Grace Baldridge is joined by Amir Nikoui, Mary Ignatova and Jack Ruley in another “Campfire Edition” focusing on the “atrocities of war.” The trio discusses Unit 731–a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Chinese, Korean, & Russian prisoners of war were subject to experiments, including limb amputations without anesthetics, bubonic plaque injections, and spread of venereal diseases.
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There was an experiment called the Milgram Experiment. The experiment had volunteers shock a “subject” (who is actually an actor; there is no actual electric current involved). The volunteers were under the impression that this was an experiment in learning and memory, and would administer a shock whenever the subject answers a question incorrectly, and this would be go up 15V every time. Every time the volunteer questions this, they would be given any of four specific prods.
All 65 volunteers questioned this at least once, but most ended up “administering” the final 450V shock.
I recommend reading about it in greater detail.
Oh, these guys. Whenever Japanese atrocities are brought up, it’s always the comfort women, the Nanking Massacre, and human experimentation. Unit 731 are the people this refers to.
These are the kind of people that make you ask WTF is wrong with them.
I am a history junkie… and never have I ever heard of this….. I want to know more about them spreading plague and how it was in the papers, filmed and we just got it white washed from history because we desperately wanted that kinda info!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They also used to drop plague infested fleas on Korean and Chinese cities before invading to weaken the population and staked people out in fields and fired artillery at them to see what explosion patterns provided optimal damage. See, people are sick all over the world! ;)
I have heard of several theories about what happened to the Nazis after WWII. Patton had said that for him the war was just starting, since he wanted to keep going against the Soviets. The US just imported the “Best” of the scientists and incorporated it into the CIA. We were under the influence of the Dulles Brothers at the time, and they appreciated the help. I hadn’t heard of Unit 731 before, but this detail of no prosecution jumped out at me. We don’t talk much about who becomes rich during war, but someone does. WWII had to have some sick financial backers but the made out like bandits. Now we know who is making out like bandits, the richest Zip Code in America is around Washington DC with the Military Industrial Complex.
There is a movie about this called “Men behind the Sun”. I watched it years ago and therefore knew about that topic, but I didn’t know about this deal with the americans.
Only 10 minutes on the atrocities of war?! I demand more!
Pretty please?
Wow, I kew only that the Japanese, Chinese, and other East Asian countries committed assorted horrible atrocities in the name of war research but not details. This is very shocking and shocking that the general public is pretty oblivious to it. Wow! Thank you for covering this– knowledge, even of evil actions by our fellow human beings, is always important to obtain and pass on.
Grace,
Thank you for looking at how awful war really is.
I’d heard of 731 before, my dad grew up around the bases in a Australia with his dad who fought, he used to tell me the stories his dad told him about 731 and other bases like that, like scary stories when I was a kid.
Never heard of Unit 731; interesting episode! Please don’t apologize for bringing light to dark moments in history; we can only improve our future by reminding ourselves of the past.
No, I had never heard of it before and I appreciate MWF bringing it to light. Let’s see if we can bring some dignity to these tortured souls. <3
If you think this stuff is confined to the past, think again. This type of stuff is happening right now in NK, The horrors that will be revealed to the world when NK finally falls will make U 731 look like amateur hour.
I just looked at wikileaks for the unit 731? there’s a ton of stuff. there was hours of potential research!
Incomprehensible. I studied the Rawandan genocide in a propaganda course, how people could be convinced to take up machetes & hunt down their neighbors. Dehumanization. The banality of evil. There’s no satisfactory answer, but it’s absolutely worth discussing the language used to instill indifference, hatred, & superiority, ultimately priming people to commit atrocities like this. My former professor has studied this extensively, even visiting Rwanda & meeting survivors. She’s written a few papers on it. Lynne Tirrel, in case you’re interested.
P.S. Even though I love Grace, I never watched the show before (just seemed too dark for me), but I saw Mary on there & thought I’d check it out. Glad I did. Harsh subject, but important. Guess I’ll add this show to my TYT viewing roster :)
I have never heard of this, and honestly, I usually watch and rewatch these episodes and try to like research the facts for myself for fun, Like Ana once recommended we do like a year ago live one day. I love this about TYT, how deep you guys get into these facts. I will just say, I watched the I.D. discovery channel like all day everyday while suffering chronic vomiting for 2 and a half years, I have never lost my appetite from watching horrific documentaries because I have ptsd, so I often get flat modes, I really have never heard anything that made me feel the way this has. It’s like genuinely terrifying like Watching the Gifted in real life with people who literally can’t fight back because physic powers are not real….-___- I don’t understand humans. I understand how Aileen became a murderer, I understand how Charles Manson clearly did too much acid. This. I. Do. Not. Understand.
