Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
Speaker 2: Should Know. And this is definitely the chipperest I'm going
Speaker 2: to sound for this episode right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and another joke free edition.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Possibly, we're definitely hitting that.
Speaker 1: Should we see oa?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's there, Yeah for sure. Please go ahead.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I did laugh. There are unspeakable atrocities
Speaker 1: that we will discuss of the horrors of well I
Speaker 1: was about to say the horrors of war, but it
Speaker 1: really are just the horrors of human experimentation during war.
Speaker 1: And so children should not listen to this, and people
Speaker 1: that are really haunted by that kind of thing should
Speaker 1: not listen to this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we can. It's not like there's spoilers
Speaker 2: or anything. We're going to talk about human vivisection, abuse
Speaker 2: of like children, women, the elderly, like it's it's as
Speaker 2: bad as humans can possibly do to other humans what
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about today. So if that's not
Speaker 2: your bag, we will definitely not blame you for skipping
Speaker 2: this one.
Speaker 1: That's right, But we do need to thank a listener
Speaker 1: sitting this one in. This came from you know, I
Speaker 1: don't even know if I'm going to say her last name.
Speaker 1: Her name is Amy, and you know who you are,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm glad you sitting this my way
Speaker 1: because this is something I knew nothing about and I
Speaker 1: think people, you know, part of the fabric of the
Speaker 1: show is is teaching people some of the unspeakable things
Speaker 1: that have happened that you would not learn in school.
Speaker 1: And so Amy sitting us in. So thank you, Amy,
Speaker 1: and we'll just forward any complaints to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Amy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I had heard of Unit seven thirty one before several times. Nothing.
Speaker 2: I had no idea the detail that I know now
Speaker 2: about them, But you know, I was walking on like
Speaker 2: we'll never talk about that. So thanks again, Amy. But
Speaker 2: I guess let's just start at the beginning. Let's give
Speaker 2: a little background, because what we're talking about here is
Speaker 2: a detachment and I think an Imperial Army unit from
Speaker 2: Japan that started up in the nineteen thirties and it
Speaker 2: committed medical atrocities war crimes that actually rival easily rival
Speaker 2: Joseph Mengel's hideous medical War crimes at Auschwitz Death Camp,
Speaker 2: like the stuff that the Japanese essentially did during World
Speaker 2: War Two to Chinese and Russian and to a lesser
Speaker 2: extent Mongolian civilians and then sometimes prisoners of war, including
Speaker 2: American It's just it's unspeakable and we're going to try
Speaker 2: to speak it as best we can, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: make sense without a little bit of context. If you
Speaker 2: have a little bit context, in my opinion, of where
Speaker 2: this evolved from, it doesn't doesn't excuse it doesn't explain it.
Speaker 2: It just makes slightly more sense than the Japanese just
Speaker 2: suddenly did this horrible thing and now everything's back to normal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And just to add an additional comment to the
Speaker 1: sort of comparison to Nazi atrocities, certainly not in scale
Speaker 1: that was happening in Germany and Poland and elsewhere, but
Speaker 1: as far as just the how reprehensible some of this
Speaker 1: stuff is.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, No, No, this is a
Speaker 2: separate thing for sure, and there's no comparison it. This happened.
Speaker 2: This happened. It's just the reason I'm comparing the two
Speaker 2: is because most people walk around understanding that the Nazis
Speaker 2: did these horrible atrocities, and what I'm trying to get
Speaker 2: across is that the Japanese did too during World War II. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just for really specific reasons that the average person
Speaker 2: isn't walking around knowing about that, which we'll talk about
Speaker 2: later too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, all right, So you promised talk of backstory,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into that here, because the backstory is
Speaker 1: is starting sort of in the late eighteen hundreds. The
Speaker 1: government of Japan was it sort of went through a
Speaker 1: movement where it was looking to build itself up into
Speaker 1: a superpower, like you know, just like Europe was, just
Speaker 1: like the United States was, And a lot of this
Speaker 1: was tied up in just sort of modernizing the country,
Speaker 1: whether it was the military or how they functioned economically,
Speaker 1: and sort of this ultranationalist movement grew up around all this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you just said the key word here ultranationalist,
Speaker 2: which is I mean nationalism is fervent to begin with.
Speaker 2: Ultranationalism reaches a fanatical level, and that's kind of this
Speaker 2: journey that began to infect Japanese society starting in the
Speaker 2: twenties or thirties. And the reason why is because Japan
Speaker 2: took a number of like kind of punches and was
Speaker 2: kind of down both economically and as far as like
Speaker 2: cultural honor goes like. Japan helped the US and UK
Speaker 2: win World War One, but were left out of the
Speaker 2: table when the spoils of war were divided up. That
Speaker 2: was a big black eye and the national pride. The
Speaker 2: Great Depression hit Japan disproportionately hard compared to some of
Speaker 2: the other countries outside of the US. There was just
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff that it was clear that the
Speaker 2: leaders of Japanese society weren't equipped to handle. And the
Speaker 2: worse it made Japan look to the Japanese, the more
Speaker 2: the national pride felt it needed to be defended. And
Speaker 2: that's where that nationalism and then eventually ultra nationalism came from.
Speaker 2: And the reason that we're talking about this today is
Speaker 2: because it became a really thick component of the Japanese military.
Speaker 2: Nationalist fanaticism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it can become a very and usually
Speaker 1: does become a very dangerous thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, everywhere anywhere in all of.
Speaker 1: History, Yeah, for sure. In the nineteen thirties, there was
Speaker 1: a part of China and northeastern China kind of near
Speaker 1: Korea in Russia and Mongolia called Manchuria, where Japan had
Speaker 1: a lot of people that were living there, had settled there.
