0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production

0:04

of iHeartRadio.

0:11

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's

0:13

Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff

0:15

you Should Know. And this is definitely

0:18

the chipperest I'm going to sound for this episode

0:20

right now.

0:21

Yeah, and another joke free

0:24

edition.

0:25

Yeah. Possibly, we're

0:27

definitely hitting that.

0:28

Should we see oa?

0:30

Oh yeah, there's there, Yeah

0:33

for sure. Please go ahead.

0:35

Okay, all

0:37

right, I did laugh. There

0:40

are unspeakable atrocities

0:42

that we will discuss of the horrors

0:44

of well I was about to say

0:46

the horrors of war, but it really are

0:49

just the horrors of human experimentation

0:53

during war. And so children

0:55

should not listen to this, and people

0:58

that are really haunted

1:01

by that kind of thing should not listen to this.

1:04

Yeah, I mean we can.

1:07

It's not like there's spoilers or anything.

1:09

We're going to talk about human vivisection,

1:12

abuse of like children, women, the elderly,

1:14

like it's it's as bad as

1:16

humans can possibly do to other humans

1:19

what we're going to talk about today. So if that's not your

1:21

bag, we will definitely not blame

1:23

you for skipping this one.

1:24

That's right, But we do need to thank

1:27

a listener sitting this one in. This

1:30

came from you know, I don't even

1:32

know if I'm going to say her last name. Her name is Amy,

1:36

and you

1:38

know who you are, and you know,

1:40

I'm glad you sitting this my way because this is something I

1:42

knew nothing about and I think people,

1:45

you know, part of the fabric of the show is

1:47

is teaching people some

1:49

of the unspeakable things that have happened that

1:52

you would not learn in school. And

1:54

so Amy sitting us in. So thank you, Amy,

1:56

and we'll just forward any complaints to you.

1:58

Yeah, thank you, Amy.

2:00

Yeah, exactly.

2:02

I had heard of Unit seven thirty one before

2:04

several times. Nothing. I had

2:06

no idea the

2:10

detail that I know now about them,

2:12

But you know, I was walking on like we'll never talk

2:14

about that. So thanks again,

2:17

Amy. But

2:19

I guess let's just start at the beginning. Let's

2:21

give a little background, because what we're talking about

2:24

here is a detachment and

2:26

I think an Imperial Army unit from

2:30

Japan that started up in the

2:32

nineteen thirties and it

2:35

committed medical atrocities war

2:37

crimes that actually rival

2:39

easily rival Joseph Mengel's

2:42

hideous medical War crimes at Auschwitz

2:45

Death Camp, like the stuff that

2:47

the Japanese essentially did

2:50

during World War Two to Chinese and Russian

2:52

and to a lesser extent Mongolian civilians

2:57

and then sometimes prisoners of war, including

2:59

American It's just it's unspeakable

3:02

and we're going to try to speak it as best we can, but

3:04

it doesn't make sense without

3:06

a little bit of context. If you have

3:09

a little bit context, in my opinion, of where this

3:11

evolved from, it doesn't

3:13

doesn't excuse it doesn't explain it. It just makes

3:16

slightly more sense than the Japanese

3:18

just suddenly did this horrible thing and

3:20

now everything's back to normal.

3:22

Yeah, And just to add an additional comment

3:24

to the sort of comparison

3:27

to Nazi atrocities,

3:31

certainly not in scale that was happening

3:33

in Germany and Poland and elsewhere,

3:36

but as far as just the how

3:38

reprehensible some of this stuff is.

3:40

You know what I'm saying, No, No,

3:43

this is a separate thing for sure, and there's

3:45

no comparison it. This happened.

3:48

This happened. It's just the reason

3:50

I'm comparing the two is because most people walk

3:52

around understanding that

3:54

the Nazis did these horrible atrocities, and what I'm

3:56

trying to get across is that the Japanese

3:58

did too during World War II. Yeah, it's

4:01

just for really specific reasons that the

4:03

average person isn't walking around knowing about

4:05

that, which we'll talk about later too.

