Japan began to explore research on both biological and chemical weapons in the late 1920s. Even before he became emperor, Hirohito showed an interest in this line of research. In 1925, during his regency, Hirohito had a biological laboratory constructed within the Akasaka Palace, and in 1928, during the second…
An estimated 20 million people died and millions more were subjugated and oppressed during Japan’s half-century of war and colonial expansion, which ended in 1945. Throughout its military campaign the Japanese army carried out an infamous “Three All” extermination policy “loot all, kill all, burn all.” The policy led to…
1936–1945: Unit 731 — the Asian Auschwitz — was a massive biological warfare research program of the Japanese Imperial Army under the command of Lt. General Dr. Ishii Shiro in Pin Fang, Manchuria outside the city of Harbin. Its true purpose was masked as the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory. Unit…
Unit 731 conducted “Field Tests” using planes in the experimental use of massive biological weapons on Chinese cities that induced epidemics of plague, cholera, and typhoid on a large scale, infecting an estimated 200,000 Chinese, Korean, Mongolians, and Allied civilians. In 1942, Japan carried out massive biological weapons attacks dropping…
During WWII, Japanese and Nazi doctors committed heinous experimental medical atrocities. Yet, those performed by the Nazi doctors were deemed “crimes against humanity,” whereas those performed by Japanese doctors were disregarded despite the many similarities. The doctors in both countries who carried out diabolical experiments regarded their victims as sub-human,…
1942—1944: Americans began to capture numerous Japanese military orders, diaries, and field notebooks that contained evidence of Japanese atrocities. The task was carried out by the US Army’s Allied Translator & Interpreter Section (ATIS), the largest translation and interrogation operation in the Pacific which was established by Gen. MacArthur in…
After World War II, Japan’s history was fabricated into a glorified myth woven by hawkish right-wing nationalist Japanese historians, and assisted by General Douglas McArthur, who shielded the emperor and the perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Japan’s fabricated mythological history was imbeded in government censored textbooks. The Japanese government steadfastly…
Textbook Censorship Challenged The Japanese government repeatedly required history textbook authors to make changes on sensitive issues concerning the Asia Pacific War (from 1931 to 1945). The first textbook attack was in 1955 when Japan’s Ministry of Education decried textbooks as “too scientific” by which they meant too critical of…
The hidden record of Japanese medical atrocities came to light in Japan through lawsuits filed by Chinese victims of germ warfare; the discovery of bones of the victims of experiments; and documented evidence of Japanese preparations for biological warfare. 1981: American journalist John W. Powell, Jr. was the first person…
In April 1992, a two-part documentary about Japanese biological weapons mastermind Ishii Shiro was based upon newly discovered records of the Khabarovsk Trial, from KGB files, and materials from 731 Biological Warfare Unit, revealed how Japanese experiments were actually conducted. In 1993 the Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono issued…
In 1995, The San Jose Mercury News obtained a 137-page declassified U.S. military counterintelligence file that provides detailed evidence of how the U.S. intelligence unit in Tokyo under General Douglas MacArthur’s command had erected a wall of silence surrounding the human experimental atrocities conducted by Unit 731 doctors – including experiments on…
These two sentences encapsulate Japanese culture during the Emperor Hirohito era. A culture that glorified Japan’s racial superiority, sought to exercise its power, encouraging merciless brutality toward its subjugated enemies whom the Japanese regarded as sub-human. A culture that unleashed unrestrained violent savagery, mass rape, indulged an appetite for unimaginable torture,…
