Posted on 03/04/2007 2:53:43 AM PST by LibWhacker
After more than 60 years of silence, World War II's most enduring and horrible secret is being nudged into the light of day. One by one the participants, white-haired and mildmannered, line up to tell their dreadful stories before they die.
Akira Makino is a frail widower living near Osaka in Japan. His only unusual habit is to regularly visit an obscure little town in the southern Philippines, where he gives clothes to poor children and has set up war memorials.
Mr Makino was stationed there during the war. What he never told anybody, including his wife, was that during the four months before Japan's defeat in March 1945, he dissected ten Filipino prisoners of war, including two teenage girls. He cut out their livers, kidneys and wombs while they were still alive. Only when he cut open their hearts did they finally perish.
These barbaric acts were, he said this week, "educational", to improve his knowledge of anatomy. "We removed some of the organs and amputated legs and arms. Two of the victims were young women, 18 or 19 years old. I hesitate to say it but we opened up their wombs to show the younger soldiers. They knew very little about women - it was sex education."
Why did he do it? "It was the order of the emperor, and the emperor was a god. I had no choice. If I had disobeyed I would have been killed." But the vivisections were also a revenge on the "enemy" - Filipino tribespeople whom the Japanese suspected of spying for the Americans.
Mr Makino's prisoners seem to have been luckier than some: he anaesthetised them before cutting them up. But the secret government department which organised such experiments in Japanese-occupied China took delight in experimenting on their subjects while they were still alive.
A jovial old Japanese farmer who in the war had been a medical assistant in a Japanese army unit in China described to a U.S. reporter recently what it was like to dissect a Chinese prisoner who was still alive.
Munching rice cakes, he reminisced: "The fellow knew it was over for him, and so he didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down. But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony.
"He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped.
"This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time." The man could not be sedated, added the farmer, because it might have distorted the experiment.
The place where these atrocities occurred was an undercover medical experimentation unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. It was known officially as the Anti-Epidemic Water Supply and Purification Bureau - but all the Japanese who worked there knew it simply as Unit 731.
It had been set up as a biological warfare unit in 1936 by a physician and army officer, Shiro Ishii. A graduate of Kyoto Imperial University, Ishii had been attracted to germ warfare by the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning biological weapons. If they had to be banned under international law, reasoned Ishii, they must be extremely powerful.
Ishii prospered under the patronage of Japan's army minister. He invented a water filter which was used by the army, and allegedly demonstrated its effectiveness to Emperor Hirohito by urinating into it and offering the results to the emperor to drink. Hirohito declined, so Ishii drank it himself.
A swashbuckling womaniser who could afford to frequent Tokyo's upmarket geisha houses, Ishii remained assiduous in promoting the cause of germ warfare. His chance came when the Japanese invaded Manchuria, the region in eastern China closest to Japan, and turned it into a puppet state.
Given a large budget by Tokyo, Ishii razed eight villages to build a huge compound - more than 150 buildings over four square miles - at Pingfan near Harbin, a remote, desolate part of the Manchurian Peninsula.
Complete with an aerodrome, railway line, barracks, dungeons, laboratories, operating rooms, crematoria, cinema, bar and Shinto temple, it rivalled for size the Nazis' infamous death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The numbers of prisoners were lower. From 1936 to 1942 between 3,000 and 12,000 men, women and children were murdered in Unit 731. But the atrocities committed there were physically worse
than in the Nazi death camps. Their suffering lasted much longer - and not one prisoner survived.
At Unit 731, Ishii made his mission crystal clear. "A doctor's God-given mission is to block and treat disease," he told his staff, "but the work on which we are now to embark is the complete opposite of those principles."
The strategy was to develop biological weapons which would assist the Japanese army's invasion of south-east China, towards Peking.
There were at least seven other units dotted across Japanese-occupied Asia, but they all came under Ishii's command. One studied plagues; another ran a bacteria factory; another conducted experiments in human food and water deprivation, and waterborne typhus.
