Unit 731 investigations (1 Viewer)

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comiso90

Senior Master Sergeant
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Dec 19, 2006
FL
Human bones could reveal truth of Japan's 'Unit 731' experiments - Telegraph


The Imperial Japanese Army's notorious medical research team carried out secret human experiments regarded as some of the worst war crimes in history.

Its scientists subjected more than 10,000 people per year to grotesque Josef Mengele-style torture in the name of science, including captured Russian soldiers and downed American aircrews.

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The experiments included hanging people upside down until they choked, burying them alive, injecting air into their veins and placing them in high-pressure chambers.

Now new detail about their victims' suffering could be revealed after the authorities in Tokyo announced plans to open an investigation into human bones thought to have come from the unit.

A new search is also due to be carried out for mass graves that may contain more victims of human experiments.

The bones are thought to be from up to 100 people and were discovered in a mass grave in 1989 during construction work.

They bore the marks of saws and some of the skulls had drill holes and portions of the bone cut out. But the issue is so controversial in Japan that they have since been stored in a repository.

Acting on information from a former nurse, the authorities have announced they will re-examine the remains to determine whether they were used in some of the barbaric experiments carried out by Unit 731 in the dying days of the Second World War.

Toyo Ishii came forward to say that during the weeks after Japan's surrender in August 1945, she and her colleagues at the army hospital were ordered to bury corpses, bones and body parts – she said it was impossible to determine how many people they came from – before the Allies arrived.

In an interview, she claimed that the hospital had three mortuaries where bodies with numbered tags around their necks were stored in a pool of formalin to preserve them before they were dissected. Organs and other body parts were preserved in glass jars. The sites that Ishii pinpointed as the mass graves will now be excavated.

The remains were found on the site of an apartment complex in the Shinjuku district of the city which is scheduled for redevelopment. It means the search is likely to be the last effort to identify the victims and determine their fate.

An investigation after the remains were found in 1989 concluded they were mostly non-Japanese Asians and had probably been used in "medial education" or taken to the medical school from battlefields overseas for analysis. The health ministry has repeatedly denied requests from relatives of several Chinese whose relatives are believed to have died in Unit 731 experiments to have DNA tests carried out on the bones.

Unit 731 was mostly active in China, where it carried out biological, bacteriological and chemical weapons tests on civilians and prisoners of war, including Russian soldiers and Americans.

Others were subject to live vivisections, exposed to extreme cold or killed in tests in pressure chambers.

The extreme right wing in Japan refuses to accept that the unit was anything more than a sanitation team that operated behind the front-line troops while virtually nothing on its activities is mentioned in school history books. Many of the scientists involved in Unit 731 went on to have careers in politics, academia, business, and medicine.

"Most people do not believe it even happened; the rest just want to cover it up and forget about what Japan did during the war," said Tsuyoshi Amemiya, a retired military historian. "Young people don't know and they don't want to know."
 
The people that think waterboarding is a war crime need a history lesson..

.
 
"Most people do not believe it even happened; the rest just want to cover it up and forget about what Japan did during the war," said Tsuyoshi Amemiya, a retired military historian. "Young people don't know and they don't want to know."

This is not true.
Once you may attempt search with the word "731部隊", eight hundreds and more of articles about the unit 731 and what they did would be coming up. You will find not a few books on it here too.
 
Who is they (besides Iran and a few people short in the head)?

I thought I read somewhere about another country trying to re-write history and deny that the Holocaust happened, or that it happened but not to the extent everyone thinks it did. Can't remember off the top of my head who was spouting that one...which may mean that I'm just mis-remembering. :oops:
 
You should write the editor of Telegraph.

Sorry comiso90 but I can't understand what you mean by the sentence.
I find no telegraph in the article.

65 years after the war, there is nothing to hide about what our old military did.

A telegraph by Colonel Katsuragi commented about the drug for Kamikza pilots in the last stage of war
"This is a lump of mercy to wipe off their fear for the death."
- a testimony by ex-member Unit 731

Here are too many articles about the unit.
 
Sorry comiso90 but I can't understand what you mean by the sentence.
I find no telegraph in the article.

65 years after the war, there is nothing to hide about what our old military did.

A telegraph by Colonel Katsuragi commented about the drug for Kamikza pilots in the last stage of war
"This is a lump of mercy to wipe off their fear for the death."
- a testimony by ex-member Unit 731

Here are too many articles about the unit.

The (opinion's) of a lot of people in the "Western world" has been influenced by the work of "Iris Chang's" book "The Rape of Nanking". Their are many people who assume that because Iris Change could find no published writings on the Nanking massacre in her American library...that, in fact, nothing had been written on the subject (anywhere). Many people are unaware of the Japanese literature (and articles) criticizing the military government and their campaign against civilians.

On a personal observation...I find it interesting that a lot of the content in Changs book is emotionally charged with the same kind of thinking that makes mass murder possible. She had written a book that is "fact based", but is presented in a provocative manor that leads the reader to conclude that all the people of Japan are the same ( a stereotype, as defined by Chang).

Before anyone jumps on me...I believe that the massacre in Nanking happened... I only have problems with Iris Chang's presentation of the material. To me...she has confused the important work of a "pop literature historian" with her own personal crusade....
 
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I thought I read somewhere about another country trying to re-write history and deny that the Holocaust happened, or that it happened but not to the extent everyone thinks it did. Can't remember off the top of my head who was spouting that one...which may mean that I'm just mis-remembering. :oops:

The only one I can think of off the top of my head that is state sponsored is Iran.
 
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Yeah, it really is, proton45.

I wonder how many westerners know the Japan-China Joint History Research Committee.
Historians from both nations have been discussing the Japan-China historical relationship to verify and correct the history descriptions each other in the 3 parts of Ancient, Medieval and Modern since 2006.

According to their latest official report dated 31 Jan, 2010(Media news),
Japan admitted the Nanjing Incident as a mass and private massacre by the Japanese military and estimated the victims number "from 20,000 to 200,000". On the other hand, China insisted the number should be more than "300,000".

About the Tiananmen Square Incident in 1989, making public was put off this time by the request of China.

About Sino-Japanese War, Japan presupposed "It must be said that the Japan side made the great portion of cause" and clarified the assailant's position. On the other hand, China concluded that Sino-Japanese War was "an all-out war of aggression by Japanese militarism."

... etc.
 

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