I witnessed unimaginable horrors in Japan's WW2 human experiment unit... I had to speak out for the sake of my children: Vet, 93, describes jars full of human bodies at notorious Unit 731 where POWs were dissected ALIVE and infected with plague

Daily Mail ^

[TigerClaws]

Sworn to secrecy by the Japanese Imperial Army, Hideo Shimizu carried the horrors he saw at the notorious Unit 731 facility with him for more than 70 years.

The 93-year-old was just 14 when he was drafted as a cadet to the city of Harbin, in what was then Japanese-occupied Manchuria, during World WaR 2.

There, he was groomed to take part in some of history's worst atrocities - human experiments carried out on prisoners of war including pregnant women and small children.

More than 3,000 people - mostly Chinese civilians, but also Russian, British and American POWs - were dissected alive, infected with bubonic plague and used as human guinea-pigs for frost-bite treatments in nightmarish torture laboratories.

Decades on, innocent pictures of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren reminded Shimizu of the faces of the many victims he came across in the slaughterhouse.

[momincombatboots]

Thanks for posting

[sport]

I did read the book the Rape of Nanking. And saw the pictures included in the book.

[Zhang Fei]

[Would China use atomic weapons on Japan? Would North Korea? YES. This is why, If we have a WW III Japan will stay neutral and not support the west, and risk nukes upon their cities. No, just as America fears too many battlefield deaths, Japan fears a nuke attack. Putin’s treaty with Kim, locks Japan from helping America in any coming war. The Japanese navy will only be used for anti-pirate duties and homeland defense. One less headache for Russia/China/Iran/ North Korea Axis.]

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The Japanese and the Koreans know that without American protection, the Chinese will conquer and rule over them. Because they are treaty allies, they are covered by the American nuclear umbrella the same way Europe is. A Chinese nuclear attack on these countries will result in the nuclear annihilation of hundreds of Chinese cities.

The difficulty for China is that as a poor country, most of its infrastructure and industry is densely packed in the cities. Destroy them and the country goes back to rickshaws and porters. But the principal deterrent for China’s leaders is their personal demise that would follow their initiation of a nuclear attack.

[Old Grumpy]

>>>Obama wanted to apologize to Japan for our ending the war.<<<

I remember that. They deserve NO apologies. The Japanese were monstrous, just like the Nazis. Thank the Lord we won the war or we would either be speaking German or Japanese.

[blueunicorn6]

Japan isolated themselves from the world.

For all of their bluster, the Japanese are a very fearful people.

They cling precariously to their small islands.

They were amazed by rifles and cannons.

They strove hard to catch up with the rest of the world.

They were very interested in the weapons of other nations.

I am sure they spent a great deal of time looking at weapons developed and used by other nations.

Their isolation and lack of experience with modern weapons preyed on their fear and they behaved horribly.

Their fear does not justify their actions.

[L.A.Justice]

Stalin nearly went to war with the USA after we smuggled Japanese scientists and documentation from that camp.

General MacArthur decided that Japanese officials involved with Unit 731 would not be tried for war crimes...US wanted data from Japanese...I think General MacArthur did many good things...But, in this case...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanese_war_crimes

Soviets did put some Japanese on trial for Unit 731...However, nobody was sentenced to death...Soviets sent those Japanese prisoners back to Japan by 1956...Soviets also probably got data from Unit 731...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khabarovsk_war_crimes_trials

[Zhang Fei]

[My father was a WW2 veteran. He served on convey patrol in the North Atlantic, guarding against the U-Boats. I never heard him same anything bad against Germans.

But he hated the Japanese. For that reason I never bought a Japanese car while he was alive. He would have disowned me. I suspect Pearl Harbor made the difference.]

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Gotta wonder how much of that was prejudice. It’s not like he had any personal experience with fighting the Japanese, let alone war atrocities. The general sense then was that Orientals were inferior. They weren’t supposed to be able to inflict a bloody nose on a white country. For Germany to do so was fine - Germany was a major power with an illustrious military tradition. And, of course, they were fellow white people. Whereas the Japanese were just a bunch of servile flunkeys.

This isn’t some random musing. For better or worse, it was a very different milieu with attitudes very different from today’s. Until the 1940s, for instance, Asian Canadians weren’t allowed to vote. A significant part of the debate over a universal draft there revolved around of letting them have the franchise.

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_Crisis_of_1944#Background
[Opposition to conscription was not limited to Quebec. In British Columbia, where alarm over the “Yellow Peril” was a major issue, many were opposed to conscription, fearful that conscription of Chinese-Canadians and Japanese-Canadians would lead to Asian-Canadian demands for the right to vote, to which the white population of British Columbia were adamantly opposed.[15]]

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Non-whites were viewed as inferior, vaguely subhuman. For the Japanese to accomplish what they did was like getting beaten up by a tribe of baboons. There was an element of humiliation - that monkeys had somehow overcome human beings. Even war propaganda depicted the Japanese as monkeys.

https://cwp.missouri.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2012/03/wwii_propaganda.jpg

[married21]

I think you are painting with a broad brush there. If all Japanese are racist how are there so many that have intermarried with Americans? I admit I hang around with a special group of Japanese people, those connected with our city’s sister city program. But given that our student exchanges and cultural exchanges have been going on for 50 years, solely with volunteers in both cities, they could not possibly all be racist.
As to the Chinese and Japanese enmity, I was in Japan a few months ago and I asked local people how they felt about tourists from other countries. They said all were welcome. But… the Chinese were more tolerated than actually liked. There were a lot of Chinese tourists anyway.