Another factory back in Japan produced chemical weapons for the army. Typhoid, cholera and dysentery bacteria were farmed for battlefield use.
Most of these facilities were combined at Unit 731 so that Ishii could play with his box of horrors. His word was law. When he wanted a human brain to experiment on, guards grabbed a prisoner and held him down while one of them cleaved open his skull with an axe. The brain was removed and rushed to Ishii's laboratory.
Human beings used for experiments were nicknamed "maruta" or "logs" because the cover story given to the local authorities was that Unit 731 was a lumber mill. Logs were inert matter, a form of plant life, and that was how the Japanese regarded the Chinese "bandits", "criminals" and "suspicious persons" brought in from the surrounding countryside.
Shackled hand and foot, they were fed well and exercised regularly. "Unless you work with a healthy body you can't get results," recalled a member of the Unit.
But the torture inflicted upon them is unimaginable: they were exposed to phosgene gas to discover the effect on their lungs, or given electrical charges which slowly roasted them. Prisoners were decapitated in order for Japanese soldiers to test the sharpness of their swords.
Others had limbs amputated to study blood loss - limbs that were sometimes stitched back on the opposite sides of the body. Other victims had various parts of their brains, lungs or liver removed, or their stomach removed and their oesophagus reattached to their intestines.
Kamada, one of several veterans who felt able to speak out after the death of Emperor Hirohito, remembered extracting the plague-infested organs of a fully conscious "log" with a scalpel.
"I inserted the scalpel directly into the log's neck and opened the chest," he said. "At first there was a terrible scream, but the voice soon fell silent."
Other experiments involved hanging prisoners upside down to discover how long it took for them to choke to death, and injecting air into their arteries to test for the onset of embolisms.
Some appear to have had no medical purpose except the administering of indescribable pain, such as injecting horse urine into prisoners' kidneys.
Those which did have a genuine medical value, such as finding the best treatment for frostbite - a valuable discovery for troops in the bitter Manchurian winters - were achieved by gratuitously cruel means.
On the frozen fields at Pingfan, prisoners were led out with bare arms and drenched with cold water to accelerate the freezing process.
Their arms were then hit with a stick. If they gave off a hard, hollow ring, the freezing process was complete. Separately, naked men and women were subjected to freezing temperatures and then defrosted to study the effects of rotting and gangrene on the flesh.
People were locked into high-pressure chambers until their eyes popped out, or they were put into centrifuges and spun to death like a cat in a washing machine. To study the effects of untreated venereal disease, male and female "logs" were deliberately infected with syphilis.
Ishii demanded a constant intake of prisoners, like a modern-day Count Dracula scouring the countryside for blood. His victims were tied to stakes to find the best range for flame-throwers, or used to test grenades and explosives positioned at different angles and distances. They were used as targets to test chemical weapons; they were bombarded with anthrax.
All of these atrocities had been banned by the Geneva Convention, which Japan signed but did not ratify. By a bitter irony, the Japanese were the first nation to use radiation against a wartime enemy. Years before Hiroshima, Ishii had prisoners' livers exposed to X-rays.
His work at Pingfan was applauded. Emperor Hirohito may not have known about Unit 731, but his family did. Hirohito's younger brother toured the Unit, and noted in his memoirs that he saw films showing mass poison gas experiments on Chinese prisoners.
Japan's prime minister Hideki Tojo, who was executed for war crimes in 1948, personally presented an award to Ishii for his contribution in developing biological weapons. Vast quantities of anthrax and bubonic plague bacteria were stored at Unit 731. Ishii manufactured plague bombs which could spread fatal diseases far and wide. Thousands of white rats were bred as plague carriers, and fleas introduced to feed on them.
Plague fleas were then encased in bombs, with which Japanese troops launched biological attacks on reservoirs, wells and agricultural areas.
Infected clothing and food supplies were also dropped. Villages and whole towns were afflicted with cholera, anthrax and the plague, which between them killed over the years an estimated 400,000 Chinese.