Speaker 1: They had a lot of influence on that area. The
Speaker 1: Chinese government did not like this, of course, they were
Speaker 1: in the middle of a civil war with the Nationalists,
Speaker 1: which was the ruling party at the time. The Nationalist
Speaker 1: government with Shang Kai Shek and then Malo Zedong's Communists
Speaker 1: were trying to take control, but they had a common
Speaker 1: enemy in Japan, and Japan was sort of encroaching on
Speaker 1: this area in northeastern China in the thirties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the ulter nationalism, I said, was so thick
Speaker 2: in the Japanese military it actually created almost like an
Speaker 2: additional branch, especially for the Kwantung Army that had basically
Speaker 2: invaded Manchuria. They weren't following orders from the Japanese Imperial
Speaker 2: Army heads, the leaders of the actual military. They were
Speaker 2: kind of working on their own to expand the empire
Speaker 2: and they were successful, so they were getting away with it.
Speaker 2: They were also getting away with it because they would
Speaker 2: assassinate you or they would stage a coup attempt, like
Speaker 2: you did not mess with these people, even though they
Speaker 2: weren't the leaders the leaders were afraid of like these
Speaker 2: middling officers who were actually these ulternational fanatics. So the
Speaker 2: upshot of all that is that Japan ended up controlling
Speaker 2: Manchuria in the nineteen thirties and set up a puppet
Speaker 2: government there, and it was like a big first step
Speaker 2: toward expanding the empire. And one other part of the backstory,
Speaker 2: and then I'll be quiet about the backstory, is that
Speaker 2: part of that ulternationalism was a certain amount of genetic
Speaker 2: and cultural pride in Japan and the Japanese. And there's
Speaker 2: nothing wrong with having pride in your culture, but the
Speaker 2: problem is very often, especially in the context of nationalism
Speaker 2: or ultra nationalism, means everybody else is inferior. And so
Speaker 2: that kind of gave this ultra nationalist detachment of the
Speaker 2: military carte blanc to mistreat anybody who wasn't Japanese, which
Speaker 2: included the Russians, Koreans, Mongolians, and Chinese. That all kind
Speaker 2: of met in Manchuria, which was at the border of
Speaker 2: all of these countries, which is where the Japanese had
Speaker 2: taken over and set up this puppet government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, anytime you throw the word genetic in there,
Speaker 1: you're probably traveling down a bad road. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and Japan definitely saw themselves, or at least a faction
Speaker 1: of Japan. I'm not going to say like everyone in
Speaker 1: the country, but this ultra nationalistic wing thought they were
Speaker 1: the superior Asian human being on planet Earth at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the ones who didn't think the same way
Speaker 2: were too scared to speak up. They were killed, Like
Speaker 2: they killed the Prime minister, Chuck, the military just killed
Speaker 2: the Prime minister, assassinated because it wasn't going along with
Speaker 2: their aims. Okay, so I lied. That was the end
Speaker 2: of the backstory.
Speaker 1: All right. So the puppet government was there in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two in Manchuria. The Chinese, like I said, did
Speaker 1: not love this. So they had a common enemy and
Speaker 1: got together to fight, and there was a pretty much
Speaker 1: a full scale war started which started in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: seven that a lot of people are like, you know,
Speaker 1: you could really point to this as the very beginnings
Speaker 1: of what would be World War two if you want
Speaker 1: to get technical, and so this is just sort of
Speaker 1: what's going on. When Unit seven thirty one is formed
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty six under the command of General shiro
Speaker 1: A Shie. I watched this. It was pretty good documentary. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's like an hour long on YouTube. I can't remember
Speaker 1: what it was called, but if you're looking for Unit
Speaker 1: seven thirty one docs on YouTube, it's the one that's
Speaker 1: like an hour long on the nose and super professionally done.
Speaker 2: It's called There's Something Wrong with Aunt Shiro?
Speaker 1: Was that it?
Speaker 2: No? No, I was referencing another horrible documentary called There's
Speaker 2: Something Wrong with Aunt Diane. Not horrible, horrific.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think I've heard of that one.
Speaker 2: Actually, it's It's tough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll talk offline. Okay, I'm not sure I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of the right one.
Speaker 2: This is definitely the episode to bring it up, and
Speaker 2: I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So she E was a doctor in the Japanese army,
Speaker 1: was a part of that ultra nationalist wing before the war.
Speaker 1: He was interested in biological weapons and what that might
Speaker 1: offer the army, and supposedly as early as nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: was starting to do some human experimentation. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: as a doctor, though not as a general, correct.
Speaker 2: As both I believe he was. He'd been a general
Speaker 2: for a while, or at least a high ranking military official.
Speaker 2: For a while when he started. Okay, so the reason
Speaker 2: that we talked so much about Manchuria a second ago
Speaker 2: is because doctor General Ishi realized very quickly that even
Speaker 2: in ultranationalists Japan, people weren't super cool with unwilling human experimentation.