4:07

Yeah. Absolutely, all

4:09

right, So you promised talk of backstory,

4:13

and we'll get into that here, because the backstory

4:16

is is starting sort of in the late eighteen hundreds.

4:19

The government of Japan was

4:22

it sort of went through a movement where it was looking to

4:24

build itself up into a superpower, like

4:27

you know, just like Europe was, just like the United

4:30

States was, And a lot

4:32

of this was tied up in just

4:34

sort of modernizing the country, whether

4:37

it was the military or how they

4:39

functioned economically, and

4:42

sort of this ultranationalist movement

4:45

grew up around all this.

4:47

Yeah, so you just said the key

4:49

word here ultranationalist,

4:52

which is I mean nationalism is fervent

4:54

to begin with. Ultranationalism

4:57

reaches a fanatical level, and that's

4:59

kind of this journey that began to infect Japanese

5:01

society starting in the twenties

5:04

or thirties. And the reason why is because

5:06

Japan took a number of like kind of punches

5:08

and was kind of down both economically

5:11

and as far as like cultural

5:14

honor goes like. Japan helped

5:16

the US and UK win World

5:18

War One, but were left out of the table

5:21

when the spoils of war were divided up. That

5:23

was a big black eye and the national pride.

5:25

The Great Depression hit

5:28

Japan disproportionately hard

5:30

compared to some of the other countries outside of the US.

5:33

There was just a lot of stuff that it was clear that the leaders

5:35

of Japanese society weren't equipped to

5:37

handle. And the worse it made

5:39

Japan look to the Japanese, the

5:42

more the national

5:45

pride felt it needed

5:47

to be defended. And that's where that nationalism

5:49

and then eventually ultra nationalism came from.

5:52

And the reason that we're talking about this today is

5:54

because it became a really thick

5:56

component of the Japanese

5:58

military. Nationalist fanaticism.

6:02

Yeah, I mean, it can become a very and usually

6:05

does become a very dangerous thing.

6:06

Yes, everywhere anywhere in all

6:09

of.

6:09

History, Yeah, for sure. In

6:11

the nineteen thirties, there was a

6:13

part of China and northeastern China

6:16

kind of near Korea in Russia and Mongolia

6:19

called Manchuria, where Japan

6:22

had a lot of people that were

6:24

living there, had settled there. They had

6:26

a lot of influence on that area. The

6:28

Chinese government did not like this, of course,

6:31

they were in the middle of a civil war with

6:34

the Nationalists, which was the ruling

6:36

party at the time. The Nationalist government with

6:38

Shang Kai Shek and then

6:41

Malo Zedong's Communists were trying to take

6:43

control, but they had a common

6:45

enemy in Japan, and Japan was sort

6:48

of encroaching on this area in northeastern China

6:50

in the thirties.