One victim, Huang Yuefeng, aged 28, had no idea that by pulling his dead friend's socks on his feet before burying him he would be contaminated.
All he knew was that the dead were all around him, covered in purple splotches and lying in their own vomit. Yuefeng was lucky: he was removed from a quarantine centre by a friendly doctor and nursed back to health.
But four relatives died. Yuefeng told Time magazine: "I hate the Japanese so much that I cannot live with them under the same sky."
The plague bombing was suspended after the fifth bacterial bombing when the wind changed direction and 1,700 Japanese troops were killed.
Before Japan surrendered, Ishii and army leaders were planning to carry the war to the U.S. They proposed using "balloon bombs" loaded with biological weapons to carry cattle plague and anthrax on the jet stream to the west coast of America.
Another plan was to send a submarine to lie off San Diego and then use a light plane carried on board to launch a kamikaze mission against the city. The war ended before these suicidal attacks could be authorised.
As well as Chinese victims, Russians, Mongolians, Koreans and some prisoners of war from Europe and the U.S. also ended up in the hands of Ishii, though not all at Unit 731.
Major Robert Peaty, of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, was the senior British officer at Mukden, a prisoner-of-war camp 350 miles from Pingfan. Asked, after the war, what it was like, Peaty replied: "I was reminded of Dante's Inferno - abandon hope, all ye who enter here."
In a secret diary, Peaty recorded the regular injections of infectious diseases, disguised as harmless vaccinations, which were given to them by doctors visiting from Unit 731. His entry for January 30, 1943, records: "Everyone received a 5cc typhoid-paratyphoid A inoculation."
On February 23, his entry read: "Funeral service for 142 dead. 186 have died in 5 days, all Americans." Further "inoculations" followed.
Why, then, after the war, were nearly all the scientists at Unit 731 freed? Why did Dr Josef Mengele, the Nazi 'Angel of Death' at Auschwitz, have to flee to South America and spend the rest of his life in hiding, while Dr Shiro Ishii died at home of throat cancer aged 67 after a prosperous and untroubled life?
The answer is that the Japanese were allowed to erase Unit 731 from the archives by the American government, which wanted Ishii's biological warfare findings for itself.
In the autumn of 1945, General MacArthur granted immunity to members of the Unit in exchange for research data on biological warfare.
After Japan's surrender, Ishii's team fled back across China to the safety of their homeland. Ishii ordered the slaughter of the remaining 150 "logs" in the compound and told every member of the group to "take the secret to the grave", threatening death to anybody who went public.
Vials of potassium cyanide were issued in case anyone was captured. The last of his troops blew up the compound.
From then on, a curtain of secrecy was lowered. Unit 731 was not part of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. One reference to "poisonous serums" being used on the Chinese was allowed to slip by for lack of evidence.
Lawyers for the International Prosecution Section gathered evidence which was sent directly to President Truman. No more was heard of it.
The Americans took the view that all this valuable research data could end up in the hands of the Soviets if they did not act fast. This was, after all, the kind of information that no other nation would have had the ruthlessness to collect.
Thus the Japanese were off the hook. Unlike Germany, which atoned for its war crimes, Japan has been able to deny the evidence of Unit 731. When, as now, it does admit its existence, it refuses Chinese demands for an apology and compensation on the grounds that there is no legal basis for them - since all compensation issues had been settled by a treaty with China in 1972.
Many of the staff at Unit 731 went on to prominent careers. The man who succeeded Ishii as commander of Unit 731, Dr Masaji Kitano, became head of Green Cross, once Japan's largest pharmaceutical company.
Many ordinary Japanese citizens today would like to witness a gesture of atonement by their government. Meanwhile, if they want to know what happened, they can visit the museum that the Chinese government has erected in the only building at Pingfan which was not destroyed.
It does not have the specimens kept at Unit 731: the jars containing feet, heads and internal organs, all neatly labelled; or the six-foot-high glass jar in which the naked body of a Western man, cut vertically in two pieces, was pickled in formaldehyde.
