Pdf Level 3 Unit 731

Unit 731, officially known as known as ‘Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army’ was built in 1935 in Manchuria (North-East China) during Japanese occupation. It was first referred to as the ‘Togo Unit’. Now often referred to as the ‘Asian Auschwitz’. The chief of the Unit was named Shiro Ishii, who convinced the Japanese Military to allow him to research and develop weapons that could kill huge numbers of people, specifically Biological Weapons.

The head of Unit 731, Shiro Ishii, was a Japanese Lieutenant, who held a postgraduate in Bacteriology from the Kyoto Imperial University. Ishii thought that using biological weapons was more cost productive than “building, manning and maintaining huge conventional forces” (Source A, page 23) During the Japanese occupation of China, Ishii’s influence in the Japanese army grew. His persuasion of the army lead to the ‘Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory’ being commissioned in 1932, with Shiro Ishii in charge. In Manchuria, anti-Japanese behaviour was an offence and perpetrators could be arrested. Most of those arrested were sent to the labs, to be experimented upon. A member of the Japanese ‘Kenpeitai’, which was the police force in occupied China, was used for supplying human subjects for Unit 731.

The unit is

The unit was mostly abandoned and most of the researchers, and their families, escaped to Japan. Ishii ordered all of them to “take the secret to the grave” (Source A, Page 11). Cyanide was also given to the personnel of Unit 731 in case someone was captured. Some of the left over Japanese troops in Manchuria proceeded to try and destroy the evidence of what happened. They bombed the unit, although due to excellent architecture and construction, most were not badly