Unit 731 researchers also had information of the effectiveness of acts of “sabotage.” For example one witness testified during the Khabarovsk Trial that he and other Unit 731 personnel “contaminat[ed] water sources, wells and buildings with the germs of typhoid and paratyphoid” during an expedition in Central China in 1942. “The flasks and bottles [containing the bacteria] were thrown into wells, marshes and in villagers’ homes.” In addition to contaminating water sources, researchers also made “three thousand rolls. . .” contaminated with “ the bacteria of typhoid and paratyphoid. . .” and [gave them] to the Chinese.” The witnesses added that the Chinese “were [then] released from the camp in order to cause and epidemic of typhoid and paratyphoid” in their villages.39 The Soviets were also targeted by the Japanese. During the summer of 1942, in the area of Tryokhrechye near the Soviet border, “experiments were made in contaminating the river Derbul and water sources with glanders, and the soil and grass surface with anthrax.”40 In 1944 Japanese BW researchers gathered information from the Soviet border about “the condition of . . .cattle, the whereabouts of summer and winter pastures and hayfields. . .” in preparation for future biological attacks aimed at the Soviet population.41 The Japanese Kwantung Army and the individual researchers understood that the bacteria could lie dormant and could devastate the not only the Chinese and Soviet populations for years to come, but also have global impact if the germs spread. There are numerous examples of bacteriological warfare and experiments carried out by the Japanese, which provided valuable BW findings that could be beneficial to the U.S.’s own BW program.
Cold w...
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...unconventional weapons, including, biological weapons, as potentially useful tools of war.
Unlike victims of Nazi scientific experiments, the Chinese and other victims of Unit 731’s cruel medical torture and germ warfare have never received global acknowledgement for the atrocities they suffered. And unlike many of the Nazi doctors who faced justice during the Nuremberg Medical War Crimes Trial, many of the Japanese Army doctors of Unit 731 faced little to no consequences for their participation in crimes against humanity. The U.S. Government has not acknowledged their role in covering up these crimes and protecting those who perpetrated them. Neither, the U.S. or Japanese Government have officially apologized, and Japan refuses to give retribution to families and victims of Japan’s BW program, citing the U.S.’s grant of immunity to Unit 731 war criminals.59
Mistakes in the World’s History World War II officially started on September 1, 1939, but what really pulled America into forceful action was when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. When Americans heard of the bombing, people panicked. Americans blamed everything on the Japanese and hated even the innocent Japanese-Americans for everything that happened. At this time, on the other side of the world, Hitler had already been overseeing concentration camps for Jews for eight years. The first concentration camps were in 1933, and millions of Jews were murdered and tortured mercilessly for no reason other than they were a race/ethnicity hated by Hitler.
Guillemin, J. (2005). Biological weapons: From the invention of state-sponsored programs to contemporary bioterrorism Columbia University Press.
...target to escape and even held a competition of the person who kills 100 people first will win the game. The Japanese keeps denying their actions and refuse to give an official apology to all the offenders. Their officials go to shrine to pay homage on their so-called heroes, ignoring how these “heroes” have deeply injured the Chinese. During the Holocaust, alive human beings were taken to the chamber of gas and organs were taken to do the experiment. How the Nazi treated the Jewish was similar to how the Japanese treated the Chinese.
On December 8, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan after the bombing of Pearl Harbor which set off a series of chain reactions. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was concerned about Japanese spies hiding in the United states and his solution was to establish Executive Order 9066 which authorized military commanders to define “military areas” and to exclude anyone from those areas. Korematsu v. the United States was a result of Executive Order 9066 which relocated over 120,000 persons of Japanese descent. Fred Korematsu refused to be relocated and suffered consequences. About 62 years later, the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld arises and with it follows the question; has the government learned from their mistakes. Considering that Yaser Hamdi was captured and detained without proper rulings until 2 years after, the public would say that the government has forgotten their mistakes of mass incarceration and neglects the consequences of their actions. The government has forgotten the effects of Korematsu v. United states and has not learned the lesson of what became of the Executive Order 9066 and its effect on Japanese Americans as well as history.
When most American people think of Germany, they think of sports cars made for the autobahn, sauerkraut, Adolf Hitler, and the Holocaust. Compared to Germany, when most American people think of Japan they think of sushi, Godzilla movies, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. World War II was such a significant event in history that almost 70 years after it came to an end, today’s younger generations often associate former Axis controlled countries with the war. People around the world are filled with disgust and immense hate when they hear the name Hitler, mainly because of his leadership under the Holocaust; which was the discriminatory mass genocide of 11-17 million people, the vast majority of which were European Jews. Hirohito, former Emperor of Japan, should strike a similar bell with people when they hear his name because Japan carried out genocide on Chinese civilians and soldiers in World War II. Japan’s attack on the Chinese city of Nanking, was one of the most atrocious events in history. This event has been named both the Nanking Massacre and the Rape of Nanking. The torturous, violent techniques used by the Japanese army upon Chinese civilians and soldiers including dehumanizing them, addicting them to drugs, and other perverse and violent acts, are some of the most grosteque methods ever recorded that could only be thought of by sadistic Japanese soldiers. The events committed by the Japanese army in Nanking, are equally as disgusting as the acts that Nazi Germany committed and should become a major topic involved with World War II in the future, despite the lack of light shed on it in the past for various reasons.