Speaker 2: So he's kind of successively moved his operation further and
Speaker 2: further away from the prying eyes of everyday Japanese people
Speaker 2: and ultimately ended up in Manchuria because it was so
Speaker 2: it was so lawless as far as like ethics and
Speaker 2: morals regarding civilian treatment and war crimes goes. It was
Speaker 2: the kind of place where you could set up a
Speaker 2: medical experimentation machine using unwilling participants. It was that kind
Speaker 2: of place. And it also had a steady supply of
Speaker 2: inferior human beings. I just made scare quotes for those
Speaker 2: of you who can't see me, who were the Koreans
Speaker 2: and the Russians and the Chinese and the Mongolians who
Speaker 2: lived in the area and were just unfortunate to have
Speaker 2: lived in this area that Japan now controlled.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, So in nineteen thirty TWOHI became the head
Speaker 1: of the and this is a new operation, but it
Speaker 1: was called the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory. This was at
Speaker 1: the Japanese Military Medical School in Tokyo, and Unit seven
Speaker 1: thirty one was known officially we call it Unit seven
Speaker 1: thirty one now for short, but it was the Kwan
Speaker 1: Kwantung Armies Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department or Manchu
Speaker 1: Detachment seven thirty one. But like I said, we call
Speaker 1: it Unit seven thirty one now. And this was the
Speaker 1: main base of operations. It was a there were like
Speaker 1: eight village basically where they kicked all the villagers out
Speaker 1: and said this is ours now they built I mean,
Speaker 1: it was like a prison camp basically. You know, it
Speaker 1: was surrounded by barbed wire, there were guard towers. No
Speaker 1: one was coming in or getting out of there without
Speaker 1: explicit permission. But some of the people invited in were
Speaker 1: doctors and nurses and engineers and pathologists and people that
Speaker 1: specialize in bacterial cultures and stuff like that. So they
Speaker 1: were just sort of staffing up with you know, legitimate
Speaker 1: and medical personnel because they were they were set to
Speaker 1: and as you'll see, it was sort of like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's figure out anything we ever wanted to know about
Speaker 1: the human body and how it responds to anything you
Speaker 1: could throw at it, from bullets to knives to anthrax.
Speaker 2: Right, And so they actually started out with a fairly
Speaker 2: legitimate mandate, which was figure out how to essentially treat
Speaker 2: things like communicable diseases or things that soldiers, Japanese soldiers
Speaker 2: might find useful, like, you know, if there were fighting
Speaker 2: in the Pacific theater, figure out how to treat malaria
Speaker 2: or something like that. But under the guidance of General Ashi,
Speaker 2: it became they moved from willing, initially willing Japanese soldiers
Speaker 2: who signed consent waiver saying you can test on me,
Speaker 2: to unwilling, unfortunate civilians. And there's a lot, as we'll see,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of debate and discussion about what happened when,
Speaker 2: who is involved, And if we were doing this podcast
Speaker 2: twenty years ago, we would be completely lost by this
Speaker 2: point totally. So much has come out that we essentially
Speaker 2: know exactly what happened. And one of the things that
Speaker 2: has really been established over the years is that awareness
Speaker 2: of Unit seven thirty one and the unwilling medical experimentation
Speaker 2: war crimes that was carrying out went all the way
Speaker 2: to the top. The Emperor was involved the Emperor's family
Speaker 2: was involved, Prime Minister Tojo was involved. Everybody knew about this.
Speaker 2: It was incredibly well funded and it was a huge
Speaker 2: prong of the Japanese military. It was just also kept
Speaker 2: incredibly secret too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And when we say unwilling subjects because
Speaker 1: of where it was located, like we said near Korea
Speaker 1: and Russia and Mongolia. Sometimes that were Russians and Koreans
Speaker 1: and Mongolians, but most of them were Chinese citizens. Some
Speaker 1: of them were criminals, some of them were just communists
Speaker 1: that were arrested basically and rounded up, and they were
Speaker 1: brought in like you said, sort of initially like hey,
Speaker 1: let's see what Let's see what happens when you don't
Speaker 1: eat for a while if our soldiers are out there
Speaker 1: and kate get their hands on food and water, Like
Speaker 1: how long can humans go without food and water? Or
Speaker 1: what is this? What does milaria do? Like you were saying,
Speaker 1: like diseases they might encounter, But it really morphed pretty
Speaker 1: quickly into hey, and this might be a good time
Speaker 1: to break but hey, I think we can develop biological weapons,
Speaker 1: so let's see how they react to the human body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's when it really took a terrible left turn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so we'll be right back. And it
Speaker 1: gets worse than act too, We'll be right.
Speaker 2: Back, okay, Chuck. So when we were last talking, the
Speaker 2: Unit seven thirty one had started to veer off into
Speaker 2: developing biological weapons, and they did so apparently because in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty five, under the Geneva Convention, a bunch of
Speaker 2: countries outlawed biological weapons, and apparently that caught the attention
Speaker 2: of the Japanese, who were like, wow, if it's worth outlawing,
Speaker 2: those things must really work at killing, so let's try those, right.
Speaker 2: It pequed their interest enough that they started a program,
Speaker 2: and so they developed a really extensive pathological development section
Speaker 2: where they apparently could develop a trillion microorganisms every few days. Like,
Speaker 2: they just grew so many communicable diseases that I saw
Speaker 2: in some field tests they would have one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty kilograms of it, Like that's how much they could produce.
Speaker 2: And they were doing things like producing malaria, cholera, typhus,
Speaker 2: the plague. They were growing this stuff. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: they were testing it on those unfortunate, unwilling test subjects
Speaker 2: to see what happened. And that's where the essentially the
Speaker 2: medical torture, the war crimes really began.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you want to see what happened to
Speaker 1: someone that was infected with typhus or cholera, you don't
Speaker 1: just ask a bunch of questions and check vitals and
Speaker 1: see how Say how are you feeling, and we'll write
Speaker 1: it down. You mentioned vivisection earlier, and that's what would happen.
Speaker 1: Vis Section is, you know, the dissection of a live thing.
Speaker 1: So whether it's a frog in biology class or in
Speaker 1: this case, a human being, it is a live human
Speaker 1: being in these cases being cut open and studied from
Speaker 1: the inside out, and a lot of times without anesthesia.
Speaker 1: I think they did use anesthesia for some stuff here
Speaker 1: and there, at least a documentary said they did, But
Speaker 1: a lot of times they didn't even use anesthesia when
Speaker 1: they would amputate someone's limb or take someone's kidney out
Speaker 1: to study it.