@Daniedoesntknow92 –
It’s all driven by greed.
During my first years here in Tokyo, I used to see a huge green cross atop a monument looking structure near one of the entrances to the old Edo Castle moat. I asked one Japanese friend and she said ‘Oh, that’s the Japanese equivalent of the American Red Cross.’ So I thought hey, cool. Then another older Japanese friend told me ‘No, it’s not cool. It’s where the American forces during Occupied Japan and the Japanese they put into power decided to put all the surviving managers of Unit 731. When I asked about that unit the info blew my mind.
OF COURSE I wanted to know how on EARTH such a deal could be struck with THAT kind of operation, but then again I was only 25. Thirty years on, I get it. It ain’t pretty but I get it. Same with Nazi leftover data. I mean after all, the Volkswagen was Hitler’s sponsored car, right?
Here in Tokyo, the subject of Unit 731 is now brought up at least once a year, usually during August, the time of the Atomic Bombs and Japan’s surrender which ended the war on the last front, the Pacific. As you can imagine, topics dealing with how Japanese suffered from the March 10th 1945 Tokyo Air Raids and from the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki get prime time treatment for a few days. Unit 731 gets covered once, on one network either on public TV, cable or satellite, sometime around 1 or 2am, for a little less than an hour. And that’s it.
My closest Japanese friends and I talk about the horrors of this thing on occasion but not often. We all think there should be way more documents declassified on this and the deal struck between the US and Japan. A lot has yet to be declassified so there are still way too many questions without answers to be able to have a meaningful discussion on this without constantly hitting dead ends.
Grace, Amir, Mary and Jack, you guys are coming to this now kind of like I did 30 odd years ago. You are luckier that more data with film footage has been declassified, and yet you are unlucky in that you got horrific film footage and more photos thrown at you than I did when most of that was still under wraps. Spending years hearing about it, discussing it with friends and seeing mild discussions on TV, kind of prepares you in a way to see the declassified footage / photos to back up the stories.
The main thing that keeps me in Japan so long is not the government here, which is definitely not repentant in the least for the atrocities it caused the world, nor is it the ‘safety’ that Brett talks about, which I insist is an illusion of safety based on your status of male, female, native or non-native, adult, child or senior citizen AND whether or not you are of white / non-white American / European heritage or a very disrespected African, Indian or South American heritage.
What keeps me here is the incredible intelligence, openness, honest activist stance my closest Japanese friends have. There are some great people here who DO know the horrors of war, who DO know exactly what their own country is shamefully responsible for and who DO NOT want to repeat it. They have empathy and a love of learning the truth in order to speak it to power. I never imagined I could ever see / hear other Americans who are like this until finding TYT.
I am grateful to you guys every day for all you do.
Thank you Grace, Amir and team!
My introduction to unit 731 was The Flowering of Bamboo by William Triplett which covered the 1948 Teikoku Ginko bank mass murder and bank robbery case in Toyko, Japan . A man claiming to be a health inspector/doctor said there was dysentery in the area and everyone had to take the a two step antidote to avoid becoming ill. He gave them very specific instructions on how to take them both ……and watched them die in minutes. He walked out with cash and checks. A woman managed to make it to the street for help, so only 12 of the 16 people in the bank died. Keep in mind, Japan was under the occupation at the time, so both Japanese and Americans were involved in the investigation. Eventually a well known artist was named as a suspect, though he does not match the description of the perpetrator. The man proclaimed his innocence, confessed, and retracted the confession. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was never carried out because there was doubt about his convection. I go on about this because it was later learned that the American wanted the case closed fast since it came too close to Unit 731 members they were protecting. A deal had been struck to not prosecute the members for their actions, and provide payments to them so the data from the experiments could be secured. Because of the cold blooded, over elaborate, and down right gruesome nature of the crime, it was privately believed that a unit member did the crime. Since prosecuting a Unit 731 member would expose classified information, it has been speculated a scapegoat was found to appease the public. I read the book years ago, so there is much more I have forgotten, but I think perhaps the leader received a monthly stipend from the Americans, but I am bit fuzzy on the detail. I believe that no unit member was ever prosecuted for the crimes against humanity—a contrast to the Germans at the time. A reward for ‘better’ data????? It is a very strange contrast in outcomes.
Honestly I think that the US thought it could get away with a deal like this with Japan because it was one unit doing these atrocities. Germany had multiple concentration camps in close proximity to civilians, and–because Germany became the battleground–other countries witnessed these camps firsthand. Unit 731 didn’t have that, so it was less known and could more easily slip under the radar. I think that’s why there’s a stark contrast.