Unit 731 Essay Research Paper A war

Unit 731 Essay, Research Paper A war is a form of violence and terror. However, some countries go a deal more than that. For example, the Iraq army carried out a sneak attack for which was criticized by the Western countries. The army took out nearly the whole army and also killed a number of innocent civilians. The Nazis also had gassed and murdered millions of innocent Jew people and was widely criticized. Japans biological experiments during the second world war is another example of a country going a good deal beyond of just creating violence and terror. The event showed that Japan created a program in which it planned to develop biological weapons and how live human beings were being used as guinea pigs. But beyond that, what were the causes and practices of the experiments of Unit 731? The following pages analyze what the causes and practices of the experiments by Unit 731. First they explain the situation in which Japan was at that point of the war. Then they present what led the Japanese army into conducting biological experiments on live humans and what they hoped to achieve in doing this. Finally, they show the practices of the biological experiments. At that time of the war, there was a international convention in Geneva which is known as the Geneva Convention. At this convention, it was governed that during warfare’s, countries must ban biological weapons from their list. Japan reacts to this by refusing to approve this treaty.(Fujita) This convention took place in 1925 which is 7 years before the actual biological experiments of Unit 731 actually took place. That shows that the Japanese Army had been planning the project of experiments years before it took place. The experiments took place from 1932 to 1945. In the year that it begun, 1932, The Japanese Army had invaded Manchuria after the Mukden Incident had taken place.(Kublin 162) When the army took control of Manchuria, they sent a man called Shiro Ishii, a physician and army officer who studied germ warfare, to begin experiments. To fully understand why Unit 731 was organized, this one man holds the whole key to the answer.(Anonymous) Born to a wealthy and rich land owner, Shiro had a promising future Shirako 2 laid out of him. After entering the Medicine Department in Kyoto University, he started and steadily began to build up a tenacity toward “winning”. After entering the Japanese army as a doctor, his tenacity toward winning slowly turned toward a weapon. A weapon that would be able to kill thousands of people. A weapon that used his field. That was the biological weapon.(Nihon Television) Lacking the sources and riches that were needed to lead Japan to victory, Shiro Ishii began to get ready for the biological experiments. He also needed to have knowledge of biological weapons which he couldn’t do by himself. So, in 1936, Unit 731, a biological warfare unit which was disguised as a water purification unit, is formed.(Fujita) In order to conduct these experiments, they needed “guinea pigs”. The Japanese Army arrested Chinese, Korean, Russian, and Mongolian people for minor crimes and then send them to Unit 731 to be used as test subjects which was known as “logs” by the researchers and technicians. Under the slogan, The Road To Victory, elite researchers eventually become overwhelmed by the madness of these experiments and slowly turn into devils. Seven years later, another elite researcher, Yasuo Akimoto, who becomes famous after these events, is sent down to Manchuria and is horrified by these experiments but could not overcome the slogan and eventually becomes a member of the unit, 731.(Anonymous 2) The practices that took place were both big and huge requiring a large amount of land. Ishii first formed a huge compound which consisted of more than 150 buildings over 6 square kilometers near the city of Harbin. This was the headquarters and eventually 9000 people die here. It comprised of over 3000 researchers and technicians. It was a huge research just focused on biological weaponry.(Anonymous 2) The experiments were divided into a number of branches. First, there was a branch in which was based upon vivisection. This branch was used for practicing the numerous ways of surgery. The vivisection had a number of stages. First, they would do an appendectomy upon the patient which was the excision of the vermiform appendix or cutting off the appendix. The next stage was as amputation of a arm or a leg. Finally, they would do a excision or cut open the trachea. When they finished practicing, they would kill the patient with a lethal injection. This brach also contained other researches. To study how fast ailments or diseases would spread, they locked up diseased people with healthy people. They also put people into pressure chambers to determine how much Shirako 3 pressure the human body can withstand. Probably the most infamous research done by this branch was determining the treatment of frostbite. Prisoners were taken outside into freezing temperatures and left there with their legs and arms exposed. The researchers would then periodically drench the exposed areas with water until the exposed areas give out a sound that resembles a board when it’s stuck. Not only were these done to prisoners, but they were also done on children.(Fujita) Prisoners were also taken to a place called Anda where they were tied up to stakes. Then they would be bombarded with biological weapons to see how many died and how effective it was. Planes would either spray the area with the new plague or either drop bombs which had infected fleas in them.(Fujita) The Japanese Army conducted these tests periodically on many areas of China such as Ningbo in Eastern China and Changde in North China. It is also known that the food and water also contained such diseases.(Harris 75) Finally as the war came to a ending, Unit 731 released all the plague infected animals it had thus creating a disaster in China. It caused outbreaks that killed at least 30,000 people from 1946 to 1948.( But even after the war, all the chemical weapons were dumped into the Nen River and then were buried in a remote county.(Fujita) It is estimated that 700,000 to 2,000,000 chemical bombs still lie in that area. Experts say that it is Asia’s most dangerous dump today and that a accidental explosion there would kill everything within a 200 kilometer radius.(Kannsaki) Works Cited Harris, Sheldon H. FACTORIES OF DEATH. 1994. New York: Routledge, 1994. Littell, McDougal. WRITING: RESEARCH PAPERS. Illinois: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997. Anonymous. “Unit 731.” Shitteru Tsumori. Mar. 5, 2000. Online. http://www.ntv.co.jp/shitteru/next_oa/000305.html Unit 731 And The Events Surrounding It. Screenplay by Shitteru Tsumori. Dir. Shitteru Tsumori. Perf. Shitteru Tsumori. Nihon Television, 2000. McCulloch, Scott D. “Biological Warfare and the Implications of Biotechnology.” Biological Warfare. Online. http://www.calpolyedu/ drjones/biowar-b.html Kannsaki, Takashi. “731″ E-mail to Hiroshi Shirako. Dec. 20, 2000. Fujita, Hiroshi. Dec. 11, 2000. Online. AIM. Anonymous 2. “Germ Warfare Timeline.” Germ Warfare. Aug. 13, 1995. Online. http://www.cnd.org/njmassacre/recent-news2.html Kublin, Michael. JAPAN. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990.