Speaker 2: So on vivisection. Nicholas Christoff, the New York Times reporter,
Speaker 2: went to Japan in nineteen ninety five as some of
Speaker 2: this stuff was really coming out and talked to some
Speaker 2: people who are actually in Unit seven thirty one, and
Speaker 2: he actually interviewed a man who was a doctor at
Speaker 2: Unit seven thirty one who had performed one of these
Speaker 2: unanesthetized vivisections, and he quoted the guy in the article.
Speaker 2: If you want to hear it, it's it's just insane
Speaker 2: that people have ever done this to other people. So
Speaker 2: what the guy said was that the the and I'm
Speaker 2: paraphrasing this first part, that when they brought the prisoner in,
Speaker 2: he knew that it was over for him, that his
Speaker 2: life was about to be executed, but he didn't know how,
Speaker 2: so he wasn't he wasn't fighting along the way. He
Speaker 2: came in essentially willingly. But when they put him down
Speaker 2: on the examination table and a scalpel was produced, he
Speaker 2: started screaming, and he said that this is this guy,
Speaker 2: this doctor who performed this said quote. I cut him
Speaker 2: open from chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly,
Speaker 2: and his face was all twisted in agony. He made
Speaker 2: this unimaginable sound. He was screaming so horribly, but then
Speaker 2: he finally stopped. This is all in a day's work
Speaker 2: for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on
Speaker 2: me because it was my first time that that happened.
Speaker 2: A guy did that to another guy. He killed him
Speaker 2: by performing surgery on him without anesthesia and opening his
Speaker 2: his abdomen and removing the organs.
Speaker 1: Yea, and this happened a lot at unit seven thirty one.
Speaker 1: And we'll say that that part and like the next
Speaker 1: probably five to seven minutes an we're gonna kind of
Speaker 1: go through some of the worst of it. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: feel fear to skip ahead, and then you know, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about kind of ramifications and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: But yeah, just listen for the sound of one of
Speaker 2: us wretching while the other one's talking. You know, we're
Speaker 2: still in that five to seven minute part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So I mentioned amputations and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Organ removal. Boy, this one is tough. They had men
Speaker 1: that were infected with different venereal diseases like syphilis, that
Speaker 1: were forced to rape women there to see how syphilis spreads.
Speaker 1: There were women who were raped and impregnated that had
Speaker 1: you know, where the men had communical diseases like you know,
Speaker 1: make her pregnant so we can see the effects on
Speaker 1: developing fetuses. Sometimes babies were born. Those babies were experimented
Speaker 1: on elderly people. You know that they wanted to get
Speaker 1: a range of not just what would this do to
Speaker 1: a Japanese soldier, but what would these weapons do to
Speaker 1: a range of humans, like from literal babies to elderly people.
Speaker 1: So that's what they did. You want to take over.
Speaker 2: Sure, So some of the things in addition to studying
Speaker 2: what communicable diseases the effects that had on the body.
Speaker 2: And that's actually the reason why they would give later
Speaker 2: on why they didn't use anesthesia. Sometimes they were concerned
Speaker 2: that the anesthesia would affect the effects and that they
Speaker 2: wouldn't have like an actual picture of what was really
Speaker 2: going on in the body, So they just didn't anesthetize.
Speaker 2: But they studied other things too, like what happens when
Speaker 2: we crush your limb? What happens if you are only
Speaker 2: allowed to drink seawater for several days? Like just imagine
Speaker 2: like completely losing all of your morals and ethics being
Speaker 2: a doctor and saying like what can I pursue here?
Speaker 2: What just crazy experiments can I come up with and
Speaker 2: then actually carrying them out? And that's essentially what happened
Speaker 2: at ping Von.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what if you had a blood transfusion of cow's blood?
Speaker 1: Like what would that do to a human being or
Speaker 1: a blood type that didn't match your own? What would
Speaker 1: that do to somebody? There was one guy, he was
Speaker 1: a physiologist name Yoshimura Hissato that focused on frostbite. So
Speaker 1: they would, you know, purposely give people frostbite to see
Speaker 1: what happened to their body and their limbs. They did
Speaker 1: publish some of this stuff, I believe. The second in command,
Speaker 1: his name was Masagi Kitano, said that, yeah, we published
Speaker 1: some of this stuff, but when we published it during
Speaker 1: the war, we said that we were using you know,
Speaker 1: research monkeys and stuff like that, and certainly keeping all,
Speaker 1: you know, anything about humans a secret.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's not like they didn't realize that what
Speaker 2: they were doing was considered unethical and immoral.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they knew it.
Speaker 2: That's also they kept the whole thing secret too, and
Speaker 2: yet they did it anyway. That frostbite work is very
Speaker 2: frequently cited as you know, evidence that actual scientific findings
Speaker 2: came out of this, because apparently before the way that
Speaker 2: they thought to revive a frostbit and limb was to
Speaker 2: rub it back into health, and they found that actually
Speaker 2: makes it worse. That you want to dunk it in
Speaker 2: water that's between one hundred and one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: two degrees farentheight, And so people are like, see, that's
Speaker 2: a scientific finding. It's weird. It's almost as if they're
Speaker 2: trying to excuse it in some way, shape or form
Speaker 2: or say that it was in any way justified. And
Speaker 2: from what I can tell, that's the only one that
Speaker 2: anyone's actually able to point to as a scientific experiment
Speaker 2: that produced actual scientific findings that we weren't aware of before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So not only were they like saying,
Speaker 1: you know, what kind of bomb can we make out
Speaker 1: of poison gas or a plague culture or you know,
Speaker 1: something that as like infected fleas, like animal fleas as
Speaker 1: a payload that have the plague dropped on a town.
