NÃO INDICADO A PESSOAS SENSÍVEIS.
Pensava que isto era o tipo de coisas que se passavam em filmes de terror com muito sangue à mistura. Mas foi brutalmente real e mostra os limites horríveis a que a natureza humana pode descer. E os responsáveis, na sua larga maioria, nunca foram punidos.
Unit 731 was a covert medical experiment unit of the Imperial Japanese Army which researched biological warfare through human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japanese personnel. Officially known as the Political Department and Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory, it was initially set up as a political and ideological section of the Kempeitai military police of pre-Pacific War Japan. It was meant to counter the ideological or political influence of enemies, and to reinforce the ideology of military units.
The unit was disguised as a water purification unit, and was based in the Pingfang district of the northeast Chinese city of Harbin, part of the puppet state of Manchukuo. It worked through political propaganda and as ideological representative of the Imperial Japanese Army's Kodoha (Imperial way faction, or war party). In the first phase this section drove against communist propaganda, but extended its responsibilities in other directions, at home and overseas.
It was a rough equivalent to the NKVD political sections and or politruk (political commissar) units of the Soviets; or the German Nazi SS propaganda departments. They promoted racial superiority, racialist theories, counterespionage, intelligence, political sabotage and infiltration of enemy lines. They liased with the Manchukuo military police, the Manchu intelligence service, regular Manchu police, Manchu Residents committees, Local Nationalist Manchu Parties and the Japanese Secret Service detachment in Manchukuo. The section in Manchukuo used some agents from White Russian, Chinese, Manchu, Mongol and other foreign backgrounds for special services or covert actions at home and abroad.
As many as ten thousand people, both civilian and military, of Chinese, Korean, Mongolian, and Soviet origin were subjects of experimentation by Unit 731.[1] Some American and European Allied prisoners of war also died at the hands of Unit 731.[2] In addition, the use of biological weapons researched in Unit 731's bioweapons program resulted in tens of thousands of deaths in China – possibly as many as 200,000 casualties by some estimates.[3]
Unit 731 was one of many units used by the Japanese to research biological warfare; other units included Unit 516 (Qiqihar), Unit 543 (Hailar), Unit 773 (Songo unit), Unit 100 (Changchun), Unit 1644 (Nanjing), Unit 1855 (Beijing), Unit 8604 (Guangzhou), Unit 200 (Manchuria) and Unit 9420 (Singapore).
Many of the scientists involved in Unit 731 went on to prominent careers in politics, academia and business. Some were arrested by Soviet forces and tried at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials; others, who surrendered to the Americans, were granted amnesty in exchange for the data collected.[4]
Because of their brutality, Unit 731's actions have now been officially considered by the United Nations as war crimes.
Activities
A special project code-named 'Maruta' used human beings for experiments. Test subjects were gathered from the surrounding population and were sometimes known as "logs" (maruta, 丸太). This term originated as a joke from the fact that the official cover story for the facility given to the local authorities was that it was a lumber mill. The test subjects included infants, the elderly, and pregnant women (including unborn fetuses). Many experiments were performed without the use of anesthetics because it was believed that it might have affected the results.
Vivisection
* Vivisections were performed on prisoners infected with various diseases. Scientists would perform invasive surgery on prisoners removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body.[6] The infected and vivisected prisoners included women, children and infants.
* Vivisections were also performed on pregnant women, sometimes impregnated by doctors, and the baby removed.
* Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss.
* Those limbs that were removed were sometimes reattached to opposite sides of the body.
* Some prisoners' limbs were frozen and sawn off.
* Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus was reattached to the intestines.
* Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners.
Weapons testing
* Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions.
* Flame throwers were tested on humans.
* Human targets tied to stakes were used to test germ-releasing bombs, chemical weapons and explosive bombs.
