Essay Unit 731

A. Plan of Investigation
This investigation will analyze the role of Unit 731, a Japanese biological and chemical warfare research and development unit, during the Japanese occupation in Manchuria. This investigation will be focused on both direct and indirect actions and experiments conducted by the unit that officially goes by the name of ‘Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army’. Collection of essays, official articles and testimonies will be mostly used to evaluate the depth of the unit’s role in Manchuria. The two main sources for this investigation: Japan’s Wartime Medical Atrocities: Comparative Inquiries in Science, History and Ethics edited by Jing Bao Nie, Nanyan Guo, Mark Selden and Arthur Kleinman, and Unit 731: Testimony by Hal Gold will be analyzed for their origins, purposes, values and limitations.

B. Summary of Evidence
The Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Department, or commonly known as Unit 731, was a secret unit established in 1936 by Japan in Pingfang, near Harbin, with subdivisions in Hailar, Dalian and Mudanjiang. The unit was initiated by General Ishii Shiro, a microbiologist and physician who had returned from two years of field

Even though some of the members were captured by the Soviets and were tried in Khabarovsk in 1949, none of the Unit 731 members who returned to Japan was tried as a war criminal. Furthermore, they were granted immunity by the American military in exchange for their wartime research. The American investigation produced two reports, Sanders and Thompson Report, but none of them addressed human experimentation or trial use of biological weapon. The Japanese military themselves warned the members not to talk about human experimentation and biological