Speaker 1: But I mentioned earlier just you know, regular weapons, guns
Speaker 1: and knives and stuff like, let's just tie people up
Speaker 1: at a stake and shoot them with different things from
Speaker 1: different distances to see like how far the bullets travel,
Speaker 1: what kind of wounds they would produce, you know, flame throwers, knives, swords,
Speaker 1: anything they could think of to just log sort of
Speaker 1: what the human body could take and what kind of
Speaker 1: effect it would have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that area where you're talking about was a second
Speaker 2: kind of satellite site at a town called Hoda. It's
Speaker 2: about ninety miles away from Harbin, which is where the
Speaker 2: ping Fon complex was, right, and everything we're talking about
Speaker 2: to this point has was carried out at ping Fon
Speaker 2: and this one huge, sixty five square acre complex of
Speaker 2: just horror, every single day horror. And imagine hundreds of
Speaker 2: other people working with them, and all of them are
Speaker 2: walking around of doing the same thing, hearing the same screams,
Speaker 2: like carrying out the same atrocities. Yeah, and it's just
Speaker 2: like the guy said, like it was just all in
Speaker 2: a day's work. That's just what we were doing. Like
Speaker 2: imagine that, like try. I can't even conceive of putting
Speaker 2: myself in a place like that and just going along
Speaker 2: with it, because you know that there were people who
Speaker 2: were there who were worried about not going along with
Speaker 2: it because they knew they would be next on the
Speaker 2: slab if they spoke up or spoke out against it.
Speaker 2: I just can't imagine it. When when my brain tries
Speaker 2: to put me in that that place at that time,
Speaker 2: it's just like stop, I don't want to go there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you see the zone of interests yet, No,
Speaker 1: you should check that out.
Speaker 2: What is it a movie? Is it a play?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a movie from last year, won the
Speaker 1: Oscar for Foreign Film and was nominated for Best Picture overall.
Speaker 1: Jonathan later, it's basically a movie true story obviously about
Speaker 1: the guy who led who was sort of the head
Speaker 1: of the concentration camp. I think it was Auschwitz and
Speaker 1: not docu. But you know, it doesn't go in the
Speaker 1: camp at all. The whole movie is just told from
Speaker 1: the perspective of the fact that he had his house
Speaker 1: next door on the other side of the wall, where
Speaker 1: he had his wife and kids in garden, and they
Speaker 1: just they live this normal life and it's a very
Speaker 1: The way that Glazer did it was very, very effective
Speaker 1: and different than I've seen in any other war movie
Speaker 1: to get across this sort of horrors without seeing any
Speaker 1: of them happen.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, that's really interesting. I've heard about that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I haven't heard anything more than what you just said.
Speaker 2: So I'll check it out though, because I trust your recommendations.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's a great film and very effective,
Speaker 1: And you know, the reason I brought it up is
Speaker 1: because that's sort of the same idea because I did
Speaker 1: a little research after about this guy and he was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I felt like I was, you know, I
Speaker 1: had to do this stuff or else I would be,
Speaker 1: you know, shot for not following orders. And that's always
Speaker 1: sort of the line that you hear.
Speaker 2: Sure, no, for sure, especially further down the pecking order.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The thing is is there were very very clearly people
Speaker 2: who were there who were totally into this and were
Speaker 2: totally fine with it all in a day's work. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just what they did. Yeah, But I guarantee there
Speaker 2: were people who were there just crumbling inside every day.
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe there weren't. Maybe you couldn't possibly
Speaker 2: keep quiet in a place like that, who knows. But
Speaker 2: there were hundreds of people, like you said, from all
Speaker 2: different fields and professions that were coming together to work
Speaker 2: to experiment on unwilling humans at ping Fon. And that
Speaker 2: was just ping Fon because what we said earlier was
Speaker 2: that their ultimate goal was to create biological weapons. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you can sit there and come up with a
Speaker 2: trillion microorganisms every few days, all like, all year long,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't amount to anything if you can't infect
Speaker 2: your enemy with them. If you wanted to carry a
Speaker 2: biological warfare program, I should say. And so one of
Speaker 2: the other things that they experimented on was how to deliver,
Speaker 2: like you said, payloads of plague infected fleas or cholera
Speaker 2: into local wells, and they did it sometimes successfully. And
Speaker 2: I think the number for the people who died just
Speaker 2: at Pingfon was three thousand. That's the number that's generally cited.
Speaker 2: And they had one hundred percent mortality rate among prisoners.
Speaker 2: There no one survived Pingfon. Not a single person survived
Speaker 2: ping Fon. If you went in there as a prisoner,
Speaker 2: you died just at ping Fon. That was three thousand.
Speaker 2: When it goes to the actual experiments that they carried
Speaker 2: out trying to deliver biological weapons in Manchuria, it expands,
Speaker 2: by some estimates into the hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And we should point out too when you
Speaker 1: say that there were no survivors of ping Fan when
Speaker 1: they closed down, and you know, we're skipping towards the end,
Speaker 1: but when they did shut it down, whoever was still living,
Speaker 1: they just murdered straight up to cover up any sign
Speaker 1: of evidence, and then just dynamited the place beyond recognition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they destroyed all the records and then
Speaker 2: all of the people there took a last order from
Speaker 2: General Ishi that was never talk about this and never
Speaker 2: implicate anyone that's ever worked here. They basically took a
Speaker 2: vow of silence about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you mentioned, you know, using actual biological weapons
Speaker 1: that was mainly against Chinese civilians, and this is some
Speaker 1: of the stuff that you know, they had sort of
Speaker 1: considered when they dropped like cotton or wheat or rice
Speaker 1: infested with disease carrying fleas on different Chinese cities, and
Speaker 1: they testified in court later on civilians did about like
Speaker 1: what happened to their community communities, these illnesses that spread
Speaker 1: through there. It's just it's hard to fathom that this
Speaker 1: was going on and largely gotten away with, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there were a couple more that I found, Chuck,
Speaker 2: that I were just reprehensible. They would infect dogs with cholera,
Speaker 2: I believe, and release them into villages and collar outbreaks
Speaker 2: would start. They gave local children chocolate lace with salmonella.
