The Unspeakable Things That Happened In Unit 731

many videos we produce at a day in history cover topics many people don't know much about some of these events have been largely forgotten or ignored over time sometimes this forgetting isn't simply the product of time but of politics and peculiar National and ethnic blind spots today's video covers one of those latter topics some of our more recent videos covering topics such as the Romanian part in the Holocaust the rape of non-king and our videos on the Holocaust itself have started with very explicit warnings about the videos as content this episode of a day in history is no different and perhaps warrants a more serious caution about what you're about to see this video is the story of a relatively forgotten and horrible place in China where human beings were treated in many ways worse than lab animals by other human beings please use discretion when watching this video it's only for adults or older teens watching with adults after watching our video on the Nan King event some commenters decided without any proof that we were spreading Chinese Communist propaganda first none of what we reported is untrue It All Happened do your own research and find out second the writer of that and this ripped lived in Japan for a time and taught there he had nothing but admiration for Japan and the Japanese of today 21st century Japan resembles 1940s Japan as much as today's Germany resembles the Nazi era that is not at all but the Japanese of the World War II era committed horrible crimes facts are facts horrible atrocities have occurred in almost every nation and culture in history they occur most often when ordered and encouraged by the country's leadership unfortunately one of the things we have learned through history is that many people will become absolute brutes and monsters when they're encouraged to do so or know they will face no legal consequences for their actions at least not from their government [Music] foreign has a unique history from the early 17th century until the mid-19th century the island nation was isolated from the World by order of the ruling Shoguns the military leaders who ruled in the name of the emperor foreigners were only allowed on one small island near Nagasaki and no Japanese at all were allowed to leave ever this all changed in 1853-54 when American naval officer Matthew C Perry forcibly opened Japan to International Trade what the naval officers and Marines in Perry's Fleet saw when they came ashore in Japan shocked them Japan had been suspended in time since the early 1600s it buildings clothing and especially weapons were 200 years behind America and the Western World at the same time China was becoming almost a vassal state of European countries sections of the country were under virtual foreign Rule and the Chinese had been forced to sign a series of what historians call the unequal treaties foreigners enjoyed favorable trade conditions which allowed them to profit greatly while many Chinese suffered additionally in those parts of China known as concessions under European control or influence European citizens and soldiers and later Americans were subject to their own law not that of China this included crimes committed against Chinese for all of these reasons and more the Japanese were determined not to let that happen to their own country playing one nation against another and occasionally using the threat of violent uprisings against the Western Powers who came to trade in Japan while at the same time understanding the limits of their own power and compromising with the West when necessary the Japanese set themselves two main goals to modernize their country as quickly as possible and to prevent the Western countries from doing to Japan what they were doing in China after a period of civil Strife the emperor Meiji was given executive power over the nation and the Shoguns were no more from 1871 until 1905 the Japanese went from a country living in the 1600s to a modern industrial nation with modern Armed Forces to the surprise of everyone except the Japanese Japan won two Wars in 1896 against China in 1905-05 against the Russian Empire the Russian defeat shocked the world and Japan wanted to be seen as an equal by the modern Western powers unfortunately Japan and the West saw the world differently to a large degree one of the ways in which they did so had to do with race and ethnicity long leading the world in military strength technology and economics the West was reluctant to see the Japanese as equals much of this had to do with racial bias some of it stemmed from the idea that the Japanese learned much from the Europeans the Japanese had seen their Nation rise from a primarily backward agricultural nation into a growing industrial power they had defeated two much larger countries China had long looked down on the Japanese as a tributary nation and the Russians believe that their more modern Army Navy and soldiers would easily defeat the small Japanese they didn't know that the Japanese armed forces were more modern than the Russians their troops better trained and their generals more skilled the Japanese were proud of their victory over Russia it showed the world that Japan was equal to any Western Nation unfortunately many Japanese believed that they had been shortchanged by the Western powers in the talks that ended these wars the trade rights and territorial concessions received after the defeat of the Russians discouraged many Japanese they believed that they had won and deserved more for their victory in World War One the Japanese sided with the Allies keeping German Naval forces bottled up in the Pacific and China for their effort which was relatively small the Japanese gained control of the few German possessions in the Pacific and even this was not enough for many Japanese two groups of people took the blame for Japan's perceived lack of respect the civilian government and the Western Powers many Japanese believe the Europeans especially conspired to keep Japan down to a large degree this was true a powerful and close by Japan could threaten British Dutch French and American colonies in business interests in Asia the westernization of Japanese cities was added to the complaints of many Japanese especially the conservative military Western fashion especially that for women was taking over many women began to press for equal rights and more jobs outside the home baseball and jazz music were two of the more popular pastimes in Japan and baseball still is why are we telling you all this in a video about Japanese atrocities in World War II China because there is no making sense of what happened unless you know what caused them by the early 1930s Japan had become a military dictatorship through the 1930s and the first half of the 40s Japan became a fascist country as dangerous to its citizens as it was to its neighbors promoted by the Japanese military government through the media education Mass rallies and Its Behavior were ideas of Japan Japanese ethnic superiority the importance of obedience and loyalty to the emperor to the point of death and a new version of what conservative Japanese believed to be the guiding principles of the Samurai among these principles were the Loyalty unto death just mentioned any disdain for anything not Japanese this Bushido code resembled the