What is Project 731?
Unit 731 (Japanese: 731部隊, Hepburn: Nana-san-ichi Butai), short for Manshu Detachment 731 and also known as the Kamo Detachment, and Ishii Unit, was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino- …
What was Unit 731 disguised as?
Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply
This new research station was called Unit 731 and was disguised as a water-purification facility named, “Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Unit of the Kwantung Army.” Unit 731 was comprised of 150 buildings surrounded by a wall and a dry moat, as well as high voltage wires, which did not resemble a water- …
What was the purpose of Unit 731?
Started as an agency to promote public health, Unit 731 was meant to conduct research that would benefit Japanese soldiers, such as learning more about the ways in which the human body can withstand hunger and thirst and fight diseases.
Did Japan use biological weapons in China?
In military campaigns, the Japanese army used biological weapons on Chinese soldiers and civilians. Japan’s infamous biological warfare Unit 731 was led by Lt. General Shirō Ishii. Unit 731 used plague-infected fleas and flies covered with cholera to infect the population in China.
What is a human vivisection?
Vivisection (from Latin vivus ‘alive’, and sectio ‘cutting’) is surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structure. Human vivisection, such as live organ harvesting, has been perpetrated as a form of torture.
Do the Japanese know about Unit 731?
In Japan, historical textbooks rarely mention Unit 731, and “very few Japanese people, especially among the younger generations, know about the unit or what it has done,” Mori said.
Where was Unit 731 located in World War 2?
It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Imperial Japan. Unit 731 was based at the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (now Northeast China), and had active branch offices throughout China and Southeast Asia.
What was the project code name for Maruta?
A special project code-named Maruta used human beings for experiments. Test subjects were gathered from the surrounding population and were sometimes euphemistically referred to as “logs” (丸太, maruta), used in such contexts as “How many logs fell?”.
What was the name of the Kwantung Army Unit 731?
Formation. It was divided at the same time into the “Ishii Unit” and “Wakamatsu Unit” with a base in Hsinking. From August 1940, the units were known collectively as the “Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (関東軍防疫給水部本部)” or “Unit 731” (満州第731部隊) for short.
What was the study method of Unit 731?
It was around this time that Unit 731 began referring to confined research subjects as “logs,” or “Maruta” in Japanese. Study methods in these experiments were barbaric. Vivisection, for example, is the practice of mutilating human bodies, without anesthesia, to study the operations of living systems.