Germ warfare attacks
* Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644, Unit 100 etc.) went beyond the "testing" phase of biological weapons, and actively committed epidemic-creating germ warfare assaults against the Chinese people (both civilians and soldiers) throughout World War II. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the lab facilities of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes over Chinese populated locations, such as the coastal city of Ningbo in 1940, and the city of Changde, Hunan province in 1941. This military aerial spraying resulted in human epidemics of bubonic plague (the "Black Death") that killed thousands of innocent Chinese civilians.[7]
Other experiments
* Some prisoners were deprived of food and water to determine the length of time before death.
* Some prisoners were placed into high pressure chambers until they died.
* Some prisoners were exposed to extreme temperatures and developed frostbite to determine how long humans can survive with such an affliction.
* Some experiments were performed to determine the relationship between temperature, burns and human survival.
* Some prisoners were placed into centrifuges and spun until death.
* Animal blood was injected into some prisoners and the effects of this studied.
* Some prisoners had lethal doses of x-ray radiation administered.
* Gas chambers tested various chemical weapons on some prisoners.
* Air bubbles were injected into some prisoners' bloodstreams to simulate a stroke.
* Sea water was injected into some prisoners to determine if it could be substituted for saline.
Biological warfare
Japanese scientists performed tests centering around the plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism and other diseases on prisoners.
The research led to the development of the defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb used to spread the bubonic plague. Some of these bombs were designed with ceramic (porcelain) shells, an idea proposed by Ishii Shiro in 1938.
These bombs enabled Japanese soldiers to launch biological attacks by infecting agriculture, reservoirs, wells and other areas with anthrax, plague-carrying fleas, typhoid, dysentery, cholera and other deadly pathogens.
In addition to this, infected food supplies and clothing were dropped by planes in areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces.
E depois disto tudo:
After Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945, Douglas MacArthur became the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, rebuilding Japan during the Allied occupation.
At the end of the war he secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing America with their research on biological warfare. The United States believed that the research data were valuable because the allies had never publicly conducted or condoned such experiments on humans due to moral and political revulsion. The U.S. also did not want other nations, particularly the Soviet Union, to acquire data on biological weapons, not to mention the military benefits of such research.[8]
The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal has heard only one reference to Japanese experiments with "poisonous serums" on Chinese civilians. This took place in August 1946 and was actioned by David Sutton, assistant to the Chinese prosecutor.
Japanese defense counselor, Michael Levin, argued the claim was vague and uncorroborated and it was dismissed by the tribunal president Sir William Webb for lack of evidence. The subject was not pursued further by Sutton who was likely aware of Unit 731 activities. His reference to it at the trial is believed to have been accidental.
Although publicly silent on the issue at the Tokyo trials, the Soviet Union pursued the case and prosecuted twelve top military leaders and scientists from Unit 731 and its affiliated bio-war prisons Unit 1644 in Nanjing, and Unit 100 in Changchun, in the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials. Included among those prosecuted germ warfare criminals was General Otozoo Yamada, the commander-in-chief of the million man Japanese army occupying Manchuria.
Many Soviet POWs held by Axis Japan, and Russian civilians, including women and children were cruelly killed in chemical and biological warfare experiments at Unit 731, along with Chinese, Koreans, Mongolians, and other nationalities. The trial of those captured Japanese perpetrators was held in the city of Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East near the border with northeast China, in December of 1949. A lengthy partial transcript of the trial proceedings was published in different languages the following year by a Moscow foreign languages press, including an English language edition: Materials on the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army Charged with Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological Weapons (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950). This book remains an invaluable resource for historians on the organization and activities of the Japanese biological warfare "death factory" lab-prisons. The lead prosecuting attorney at the Khabarovsk trial was Lev Smirnov, who had been one of the top Soviet prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials, against the Nazi doctors who had committed human experiment atrocities at such death camps as Auschwitz and Dachau.
The Japanese doctors and army commanders who had perpetrated the Unit 731 atrocities and germ warfare received sentences ranging from 2 to 25 years in a labor camp from the Khabarovsk court.
Many former members of Unit 731 became part of the Japanese medical establishment. Dr Masaji Kitano led Japan's largest pharmaceutical company, the Green Cross. Others headed U.S.-backed medical schools or worked for the Japanese health ministry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
