Undoubtedly some reality overcomes the fiction and if you think that the Nazis were the worst of the Second World War, I invite you to read this post.
The 731 Squadron was established as a unit of biological and chemical weapons during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II where its main guinea pigs were people. And he was responsible for some of the most horrible war crimes committed in modern times
One of the medical researchers involved with 731 Squadron explained how vivisection was performed on people: "I was ordered to wash the body of the person with a brush before taking it naked to the dissection room by a special member of the squadron," he remembered. "The first time I shuddered, one member of the team was listening to the heart beats with the stethoscope, another was holding a scalpel, and the moment he removed the stethoscope from his ears, a scalpel stuck into his body. I knew it, but according to the doctors, this moment was very important, because if something went wrong, the blood would fall on us, and then we could become infected. "
Some of the most violent tests consisted of trying to find the best way to treat the shrapnel injuries produced during the fights. Prisoners were tied to wooden stakes by placing bombs around them at various distances before being detonated. Those who survived underwent surgery; the rest went for autopsies. Other prisoners became human targets to test other weapons such as flamethrowers, not to mention bombs that released germs or chemical weapons.
The experimentation of devices such as bombs on human beings was just one of the brutal activities by which the 731 Squadron is known. The vivisections were performed on men, women and children - who had been infected - without anesthesia. The organs were extracted from the test subjects while they were still alive so that the decomposition did not alter the results as they feared it would happen.
Some prisoners were hung upside down to observe how long it would take to suffocate. Air was injected into the arteries to determine the time it took to show the initial symptoms of an embolism.
Some captives were injected with horse urine into their kidneys, people were deprived of food, water and sleep to specify the length of time until death. Other people were placed inside vacuum chambers until they died.
Many were exposed to extreme temperatures developing freezing, being analyzed how long the human body survived with such torture, in addition to determining the effects of putrefaction and gangrene on human flesh.
Some experiments were carried out to define the relationship between temperature, burns and human survival. A few prisoners were placed inside centrifuges, spinning them to death.
Animal blood was injected into some others, studying the effects of this action. Some captives were irradiated with lethal doses of X-rays. In gas chambers several chemical weapons were tested, always using people.
Air bubbles were injected into the bloodstream of other prisoners to simulate a stroke.
Seawater was also injected into as many captives to determine if it could serve as a substitute for saline.
Mothers with babies were placed in a tank filled with water and observed the behavior of the mother (who initially held the baby to the top but then ended up stepping on it to avoid drowning herself).
These are just some of the cruel experiments done by this squad now you think the Nazis were the worst. It is noteworthy that one of the responsible was Shirō Ishii commander of the 731 squad followed by its members:
Chūsa (Lieutenant Colonel) Ryoichi Naito
Dr. Masaji Kitano
Yoshio Shinozuka
Yasuji Kaneko
After Japan surrendered to the allies in 1945, Douglas MacArthur became supreme commander of the allied forces, rebuilding Japan during the Allied occupation.
At the end of the war, he secretly granted immunity to the doctors of Squadron 731 in exchange for providing the United States with his research data on biological warfare. The United States believed that the research data had value because the allies never prosecuted or publicly condemned such experiments on humans, due to moral and political aversion. The United States also did not want other nations, such as the Soviet Union, to acquire the data on biological weapons, not to mention the military advantages of such research.
The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal had learned only through a reference to Japanese experiments with "infected sera" on Chinese civilians. This happened in August 1946 and was denounced by David Sutton, assistant to the Chinese prosecutor.
Japanese defense adviser Michael Levin argued that the accusation was vague and without corroboration, being annulled by the president of the court, William Webb, for the lack of evidence. The issue was not investigated further by Sutton, who was probably aware of the activities of Squadron 731. It is believed that his reference to this in the trial may have been accidental.
Shirō Ishii, comandante del Escuadrón 731