Speaker 2: The one thing that was super effective they found was
Speaker 2: mixing wheat grain with plague infested fleas or infected fleas
Speaker 2: and dropping it from airplanes and then the villagers would
Speaker 2: feed the grain to their chickens and plague outbreak would
Speaker 2: start and again. Like over time, at least tens of
Speaker 2: thousands of people in Manchuria died from these plague and
Speaker 2: collar outbreaks. Colera is no oh joke. Apparently there was
Speaker 2: a researcher who was a pathologist at Unit seven thirty
Speaker 2: one who boasted that they produced enough calera to kill
Speaker 2: every single person in the world. And they didn't succeed
Speaker 2: in that, thankfully, but they definitely killed a significant number
Speaker 2: of people in Manchuria with things like cholera and the
Speaker 2: plague from just trying to figure out how to get
Speaker 2: that to those people. Fortunately, that was something they really
Speaker 2: failed at. They never really figured it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, mainly we've been talking about like people
Speaker 1: that they arrested and you know, practice on or when
Speaker 1: it was like you know, actual biological weapons, it was
Speaker 1: on civilians, but they also did this on prisoners of
Speaker 1: war in different places outside of Unit seven thirty one,
Speaker 1: specifically Singapore and the Philippines. You mentioned US prisoners of
Speaker 1: war early on. There was one documented case, at least
Speaker 1: one documented case in May of nineteen forty five when
Speaker 1: there was a down US plane where they captured eight
Speaker 1: airmen and in May of nineteen forty five, they were
Speaker 1: basically medically tortured. There was one medical student later on
Speaker 1: that said, you know what was going on was just
Speaker 1: torture at this point, there was no scientific value happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that wasn't even Unit seven thirty one. That's
Speaker 2: how badly like this whole German infected Japanese military. Essentially,
Speaker 2: the military is like, hey, we got these POWs. We
Speaker 2: want to we want to do a number on them.
Speaker 2: So basically just operate on them until they're dead. And
Speaker 2: that's what it would be dressed up as is like
Speaker 2: practice surgeries. Like I want to learn how to remove
Speaker 2: an arm, so that's what they would practice on. Or
Speaker 2: I want to learn how to remove an appendix, so
Speaker 2: I'm going to practice that, and like eventually the patient
Speaker 2: would just die because they didn't have enough organs left
Speaker 2: to sustain themselves, or they lost so much blood that
Speaker 2: they died, but they died from surgery. That was how
Speaker 2: they died.
Speaker 1: Well, and if they happened to live through this, they
Speaker 1: would strangle them till they died.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I heard one other thing it's kind of unrelated
Speaker 2: to this, but it's just stuck out to me, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of haunted me actually, that there was a
Speaker 2: group of POWs, American POWs that were being held in Japan,
Speaker 2: and hours after the surrender had taken place and where
Speaker 2: it had spread that Japan surrendered. Rather than release these POWs,
Speaker 2: this group of Japanese soldiers took them to this hillside
Speaker 2: and decapitated them, killed them, just completely wasted their lives
Speaker 2: for nothing after a surrender. Somehow, it's bad enough to
Speaker 2: do that in the context of war, but within hours
Speaker 2: of surrendering, it makes it exponentially worse. It's way worse
Speaker 2: than even if that happened five years later, Like they
Speaker 2: just held them for five years and then killed them
Speaker 2: somehow within hours of surrendering. It just makes it worse
Speaker 2: to me. And I can't really get that one out
Speaker 2: of my head, so I wanted to make sure it
Speaker 2: was in everybody else's head, I guess.
Speaker 1: I guess you want to think that after something as
Speaker 1: horrific of a war has ended, then everyone just wants
Speaker 1: to go home and have it be over, you know,
Speaker 1: and that you know clearly isn't always the case.
Speaker 2: Well, I remember also just kind of tied into it.
Speaker 2: The Nazis did that too, Like the truest believers would
Speaker 2: just walk around executing people who, like at the end
Speaker 2: of the war, like they knew, like Hitler was dead
Speaker 2: and the war was over, but they were executing people
Speaker 2: who were like trying to go home or running away
Speaker 2: or whatever. Just a complete waste of life. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't really have anything else to add to that.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll edit that part out, but it just has
Speaker 2: stuck with me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, we'll take our last break, and we're
Speaker 1: going to come back and finish up with the investigations
Speaker 1: and kind of what happened afterward, and prepared to be
Speaker 1: unsatisfied right after this. All right, we are back. We promised,
Speaker 1: talked of investigation and you know kind of what happened afterward,
Speaker 1: it you know, became pretty clear that the war was ending.
Speaker 1: So general is she e like you said earlier, said,
Speaker 1: you know, no one can ever speak of this. Beginning
Speaker 1: on August ninth, they started destroying everything, started blowing that
Speaker 1: place up, killed everyone else who was there, which, as
Speaker 1: we'll see is you know, one reason they got away
Speaker 1: with some of these atrocities is because there were no
Speaker 1: surviving people to testify. So the US started investigating this
Speaker 1: at a place called Camp Dietrich in Maryland. It was
Speaker 1: an army base, a pretty new one, and when they
Speaker 1: started questioning, they kind of realized what was going on.