But it does give an idea of what this Asian Auschwitz was like. In the words of its curator: "This is not just a Chinese concern; it is a concern of humanity."
You've learned well from the Dems. Simply repeat the big lie over and over and over, and pretty soon it becomes truth. That Lindbergh was a Nazi was democrat spin against a powerful Republican in 1940. But that he is "anti-American" is just something you made up from thin air and continue to repeat.
It must be frustrating for you to prove the negative that American soldiers didn't shoot Japanese soldiers under a white flag.
In a memo from Air Force Col. Turner Rogers, complained that they were being asked by the Army to strafe civilian refugee columns. From the Memo:
"It is reported that large groups of civilians, either composed of or controlled by North Korean soldiers, are infiltrating U.S. positions," the memo reads. "The army has requested that we strafe all civilian refugee parties that are noted approaching our positions. To date, we have complied with the army request in this respect."
It doesn't look like the US army had any qualms about killing yellow skined people at will, and without any evidence whatever that they harbored combatants.
What happened to these little monsters after the war...I bet some of them worked as quality control engineers for Toyota. Their first dustup with a superior was probably when they asked for live subjects for crash tests.
Another reason why the internment of Japanese Americans and aliens was NOT a mistake.
Field Marshall Goering also viewed Lindbergh as a hero, and presented him that year with the Service Cross of the German Eagle -- ornamented with four small swastikas -- for his services to German aviation. A month later, Nazis pillaged Jewish shops, killed dozens and arrested thousands on Kristallnacht, the "night of broken glass." Americans became increasingly uneasy with Lindbergh's friendship with the Nazis.
Back in the U.S., Lindbergh became the spokesperson for the America First Committee, a powerful isolationist group led by the head of Sears Roebuck. He wrote his own speeches, calling for Americans to stay out of the war.
Lindbergh told his listeners the Nazi conquest of Europe was unavoidable. Americans, he said, should turn their attention to the threat posed by non-white nations. At the time, many agreed with his isolationist views, if not his Nazi-inspired belief in "racial strength." But as Germany invaded France and began bombing England, Americans were less certain that this is a war they should stay out of.
It was a 1941 speech in Des Moines, Iowa that toppled Lindbergh. Not far from an airport he had dedicated in 1927, in a land that was once farms and cattle ranches, Lindbergh said it was time to "name names" of forces conspiring against America. "The three most important groups who have been pressing this country towards war," he said, "are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration." He said American Jews were a "danger" to their country, citing "their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures,our press, our radio and our government."
Hmmm. That's quite some Exhibit A to your attempt to charge the U.S. Army with bigotry against the Japanese.
Is it only the Japanese fascists you sympathize with or is it the European variety too?
Even you've admitted that he did.
btw, nice try with that 'learning from the Dems' tripe.
You're the only one on this thread who is taking the word of one highly suspicious source and turning it into 'fact' by repeating it ad nauseum.
Good bye, narb. I'll let others deal with your unsubstantiated false charges. I've had quite enough of you.
The war began only a month earlier, when North Korea launched a sneak attack on June 25, 1950. A month later, the Army was in a desperate race to deploy enough troops fast enough to keep some toe hold on the Korean peninsula, where the army of the ROK was in headlong retreat. Like the jihadists of today, the North Koreans were infiltrating our lines by hiding among civilians.
July 24, 1950:
"At Yongdong a series of attacks by U.S. tanks starting around dawn against the enemy roadblock behind the 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry failed to dislodge the North Koreans. The 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment and the 16th Reconnaissance Company is sent to try and break the roadblock. Meanwhile, North Korean forces kept up frontal attacks on the 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry. These were beaten back with the help of 105mm, quad-fifty and 37mm Antiaircraft afire from supporting artillery units. As the day before, the North Korean frontal attacks were diversions to allow several platoon-sized units infiltrate around 1st Battalion positions. Some infiltrators came down the main road, dressed as civilian refugees."
