Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. It undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War of World War II. Estimates of those killed by Unit 731 and its related programs range up to half a million people. Researchers involved in Unit 7 31 were secretly given immunity by the United States in exchange for the data they gathered through human experimentation.
About Unit 731 in brief
Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. It undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War of World War II. Estimates of those killed by Unit 731 and its related programs range up to half a million people. The researchers involved in Unit 7 31 were secretly given immunity by the United States in exchange for the data they gathered through human experimentation. Other researchers that the Soviet forces managed to arrest first were tried at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials in 1949. The Americans did not try the researchers so that the information and experience gained in bio-weapons could be co-opted into their biological warfare program, much as they had done with German researchers in Operation Paperclip. The program received generous support from the Japanese government up to the end of the war in 1945. It was based at the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest gas chamber in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, and had active branch offices throughout China and Southeast Asia. The facility itself was built in 1935 as a replacement for the Zhongma Fortress, a prisonexperimentation camp in Beiyinhe, a village 100 km south ofharbin on the South Manchuria Railway. In the autumn of 1934, a jailbreak which jeopardized the facility’s secrecy along with a later explosion in 1935 led Ishii to shut down Zhongsma Fortress. In 1936, Emperor Hirohito authorized by decree its integration into the Kwantung Army as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department.
From August 1940, the units were collectively known collectively as the EPidemic prevention and water purification department. In 1937, sister chemical and biological warfare units were founded in major Chinese cities and towns. After the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, they were referred to as the 731 Regiment, Manshu Detachment 731, The Kamo Detachment or the Ishii Company. The unit and its sister units were divided at the time into the unit and the unit Wakamatsu Unit, with a base in Hsinking, China. The units were known collectively in August 1940 as the units collectively known as the epidemic protection and waterpurification department of the Kwantsung Army Technical Testing Department. In addition to the establishment of the EPIDemic Prevention Department, the Japanese army also established an additional biological warfare unit called the Epidsemic Prevention Workshop or the Kwansung Army Military Horse Horse Unit, which was based in the city of Hsinkamatsu. In 1941, the Kwensung Army established a chemical warfare unit for the invasion of the Chinese city of Wenzhou. The Kwansong Army Technical Training Department was also known as the EpIDS War Testing Department or the Kamo Military Horse Unit. In 1942, it was renamed the EpIDs War Testing and Development Department, and in 1943 it became the EpIDemic War Testing Unit.
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This page is based on the article Unit 731 published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