Some 1,500 “enemy aliens” who were thought to have connections with Japan were immediately rounded up and interned by the De...
During the Holocaust, the Nazis carried out many unethical medical experiments on patients without regard for their survival. Prisoners were forced to be subjects in various studies against their will. The Nazis’ victims went through indescribable pain as they were forced through high-altitude, freezing, tuberculosis, sea water, sulfanilamide, poison, and transplant experiments. Through these tragic Holocaust experiments, scientists and doctors discovered treatments used today for high-altitude sickness, hypothermia, contagious diseases, dehydration, poisoning, and war wounds.
...nited States apologized for their actions consistently and offered money to cover the wounds of hundreds forever scarred with agony from these passing years. Entitling emotional distress upon Japanese-Americans. Money cannot cover up near death experiences that had existed in the internment camps. Having been treated like rodents, fed small proportions of meals and disturbing shelter circumstances. They tried their best to recreate what was taken away from them but nothing would ever be the same. The disturbing reality of this has been repeated throughout history in foreign affairs and in U.S history. The United States prides themselves in being a nation of freedom and equality, unable to learn from ongoing discrimination between race and ethnicity, but never again will this happen to the recovering Japanese- Americans that faced true brutality from their own people.
“Hiroshima,” brings to light the psychological impact the detonation of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima had. Following the atomic bomb, over a hundred thousand people were dead and another one hundred thousand people severely injured in a city with a population of 250,000. Dr. Sasaki and Mr. Tanimoto were left wondering why they had survived while so many others had perished, this is known as survivor’s guilt and it can be very heavy and dangerous baggage to carry. On the historic day of the first use of the atomic weapon, Mr. Tanimoto spent most of his time helping people however, one night he was walking in the dark and he tripped over an injured person. He felt a sense of shame for accidentally hurting wounded people, who were in enough pain
“’How many logs did you chop today?’ People would answer ‘Two logs were cut at my section’, or ‘No logs were cut at my section’” (Simkin). This conversation was not a discussion on the productivity of a day’s work of cutting wood, no this was far worse. The discussion between these men was about the vivisection of live human subjects. Here was a daily part of the lives of workers and researchers of the Japanese Covert Biological and Chemical Warfare Research Department Unit, or better known as Unit 731, and the atrocities committed by the “Asian Auschwitz”. So what happened to the leaders and men of Unit 731? If they surrendered to the Americans after World War II, then they were granted immunity and allowed to live their lives free without any worry of prosecution for their crimes on humanity. So the question is, was it correct of the United States to grant immunity to human experimenters of Unit 731 and cover-up all knowledge of Unit 731’s existence?
When 1937 arrived, Japanese soldiers raided China’s capital of Nanking and began mass murdering citizens. The sole leader of the Japanese Imperial Army was non-existent. There were many people in power, such as generals, who allowed these behaviors to occur. Baron Koki Hirota, foreign minister at the time, proceeded to do nothing while being well aware of the Japanese’s persecution of the Chinese. These unsympathetic murders of those who were thought to be Chinese soldiers as well as women, children and the elderly.
"Nazi Medical Experiments." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
The moral and military necessity of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings has been a subject of debate for almost half a century. Most revisionists emphasize the victimization of Japan during the attacks. They often forget the military realities and the historical context while judging whether it was necessary for America to use nuclear weapons against the two Japanese cities. It is important to note that Japan was the aggressor. Japan triggered the war that led to the bombing of its two cities with its sneak attack on America’s Pearl harbour in 1941. Subsequent systematic and flagrant violation of several international agreements and norms through employment of chemical and biological warfare and mistreatment of prisoners of war and civilians aggravated the situation[ Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth. (NY: Knopf, 1995), 89]. A response was needed to deal with increased aggression from Japan. Allied military planners had to choose between invading Japan and using the US atomic bombs in 1945[ Ronald Tabaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb. (Little, Brown, 1995), 101
In 1900, Walter Reed, a 49 year-old physician, led medical experiments on subjects who voluntarily consented to the tests. One of his experiments consisted of his medical staff at the United States Army Yellow Fever Commission being bitten by mosquitoes carrying yellow fever (“A slap in Major Walter Reed’s Face”). The object was not chaotically based, but specific to finding a cure. Whereas, in the 1940s at the beginning of the Holocaust, hazardous experiments, intended to test human boundaries, were performed without subjects’ consent and in unsafe environments. These vicious experiments were forced upon Jewish prisoners by two Nazi physicians, Josef Mengele and Shiro Ishii (“Human Experimentation, Plutonium, and Colonel Stafford Warren”). The state of the subjects was filthy and brutal, in their appearance and treatment. Many of the experiments left the victims mutilated and psychologically scarred. They consisted of injections of diseases, subjection to various poisons, and exposure to extreme temperatures. Later, in 1946, Germany received a ‘slap on ...
Infectious disease was recognized as a potential impact on people and enemy as early as 600B.C.Poisoning wells and other sources of enemy water supply was a common strategy that continued be used through the European wars, the American civil wars and even into 20th century.