ways of the ancient Samurai mostly in name only the people who bore the brunt of Japanese ethnocentrism were the Chinese for centuries the Chinese had demanded and received tribute from the Japanese in one form or another as a result Chinese culture dominated Japan and though Japanese culture became unique over time many of its religious ideas writing and cultural characteristics had Chinese Roots by the 20th century Most Japanese saw themselves much like a child who had grown up to be more powerful and advanced than their parents combined with the ideas we just mentioned the Japanese in China behaved much like the Nazis did in occupied Europe Superior and without regard for human life that wasn't Japanese in 1931 the Japanese conquered the Chinese territory of Manchuria in 1936 they invaded China and soon overran most of the eastern part of the country especially the coastal cities the treatment of the Chinese who found themselves under Japanese Occupation was abysmal to say the least one brutal atrocity followed another the best known of which was the infamous rape of non-king in 1937. the Japanese exploited the Chinese under their control economically China also became one vast laboratory its people were subject to not only Modern Warfare but were subjects for the Japanese military to learn about chemical and biological weapons the war itself cost China millions of people but in the military and among civilians the estimates of Chinese losses from 1936 to 45 range from 10 to 20 million people doing his best to increase that total was a monster named Shiro ishii ishi like Mengele and Auschwitz was a doctor he was born in 1892 into an established middle class family and became a doctor in 1921 he joined the army as a surgeon ishi was fascinated by the process of infection and after a trip to the battlefields of World War One Europe became interested in the possibilities of chemical and biological weapons after spending two years on World War One battlefields and talking with the doctors and officers who had fought on them ishi was recognized as an expert in the field of weapons of mass destruction in 1936 ishi was ordered to form a new unit the unit's official name was number 731 water purification unit but was referred to as Unit 731 then and now ishi was joined by a number of other doctors including his second in command Dr hisato Yoshimura there were other doctors on the staff and a company or more of gods and assistants unit 731's Home was an old fortress and prison camp near the northern Chinese city of Harbin up to 1 000 people could be housed inside the Fortress complex at any one time from the time of its Inception until the end of the war Unit 731 killed anywhere between 2 and 300 000 people please look in our video about the rape of non-king for more on the problems with estimating Chinese casualties during the war most of those victims were killed or allowed to die not by firing squad hanging or other common forms of executions the vast majority were not gassed as the Nazis did to their victims in the death camps of Poland no most of the victims of Unit 731 died as a result of experiments developed by ishi Yoshimura and others these experiments in death came in many forms it's estimated that thousands of Chinese in the surrounding areas were killed when Unit 731 released a variety of germs on the unsuspecting populace these diseases included plague typhus smallpox prisoners were injected with tuberculosis cholera gonorrhea syphilis and were made to have dysentery flea bombs filled with plague infested insects were released in towns and Villages children were given food poisoned with a variety of deadly chemicals their bodies were then dissected and studied massive doses of tetanus vaccine which caused people to go into uncontrollable muscle spasms that often led to death were administered within the prison doctors and soldiers wore protective suits at times outside it figures in other worldly biosuits would roam over areas of Countryside strewn with dead and dying people not to help but to see how lethal long-lasting and effective their biological weapons were experiments included exposure to incredible amounts of x-rays the radioactive Burns within and without the body were studied after the victims had died of this exposure many of the people who were dying of the diseases given to them by the members of Unit 731 were examined before their deaths when we say examined we mean that they were cut open in various ways and parts of their bodies with no anesthetic Ichi and his staff wanted to witness the process of infection before serious internal and external infections said it and they believed that decomposition would affect or skewed their results some experiments which theoretically having some kind of purpose seem to be created simply from Pure sadism people were burned to death with flamethrowers they were exposed to chemical warfare agents exposed means they had these agents thrown on their naked bodies or forced down their throats and other orifices female prisoners were raped some of them by male Prisoners the stated purpose to study the possibility of conception even while infected with deadly diseases including syphilis and gonorrhea many of the guards were also infected by raping prisoners though they were officially forbidden to have sexual contact with them like the Nazi doctors is she and his men exposed people to freezing temperature and low pressure Chambers they also induced heart attacks forced abortions on prisoners and women who live nearby and conducted surgeries that are right out of a nightmare arms removed and legs sewn in their place the removal of sexual organs Etc the list is almost endless and includes many more instances of sadism some of which we caution you are even more disturbing than what has already been described in this video when the war ended in September 1945 ishi was in Japan he was arrested by U.S authorities as were a number of his accomplices as was the case with a number of wanted Nazi war criminals ishi was given immunity from prosecution again he was given immunity from prosecution by the United States military government why because the U.S believed that it was possible that some of the data collected by ishi during the war could be of use to America in any future conflict Yes you heard that right ishi died peacefully in 1959. a number of ishi's officers and men were captured by the Soviets when they invaded northern China in the last days of the war amazingly they received prison terms not executions despite some of them receiving sentences of 20 or more years or were repatriated to Japan in the 1950s in a Soviet effort to improve relations with Japan members of Unit 731 openly held reunions in Japan after the war it's hard to like a video like this but if you found it interesting please like And subscribe and click the Bell to get notified of our next fascinating release

Channel: A Day In History

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Keywords: unit 731 experiments, unit 731 japan, japan unit 731, history, ww2, unit 731 world war 2, unit 731 reddit, japanese unit 731, unit 731 documentary, unit 731 survivors, shiro ishii, dark history, unit 731, world war 2, unit 731 japanese, history channel, unit 731 explained

Id: -BpKixUKbU8

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 16 2023