Japan unearths site linked to human experiments | World news | The Guardian

Quote:

Authorities in Japan have begun excavating the former site of a medical school that may contain the remains of victims of the country's wartime biological warfare programme. The school has links to Unit 731, a branch of the imperial Japanese army that conducted lethal experiments on prisoners as part of efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. The Japanese government has previously acknowledged the unit's existence but refused to discuss its activities, despite testimony from former members and growing documentary evidence. In 2002 a Japanese court said Tokyo was under no obligation to compensate victims. The government agreed to launch a ¥100m (£741,000) investigation after Toyo Ishii, a former nurse, said she had helped bury body parts on the site as the US occupation forces moved into Tokyo at the end of the second world war. Officials said so far there was no evidence the site had been used for experiments. "We are not certain if the survey will find anything," Kazuhiko Kawauchi, a health ministry official, told Associated Press. "If anything is dug up, it may not be related to Unit 731." Experts believe that if the excavation yields physical evidence that Japan conducted experiments on live humans, the government would face pressure to discuss the country's wartime conduct. "If bones or organs with traces of live medical experiments are found, the government would have to admit a wartime medical crime," said Yasushi Torii, head of a group that has been investigating the case for decades. "This is a start, although we will probably need more evidence to prove Unit 731's involvement." Ishii, 88, broke her 61-year silence in 2006, claiming that she and colleagues had been ordered to bury numerous corpses, bones and body parts in the grounds following Japan's surrender in August 1945. The then conservative government met with Ishii five years ago over her claims and pledged to pursue the case. However, authorities held off on excavation until residents had been relocated and their apartments demolished last year. The current left-of-centre administration, which took office in 2009, has shown greater willingness to examine the darker episodes in Japan's wartime history. The site in Tokyo's Shinjuku district is close to another where the mass graves of dozens of people who may have been victims of wartime experiments was uncovered in 1989. Investigators concluded, however, that the remains, which included skulls with holes drilled through them or sections removed, were not connected to Unit 731 and that there was no evidence of criminal activity. The health ministry concluded that the remains were those of non-Japanese Asians that had been used in "medical education" or recovered from war zones for analysis in Japan. Unit 731, based in Harbin in northern China, conducted experiments on tens of thousands of mostly Chinese and Korean prisoners, and a small number of Allied prisoners of war. Some historians estimate up to 250,000 people were subjected to experiments. The remains of some are thought to have been transported from China to Tokyo for analysis. According to historical accounts, male and female prisoners, named "logs" by their torturers, were subjected to vivisection without anaesthesia after they had been deliberately infected with diseases such as typhus and cholera. Some had limbs amputated or organs removed. Leading members of the unit were secretly granted immunity from prosecution in return for giving US occupation forces access to years of biological warfare research. Some went on to occupy prestigious positions in the pharmaceutical industry, health ministry and academia.

This is pretty interesting because it was behind a big fence for ages and the kept refusing to dig it up.

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What I don't get is Japanese attitudes to this.

The stuff is fairly well documented and, in any case, kind of self-evident: It was total war and Japanese, esp. at the times, consider(ed) non-japanese as sub-humans. Guess what. These 2 factors lead to things like Unit 731, Nankin and POW mistreatment/slow extermination very naturally. If anything, one ought to be surprised that it wasn't more common.

Have the Japanese suddenly realise they're not the Elected People and they ought not to treat Koreans or Chinese or Indians like some variation of apes?

As to the USA playing dark games with war criminals, this shouldn't be a surprise either - It was common practice during the so-called denazification period of post-war Germany... If they did it in Germany, why wouldn't they do it in Japan?

Basically, it's all self-evident. Thus, why are the Japanese so squeamish about it all? Germans seem to have both taken the blame and moved on far more 'easily'...

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Legend of the Five Rings has a little story that illustrates this principle. The Emperor has a map which shows that it takes 2 days to go from a certain place to the palace. In reality, it takes three days, and even though everybody knows this, nobody can admit they know it, because the Emperor's map is automatically right. To challenge the Emperor's map is to challenge the principle of absolute obedience which the Empire requires; the mere fact of travel times is trivial in comparison. Therefore, everybody who travels on this route apologises and makes up some excuse, and gets a bollocking from the Emperor for being late.

I think it's to do with enryo and the culture of apology. Once someone's apologised you're supposed to STFU and be satisfied, no matter how insincere they are.

That and the fact that MacArthur sent everyone involved off for a brisk two weeks in Sugamo Holiday Camp for Friends of the Emperor and then brought them right back into government to stomp on the communists... They didn't really start dying off in significan numbers until the 90s.

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