[Sarcazmo]

I read the book Unbreakable.

According to that account, the Japs were worse than the Germans. By a large margin.

Govt covered it up because they wanted to ally with Japan.

[Sarcazmo]

“there are people in EVERY country who would ...”

I agree. Them friendly good ‘ol boy Democrats we drink beers with sometimes... may not quite be what we think they are. Incidentally, they’re on “our” side too.

But these days if a guy is still supporting Brandon, I’d say the mask has slipped.

[Glad2bnuts]

Is there any examples of co-ordination between Japan and Germany during WW II?

[Sarcazmo]

In my experience Anybody can be racist. Everybody is never racist.

YMMV. I probably wouldn’t go on a bicycle tour through South Africa.

[Sarcazmo]

Interesting question.

Like your tagline too. It seems to me that it is extremely difficult to identify the “right” time at the time.

It’s pretty easy to identify when the right time was, after its too late.

Too bad we don’t have a good AI. It would know when the right time was. But then we’d all dither about speculating whether it was right or not.

[Soul of the South]

“Toss in using agent orange.”

Absolutely.

[Beowulf9]

“It was a marriage of convenience”.

I really have to apologize for this but I don’t know what that means. I’m not much informed on that war, or any other war really. It was convenient to go to war siding with the Germans? Why not just stay out of the war? Wouldn’t that be even more convenient. I don’t get this?

Actually now that I think about it what did they have to gain by going to war against us and our allies anyway?

[Zhang Fei]

[I read the book Unbreakable.

According to that account, the Japs were worse than the Germans. By a large margin.

Govt covered it up because they wanted to ally with Japan.]

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It was a different philosophy from the Germans. The Japanese wanted to conquer the world and rule it from Tokyo. The Germans wanted to kill the world and repopulate it with Germans, or people who could pass for German.

That difference is why numerous postwar Asian leaders had prior experience working for the Japanese occupation authorities in responsible positions. The major names are Korea’s Park Chung-hee, Taiwan’s Lee Teng-hui, Indonesia’s Sukarno and Suharto, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Burma’s Aung San and Ne Win.

The Japanese attitude towards the conquered was fairly simple. Brutal collective reprisals were mounted against populations in regions that were perceived as harboring guerrillas or enemy troops. For instance, after the Doolittle mission that inflicted 50 dead in Tokyo, Chinese sources claim Japanese forces killed 250K people in areas of China where Doolittle’s men ditched their aircraft and were spirited out of China.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid#Zhejiang-Jiangxi_campaign

But those who went about their lives as before, prior to Japanese rule, were left alone. Exemplary atrocities were mounted against trouble spots to discourage flare-ups in guerrilla attacks, but areas that complied were spared.

That’s a very different policy from Germany’s, which killed or tried to work to death every Jew it came across. Germany’s long-term plan was to rid the world of people who could not pass for German, and many that did pass for German.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan

Japan wanted to rule the world whereas Germany wanted to kill it. Japan sought obedient subjects. Germany sought a world unpopulated by subhuman races - for Germans, the taint was in the blood. That’s the principal reason Germany’s actions are reviled to an extent Japan’s are not.

[Mean Daddy]

My father was a Korean War vet & he told a story about a slightly older co-worker who had survived the Bataan Death March and if he went out to lunch with someone and they owned a Japanese car, he refused to ride in it.

[Zhang Fei]

[My father was a Korean War vet & he told a story about a slightly older co-worker who had survived the Bataan Death March and if he went out to lunch with someone and they owned a Japanese car, he refused to ride in it.]

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Given the experience of that acquaintance, that’s completely understandable. A good number of Holocaust survivors swore off German cars. But for people not directly involved, you gotta wonder about their misgivings about Japan and Japanese products. For instance, China’s maltreatment of GI POWs in Korea was such that, as with Japan’s, 40% of them died. The Chinese starved them to death and denied them medical treatment. I can’t say I’ve heard of any Korea vet who’s boycotting Chinese products because of China’s wartime conduct.

[ansel12]

Japan is a solid ally and is immersed in its biggest military buildup since WWII, it is deeply engaged with the allies against the China threat.

Japan unveils biggest military build-up since World War II
“Japan has announced a U.S. $320 billion plan to buy missiles capable of striking the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and North Korea, and ready the nation for sustained conflict as regional tensions and Russia’s Ukraine invasion stoke war fears.
The sweeping, five-year plan unveiled in mid-December 2022 will make Japan the world’s third-biggest military spender after the United States and the PRC, based on current budgets.”
https://ipdefenseforum.com/2022/12/japan-unveils-biggest-military-build-up-since-world-war-ii/

[princeofdarkness]

Damn old Doug MacArthur was an outright fool.