July 26, 1950:
"While the 7th Cavalry was trying to reassemble other elements of the 1st Cavalry Division held their positions at Yongdong. The North Koreans mounted small probing attacks to tied these elements down while sending a regiment in a sweeping flanking movement through Chirye and thence toward Kumch'on. That night North Koreans mounted a major attack against 1st Cavalry elements at Yongdong by DRIVING SEVERAL HUNDRED REFUGEES AHEAD OF THEM THROUGH AMERICAN MINES FIELDS. This attack was repulsed."
By early August the UN forces had been driven into the tiny Pusan Perimeter and were under relentless attack. The Air Corps was doing something it ordinarily would not do but in the circumstances was essential to survival.
CNN's deliberately dishonest hit piece, repeated by you, was contemptible.
You don't know anything about the history of WWII or you'd know Germany suffered nearly a million civilian dead. And you would know that incendiary bombs were indeed used in raids on Germany. It was simply impossible given the technology of the day to minimize civilian deaths from bombing the way we can today.
And whose fault was it that Japan suffered such devastation from the urban bombing campaign??? Any government remotely concerned about its citizenry or the future of its nation would have surrendered before it ever got to that point. But the Japanese fascists refused - they were apparently willing to allow the total destruction of almost all their major cities - until TWO atomic bombs persuaded them to do the right thing. That blood is on the hands of Tojo and his fellow fanatic fascists.
JMP; first of all, nobody here ever said all of our soldiers are darling little angels. In fact, if you read all the posts from OWF and myself and others, we specifically state that.
Second; the tactic of equating moral relevance, i.e. 'they did bad things but so did we' is right out of the liberal/socialist/commie playbook, and it has no place here on FR.
Third; although others have already pointed this out to you, one must question why; why, on a private property, conservative website, why one individual would take it upon him/herself to post unsubstantiated claims, and they are unsubstantiated claims, about alleged American atrocirties, on a thread that is about documented and admitted Japanese atrocities.
Let's play this out in a comparison that you may understand; on a private website for born again Christian conservatives, someone posts a thread about the beauty of Jesus' love, His mercy, His grace. Then someone different posts on that same thread something from the OT that appears to contradict that, and stubbornly supports it despite no proven overall knowledge about the rest of the Bible.
Now, take it one step further. That poster has a history of doing things like that. What should be done? Allow that person to continue to abuse the privilege of posting on private property against the stated mission and charter of the website...or pretend it's OK, or do nothing, or just say 'we believe in diversity'? And, allow that poster to tear down Jesus?
The short answer is, no way. And, since this site is a stated conservative website, and not a liberal debating platform, then those such statements and those tactiics are to be questioned vigorously, and exposed for what they are.
Fourth; the poster several made very specific statements about "I see Americans pridefully beating their chest in a way that says "we are good", but "they were evil". Sorry, it's not that simple", or another one such as "my agenda is to slow down the pride and chest beating that America's enemys are evil, while our soldiers are saints."
Well, sorry to have to tell him, but it pretty much is that simple from a high level. Again, these are typical lib/soc/commie tactics and we should not stand for it. But I did take the time to remind the poster about why we were a force for good in the world, and they were a force for evil. There is no getting around it. Our soldiers may not be 100% saints, but our mission was for good and against evil. Anyone who disagrees with that is questionable on this site.
Fifth; he is inaccurate in several statements, i.e. "firebomb raids killed far more civilians in Tokyo, Kyoto, etc"...just flat wrong, we never firebombed Kyoto or any bombing of Kyoto.
Next; you mentioned about me calling in other 'like-minded' people to gang up and bully the poster. I have some news for you, that this site is primarily for like-minded people. It is not an open forum for anti-American, anti-military, liberal debate or discussion. I'm not saying this poster is all of that, but those unsubstantiated accusations sure fit that description better than it does the founders statement on the home page. The reason I pinged other people, btw, most of whom I do not know from an interaction on FR perspective, was to expose this to people who I knew would take great offense to these accusations.
