Additionally, Unit 731 produced biological weapons that were used in areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces, which included Chinese cities and towns, water sources, and fields.

Originally set up by the military police of the Empire of Japan, Unit 731 was taken over and commanded until the end of the war by General Shirō Ishii, a combat medic officer.

While twelve Unit 731 researchers arrested by Soviet forces were tried at the December 1949 Khabarovsk war crimes trials, they were sentenced lightly to the Siberian labor camp from two to 25 years, in exchange for the information they held.

Prisoners were generally well fed on a diet of rice or wheat, meat, fish, and occasionally even alcohol in order to be in normal health at the beginning of experiments.

[15] Human experiments involved intentionally infecting captives, especially Chinese prisoners of war and civilians, with disease-causing agents and exposing them to bombs designed to disperse infectious substances upon contact with the skin.

"[41]Other sources provided information on usual practice in the Unit for surgeons to stuff a rag (or medical gauze) into the mouth of prisoners before commencing vivisection in order to stifle any screaming.

This marked the initiation of the latter phase of Ishii's elaborate scheme: conducting field trials through military expeditions on unsuspecting civilians, aiming to devise a method of dissemination that would efficiently spread the pathogens in optimal concentrations for maximum devastation.

During the period of 1940 to 1943, Japanese scientists found that using bacterial bombs for transmission wasn't effective, but they did find success in utilizing planes to spray microorganisms as a means of biological warfare delivery.

[50] Due to pressure from numerous accounts of the biowarfare attacks, Chiang Kai-shek sent a delegation of army and foreign medical personnel in November 1941 to document evidence and treat the afflicted.

A report on the Japanese use of plague-infected fleas on Changde was made widely available the following year but was not addressed by the Allied Powers until Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a public warning in 1943 condemning the attacks.

It was surgery for most, autopsies for the rest.Army Engineer Hisato Yoshimura conducted experiments by taking captives outside, dipping various appendages into water of varying temperatures, and allowing the limb to freeze.

[63] Naoji Uezono, a member of Unit 731, described in a 1980s interview a grisly scene where Yoshimura had "two naked men put in an area 40–50 degrees below zero and researchers filmed the whole process until [the subjects] died.

"[64] Yoshimura's lack of remorse was evident in an article he wrote for the Japanese Journal of Physiology in 1950 in which he admitted to using 20 children and a three-day-old infant in experiments which exposed them to zero-degree-Celsius ice and salt water.

The testimony of a unit member that served as a guard graphically demonstrated this reality: One of the former researchers I located told me that one day he had a human experiment scheduled, but there was still time to kill.

[86][87][88] A member of the Yokusan Sonendan paramilitary political youth branch, who worked for Unit 731, stated that not only were Chinese, Russians, and Koreans present, but also Americans, British, and French people.

Chief of the Personnel Division of the Kwantung Army Headquarters Tamura Tadashi testified that, when he was shown the inner-prison, he looked into the cells and saw living people in chains, some moved around, others were lying on the bare floor and were in a very sick and helpless condition.

and died with this last word.Additionally, Unit 731 Youth Corps member Yoshio Shinozuka testified that his friend junior assistant Mitsuo Hirakawa was vivisected as a result of being accidentally infected with plague.

Former Unit 731 member Hideo Shimizu stated that during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria he was instructed to eliminate evidence by burning the victims in the courtyard, collecting the leftover bones from the area, and then destroying the remains with explosives.

The Japanese wanted to avoid prosecution under the Soviet legal system, so, the morning after he made his threat, Sanders received a manuscript describing Japan's involvement in biological warfare.

MacArthur struck a deal with Japanese informants:[113] he secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731, including their leader, in exchange for providing exclusive American access to their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation.

The Japanese doctors and army commanders who had perpetrated the Unit 731 experiments received sentences from the Khabarovsk court ranging from 2 to 25 years in a Siberian labor camp.

[11] According to an investigation by The Guardian, after the end of the war, under the pretense of vaccine development, former members of Unit 731 conducted human experiments on Japanese prisoners, babies and mental patients, with secret funding from the U.S.

[122] As the chief of the unit, Shiro Ishii was granted immunity from prosecution for war crimes by the American occupation authorities, because he had provided human experimentation research materials to them.

[129] Prince Mikasa, who was the younger brother of Hirohito, toured the Unit 731 headquarters in China, and wrote in his memoir that he watched films showing how Chinese prisoners were "made to march on the plains of Manchuria for poison gas experiments on humans.

[46] Japanese biological warfare operations were by far the largest during WWII, and "possibly with more people and resources than the BW producing nations of France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and the Soviet Union combined, between the world wars.

[132][133] Harris concluded that US scientists generally wanted to acquire it due to the concept of forbidden fruit, believing that lawful and ethical prohibitions could affect the outcomes of their research.

Despite the explicit admission of conducting experiments on humans with fatal pathogenic inoculations, Ikeda's report passed peer review and was published in a Japanese scholarly journal.

Presiding judge Koji Iwata ruled that Unit 731, on the orders of the Imperial Japanese Army headquarters, used bacteriological weapons on Chinese civilians between 1940 and 1942, spreading diseases, including plague and typhoid, in the cities of Quzhou, Ningbo, and Changde.

[142] In April 2018, the National Archives of Japan released the names of 3,607 members of Unit 731, in response to a request by Professor Katsuo Nishiyama of the Shiga University of Medical Science.

[143][144] After World War II, the Office of Special Investigations created a watchlist of suspected Axis collaborators and persecutors who are banned from entering the United States.