the imperial japanese army's Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department: unit 731
By: Courtney Gallant
During the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, a research and development unit was created by the Japanese Imperial Army for the purposes of chemical and biological warfare under the name of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department, or Unit 731, headed by Dr. Shiro Ishii. Unit 731 is known as the Other Holocaust, the Japanese Holocaust and the Asian Auschwitz to the people who are aware of the atrocities that were committed at this site. To this day, Unit 731 remains the best kept secret of the Second World War.
Under the guise of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department, Dr. Shiro Ishii and his fellow doctors committed heinous experiments on human beings in the name of science on a project code named Maruta, referring to the test subjects as marutas, meaning “logs”. No one was spared; young and old, strong and weak, civilian and military, women and children, even infants were not spared.
Some of the terrors that Unit 731 unleashed on their prisoners include but are not limited to vivisection without anesthetics, weapons testing, germ warfare, and live autopsies.
Experiments with epidemics were conducted, including tests involving bubonic plague, anthrax, smallpox, typhoid, paratyphoid, tularemia, cholera, epidemic hemorrhagic fever, syphilis, aerosols, botulism, brucellosis, dysentery, tetanus, glanders, tuberculosis, yellow fever, typhus, tularemia, gas gangrene, scarlet sever, songo, diphtheria, erysipelas, salmonella, venereal diseases, infectious jaundice, undulant fever, epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis, tick encephalitis, plant diseases for crop destruction and more.