You have not been around here long enough to have experienced first hand the many attacks, disruptions, false conservatives...you name it. There are people out to tarnish this site, and thank God that Jim has maintained the courage to stick with it. FR has also been a 'self-policed' forum, which is why we have the abuse buttons and how disruptors get zotted. Those who openly go against the mission and purpose of this website get called on the carpet and have a chance to subtantiate their accusations or not. They either have game, or they don't.
Some of the people I pinged are well known to the poster and have dealt with these type of 'dodgy' exchanges before. Virtually everyone who was pinged that replied had the same reaction as I did, whether they knew the poster previously or not.
Last; on a personal note, in typical fashion of this poster, he made an offhand comment that inferred that my father, a decorated WWII vet in CBI theater, may have done something horrible..."If in your imagination you think that I'm slandering your father, then you're one with a problem (unless you actually are covering for something he did). "...now, I never responded to that because I think that speaks for itself, in the same way that his comments such as "I reserve the spit on those who murdered under color of war, and don't have the bravery to admit it after 50 years. " and "If American soldiers murdered Japanese soldiers while under a whte flag, then I would hope that they would be man enough to admit to it, as this Japanese guy did. "...which clearly exonerates the admitted Japanese torturer because he admitted it, but calls the American soldiers "less of a man" because nobody admitted something they have not been objectively charged with.
So, if all of that is not enough for you to understand the dangerous notion of those comments by that poster, well...what can I say.
Obviously you don't know about the battles of the 8th Air Force to make daylight bombing work, specifically so we didn't have to do night time firebomb raids. It was the British that flew those.
It was simply impossible given the technology of the day to minimize civilian deaths from bombing the way we can today.
There was a specific time when the US made a conscious decision to stop flying HE bomb missions against Japanese military targets, and began firebombing their cities.
That blood is on the hands of Tojo and his fellow fanatic fascists.
I get your point. Two wrongs make a right. Because the Japs were barbaric, it was OK if Americans were barbaric. Then Lindbergh was right. American soldiers did murder Japanese soldiers under a white flag, and you think that's just fine.
Did it ever occur to you that the decision to change bombing tactics happened after Iwo Jima and coincident with the Okinawa campaign, when it became obvious all the previous campaigns and the impending losses of two islands the Japanese considered home territory would not cause a surrender? Our choice was either to target Japanese civilians and destroy their will to resist or prepare for millions of dead, both Japanese and Allied, in a ground invasion. Responding to Japanese aggression and fanaticism in the way we did was not a second "wrong" - unless you are on the same moral equivalence kick as the America hater crowd.
You probably agree with John Kerry that using .50 cal. on troops is a "war crime."
I hope no one minds, but I think this has gone on long enough.
I'd like to report this post to the Mods and JimRob, just for the record.
If narby is going to continue to post on this precious website maligning our troops like this, I think JimRob ought to know about it.
Post #210
No objection. Hunting for troll is fun, but it can get old.
Indeed. And this is very old.
shoo fly. don't bother me. never again. never.
One and the same. You nailed it.
Post 217: One and the same. You nailed it.
Make up your mind.
It's not enought that NewLand has to call in his buddies in order to bully me around. Now you make threats in JimRob's name.
If narby is going to continue to post on this precious website maligning our troops like this, I think JimRob ought to know about it.
All I've done is repeat the testimony of Charles Lindbergh, American Hero, and witness to several theaters of war from 1942 through 1945. NewLand, you and others have called me names, insulted me in various ways, and in general bullied me around.
I'm an American patriot. I'm ex-military. I admire our men in action today, and those in the past. I was shocked when I read what Lindbergh wrote of what he saw, but I believe him. It makes sense. I explains several other things I've seen in the history, but I'm confident it was the exception, not the rule.
Sometimes Mai Li massacres happen. Sometimes killing fields at No Gun Ri Korea happen. And sometimes Americans justify battle field atrocities because those on the other side did such-and-such. People on this very thread have implied that same rationalization, that the Japs were so evil, that whatever we did to them was justified. I live in confidence that America will survive pointing out the fact that not every one of use is perfect.
I rest my case.
use = us
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