Speaker 1: And Japan said, you know, the Cold War is sort
Speaker 1: of taking hold now, and you know, we're really afraid
Speaker 1: that some of this stuff might get into the hands
Speaker 1: of the Soviets. So America made a decision to rather
Speaker 1: than pursue prosecution, was like, hey, let's work with them,
Speaker 1: just to get as much much data and information as
Speaker 1: we can from them that is useful to us, and
Speaker 1: that in itself is a pretty horrific thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we actually paid them. We paid them, We paid
Speaker 2: the unit seven thirty one scientists like, general, is she
Speaker 2: money to work with us? And it's weird. There's like
Speaker 2: a lot of papers. I read one from the Cambridge
Speaker 2: Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics in twenty fourteen that compared like
Speaker 2: the two prongs that were taken like two different, two
Speaker 2: different approaches, one toward the Nazis and their medical atrocities,
Speaker 2: one toward the Japanese and their medical atrocities. And there
Speaker 2: was one guy in particular named John W. Thompson, who
Speaker 2: was Canadian who really led the charge to prosecute the
Speaker 2: Nazi doctors who carried out these horrible experimentations as war criminals.
Speaker 2: There wasn't a guy like that dealing with the Japanese
Speaker 2: in the tribunal for war crimes in the Far East,
Speaker 2: and so the US military and intelligence was able to
Speaker 2: keep a lid on the whole thing. The Russians were
Speaker 2: talking about it because their people had been killed, the
Speaker 2: Chinese were certainly talking about it because their people had
Speaker 2: been killed, And people as high up as Douglas MacArthur
Speaker 2: were publicly saying this is communist propaganda, This isn't true,
Speaker 2: knowing full well it was true, because he was collaborating
Speaker 2: and the people under him were collaborating with the very
Speaker 2: people who had performed these atrocities in order to get
Speaker 2: their medical data. We paid them for it, and we
Speaker 2: gave them immunity. Some of them apparently even visited Fort
Speaker 2: Dietrich to help with America's own biological warfare program that
Speaker 2: we essentially lifted from the Japanese after World War Two.
Speaker 1: That's what happened, yeah, I mean, that is that's blood
Speaker 1: on the hands of the United States because what they're
Speaker 1: basically saying, they're basically you know, they wouldn't outright say that,
Speaker 1: but they're justifying these experiments by saying that the data
Speaker 1: was useful.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, they said that Americans couldn't possibly ever get
Speaker 2: data like this because we have scruples, but apparently the
Speaker 2: Japanese don't, so we'll just take their data because they
Speaker 2: don't have scruples. But that means that by proxy, you
Speaker 2: don't have scruples if you're willing to use this, And
Speaker 2: that's what happened with the Nazi stuff like that guy
Speaker 2: John W. Thompson wanted to make an example out of
Speaker 2: those Nazi doctors, like attention all scientists everywhere in the world.
Speaker 2: Even the cover of World War two can't save you
Speaker 2: like you like you were going to be hung if
Speaker 2: we ever catch any of you doing something like this, hanged.
Speaker 2: I guess that that message wasn't given to the Japanese doctors,
Speaker 2: and in fact, because a lid was kept so tightly
Speaker 2: on what had happened and was just relegated to rumors
Speaker 2: as far as America and Japan was concerned, they were
Speaker 2: allowed to re enter Japanese society and actually become fairly
Speaker 2: prominent and celebrated in their fields in a lot of cases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, there were some tribunals from over the course
Speaker 1: of a couple of years from forty six to forty eight.
Speaker 1: Other countries were involved, including China and the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: but they did not talk about Unit seven thirty one.
Speaker 1: There was a separate tribunal in Yokohama in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: eight that convicted twenty three military figures, some medical personnel
Speaker 1: that were in the Kyushu University torture, and these were
Speaker 1: specifically of uspows only, and they got death or life sentences,
Speaker 1: but those sentences were dropped or commuted, I guess because
Speaker 1: the US was trying to build a friend in Japan
Speaker 1: at that point and an ally at the start of
Speaker 1: the Korean War, and then the Soviet you know, eventually
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty nine said you know, we have to
Speaker 1: expose some of this. So they put and this is
Speaker 1: by themselves, they put twelve members of Unit seven thirty
Speaker 1: one on trial and you know, accusing them of everything
Speaker 1: that they did, and this is where a lot of
Speaker 1: like information was brought out. They were sentenced between two
Speaker 1: to twenty five years in prison, and the US, because
Speaker 1: we were now in a Cold war with Russia, said
Speaker 1: that this is propaganda.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this trial where essentially all of the information,
Speaker 2: the fact factual information we had for decades about what
Speaker 2: Unit seven thirty one did came out of this trial.
Speaker 2: But it was just in the USSR. And it wasn't
Speaker 2: until nineteen eighty two that a journalist named John W.
Speaker 2: Powell got his hands on it and published an article
Speaker 2: on what Unit seven thirty one had done during the
Speaker 2: war and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists journal And it
Speaker 2: was through those court transcripts, so they came back to
Speaker 2: haunt them thirty years later, and that's when it really
Speaker 2: became started to become knowledge among historians, the military, the
Speaker 2: government in the West, in the United States, and among
Speaker 2: allies that the Japanese had actually done these things that
Speaker 2: they'd long been accused of by the Soviets and Chinese,
Speaker 2: and here was evidence of it by the testimony by
Speaker 2: the very people who were there, who'd been captured by
Speaker 2: the Soviets.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, most of this stuff has come out
Speaker 1: at an alarmingly slow rate, and over the course of decades,
Speaker 1: I believe in nineteen eighty two, there was a museum
Speaker 1: in China at that ping Fan site obviously that China established,
Speaker 1: But it took all the way until nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: you know, forty plus years after the war ended, that
Speaker 1: the Japanese government finally admitted that it even happened. But
Speaker 1: they still wouldn't release any information, like most of the
Speaker 1: stuff that we know. Like you said, if we had
Speaker 1: done this episode, you know, at the beginning of our run,
Speaker 1: and we probably wouldn't have known what we know now
Speaker 1: because a lot of it came out in the nineties,
Speaker 1: the early two thousands. Well I guess by that time
Speaker 1: we were around. Yeah, but that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 1: The point is, it took a long time for this
Speaker 1: stuff to come out, and you know, we can't go
Speaker 1: over everyone. You did mention that, you know, many of
Speaker 1: them went on to have just great lives and careers,
Speaker 1: but we should highlight a few of these. The second
Speaker 1: in command that I mentioned earlier, Masaji Kaitano. He co
Speaker 1: founded a green Cross, a very large Japanese pharmaceutical company,
Speaker 1: with two other colleagues from Unit seven thirty one. So
Speaker 1: they did well, they.
