Unit 731 Research Paper

For the past half-century, scholars studying WWII have grown suspicions that Japan was engaged in biological warfare (BW) and chemical warfare (CW) experiments during the 1930s and ‘40s. However, because prosecutors at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial did not charge any Japanese scientists with engaging in BW or CW, suspicions of these activities were generally dismissed as unfounded. For 40 years, the horrific activities of unit 731 still remained one of the mostly guarded secrets of WWII. It was not until 1984 that Japan formally acknowledged what it had long denied- leading by Ishii Shiro, there were brutal experiments conducted on human subjects by the Unit 731 in preparations of the germ warfare. In this research paper I am going to discuss upon the following subjects: the origin and establishment of the imperial Japanese army unit 731; the wartime discovery of by Allied intelligence of information about Japan’s biological BW programs; and United States governmental and military knowledge of and subsequent possession of some of Japan’s biological warfare; and the reasons behind American government’s effort to cover up the evidences of Japan’s biological warfare; and discuss in sequence of the postwar foreign investigations, especially between the United States and Soviet Union, including the decision to grant General Ishii

Officials in Tokyo gave the order of a complete destruction of all inculpating evidences including all constructions in Harbin headquarter. The fate determined for any potential witnesses of the project, around six hundred Manchurian workers and civilians, was being shot by the stationed Japanese soldiers; and the rest of the lingering three hundred prisoners were poisoned or gassed and cremated to exterminate all signs (Gold 69). The Japanese crews were sworn to keep their silence to the grave to their leader