Speaker 2: Did, and green Cross went on to infect eighteen hundred
Speaker 2: people with hemophilia with HIV because they were selling them
Speaker 2: unsterilized blood clotting agents in the nineties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was what about is she?
Speaker 2: She became one of the most celebrated doctors in all
Speaker 2: of Japan. He supposedly, according to one British historian named
Speaker 2: Richard Drayton, went to Fort Dietrich to advise the US
Speaker 2: on the bioweapons program. There. He died in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: nine at age sixty seven, never having even been publicly
Speaker 2: accused of what he had done in Japanese society. He
Speaker 2: was just a celebrated doctor by that point when he died.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the guy hasato that the guy who led those
Speaker 1: frostbited experiments. He became president of the Kyoto Prefectural University
Speaker 1: of Medicine.
Speaker 2: This one gets me though, This last one. You gotta
Speaker 2: say that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the communicable disease researcher Amatani Shogo, he won the
Speaker 1: Asahi Prize for outstanding contributions to the field of communicable
Speaker 1: disease research. And part of that was some of the
Speaker 1: stuff that he got from Unit seven thirty one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I looked all over like, hey, how did
Speaker 2: he disguise that or how did the Asahi Prize people
Speaker 2: miss that? I didn't see anything like that. Apparently his
Speaker 2: research came directly from medical experiments on unwilling participants got
Speaker 2: him the Asahi Prize. Yeah, that's insane, man.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: So there's no clear evidence that the United States gained
Speaker 2: much of anything from the deal it made with the
Speaker 2: Unit seven thirty one leaders for all of their research.
Speaker 2: Other people say, no, actually it's not true at all.
Speaker 2: And in fact, the Chinese accused the US of using
Speaker 2: the same kind of germs for germ warfare in Korea,
Speaker 2: and the US of course it's like, no, he didn't.
Speaker 2: But Fort Dietrich is well known as being like a
Speaker 2: biological research facility. They're like, it's not biological warfare. We're
Speaker 2: just using gain of function research to see what happens
Speaker 2: when we make this virus do this, you know, not
Speaker 2: for biological warfare. It's very bizarre, but it exists. It's
Speaker 2: definitely there, and it's a strange place. Apparently that's where
Speaker 2: a lot of MK ultra experiments were carried out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wouldn't that where the men stared at goats?
Speaker 2: I think so? Yeah, I mean that was definitely about that,
Speaker 2: but I don't remember if that was at said at
Speaker 2: Fort Tetrick or not. I got a funny story about that.
Speaker 2: I got to tell you sometimes.
Speaker 1: Oh well, how about now we could use it.
Speaker 2: No, I can't really tell you here on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Ah, copy of that, all right?
Speaker 2: And then just one more thing, Chuck, This has not
Speaker 2: revelations that Unit seven thirty one carried out these experiences
Speaker 2: has not exactly been like embraced in Japanese society, right.
Speaker 1: Like, there's a real divide on whether to teach this
Speaker 1: horrific but very true history of their own country because
Speaker 1: of the obvious sort of effects that this could have
Speaker 1: on children and how they feel about their country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen that they're worried that they might make
Speaker 2: Japanese children ashamed of their country. So you can't teach
Speaker 2: them that kind of stuff. So that's it. That's the
Speaker 2: last thing I've got. All Right, you got anything else?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. I'm glad that one's over.
Speaker 2: Same here, Thanks a lot, Amy, Yeah, thanks Amy. If
Speaker 2: you want to know more about you in seven point
Speaker 2: thirty one, Okay, there's plenty of stuff you can read
Speaker 2: on the internet. And since I said that it's time
Speaker 2: for listener mail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a little further explanation about backdraft from
Speaker 1: our Arts and Investigation EP. Hey guys, it's a fan
Speaker 1: of your work. I was excited to listen to the
Speaker 1: episode on an Arson Investigation because I'm a firefighter and
Speaker 1: I've learned about some of what you guys covered and
Speaker 1: got some cool new information from you. I want to
Speaker 1: let you know that you were so close on backdraft,
Speaker 1: but just a little bit off. The way backdraft works
Speaker 1: is when you have a working fire that does not
Speaker 1: have access to fresh oxygen. At a certain point, the
Speaker 1: fire will have consumed all of the oxygen in a
Speaker 1: space and basically begin to smolder, so it will create
Speaker 1: a turbulent smoke in a very high and very high temperatures,
Speaker 1: but not actual flames. So the backdraft occurs when oxygen
Speaker 1: is suddenly added to the situation, if I say, opening
Speaker 1: a door or a window. The sudden addition of oxygen
Speaker 1: to the superheated gases can create a pretty violent explosion,
Speaker 1: and that explosion itself is the backdraft. I figured I've
Speaker 1: learned so much from you guys, I thought it'd be
Speaker 1: cool to share some info back Hope this receives you
Speaker 1: well and that is from Lindsey.
Speaker 2: Thanks Lindsay. That was very cool. Apparently the only way
Speaker 2: to fight a backdraft is to love it too. I'll
Speaker 2: let that part out, Linda.
Speaker 1: That's right, you got to joke in there. Very nice.
Speaker 2: If you want to get in touch with us like
Speaker 2: Lindsay did and let us know something cool that we
Speaker 2: didn't know, you can do it. Send it via email
Speaker 2: to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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