6:51

Yeah, and the ulter nationalism, I said, was so

6:53

thick in the Japanese military

6:56

it actually created

6:58

almost like an additional

7:00

branch, especially for the Kwantung

7:03

Army that had basically invaded

7:05

Manchuria. They weren't

7:08

following orders from the Japanese Imperial

7:11

Army heads, the leaders of the actual

7:13

military. They were kind of working on their

7:16

own to expand the empire and they were successful,

7:19

so they were getting away with it. They were also getting away

7:21

with it because they would assassinate you or they

7:23

would stage a coup attempt, like you did not mess

7:25

with these people, even though they weren't the leaders

7:28

the leaders were afraid of like these middling

7:30

officers who were actually these ulternational

7:33

fanatics. So the upshot of all that

7:36

is that Japan ended

7:38

up controlling Manchuria in

7:40

the nineteen thirties and set up a puppet

7:43

government there, and it was like a big

7:45

first step toward expanding

7:47

the empire. And one other part

7:50

of the backstory, and then I'll be quiet about

7:52

the backstory, is that part

7:54

of that ulternationalism was a certain

7:56

amount of genetic and cultural

7:58

pride in Japan and the

8:00

Japanese. And

8:03

there's nothing wrong with having pride in your culture,

8:05

but the problem is very often, especially

8:07

in the context of nationalism or ultra nationalism,

8:10

means everybody else is inferior. And

8:12

so that kind of gave this ultra nationalist

8:15

detachment of the military carte blanc

8:18

to mistreat anybody who wasn't Japanese,

8:20

which included the Russians, Koreans, Mongolians,

8:24

and Chinese. That all kind of met

8:26

in Manchuria, which was at the border

8:28

of all of these countries, which is where the

8:31

Japanese had taken over and set

8:33

up this puppet government.

8:34

Yeah, I mean, anytime you throw the word genetic

8:36

in there, you're probably traveling down a

8:39

bad road. Yeah, you know, and

8:41

Japan definitely saw themselves, or

8:44

at least a faction of Japan. I'm not going to say like

8:46

everyone in the country, but this ultra nationalistic

8:49

wing thought they were

8:52

the superior Asian human being

8:54

on planet Earth at the time.

8:56

Yeah, and the ones who didn't think the same way

8:58

were too scared to speak up. They were

9:00

killed, Like they killed the Prime minister, Chuck,

9:02

the military just killed the Prime

9:04

minister, assassinated because it wasn't

9:07

going along with their aims. Okay,

9:09

so I lied. That was the end of the

9:11

backstory.

9:12

All right. So the puppet

9:15

government was there in nineteen thirty two in

9:17

Manchuria. The Chinese, like

9:19

I said, did not love this. So

9:22

they had a common enemy and got together

9:24

to fight, and there was a pretty

9:26

much a full scale war started

9:29

which started in nineteen thirty seven that a lot of

9:31

people are like, you know, you could really

9:33

point to this as the very beginnings of what would

9:35

be World War two if

9:37

you want to get technical, and

9:40

so this is just sort of what's going on. When

9:43

Unit seven thirty one is formed

9:45

in nineteen thirty six under

9:47

the command of General shiro A

9:50

Shie. I watched

9:52

this. It was pretty good

9:54

documentary. Actually, it's like an hour long on YouTube.

9:57

I can't remember what it was called, but if you're looking for Unit

10:00

seven thirty one docs on YouTube, it's the one

10:02

that's like an hour long on the nose

10:04

and super professionally done.

10:06

It's called There's Something Wrong with Aunt Shiro?

10:09

Was that it?

10:10

No? No, I was referencing another horrible

10:12

documentary called There's Something Wrong with

10:14

Aunt Diane. Not horrible, horrific.

10:16

Oh, I think I've

10:18

heard of that one.

10:19

Actually, it's It's tough.

10:22

Yeah, we'll talk offline. Okay, I'm not sure I'm thinking of the

10:24

right one.

10:24

This is definitely the episode to bring it up, and I'll

10:26

tell you that.

10:27

Yeah. So she E

10:30

was a doctor in the Japanese army, was

10:33

a part of that ultra nationalist wing before

10:36

the war. He was interested

10:39

in biological weapons

10:41

and what that might offer the army,

10:44

and supposedly as early as nineteen

10:46

thirty was starting to do some human

10:49

experimentation. I

10:51

think, you know, as a doctor, though not as a

10:54

general, correct.

10:56

As both I believe he was. He'd

10:58

been a general for a while, or at least a high ranking

11:01

military official. For a while when he started.

11:03

Okay, so the reason that we

11:06

talked so much about Manchuria a second ago

11:08

is because doctor General

11:11

Ishi realized very quickly

11:13

that even in ultranationalists

11:15

Japan, people weren't super cool

11:18

with unwilling human experimentation.

11:21

So he's kind of successively

11:24

moved his operation further

11:26

and further away from the prying eyes

11:29

of everyday Japanese people and

11:31

ultimately ended up in Manchuria

11:34

because it was so it

11:36

was so lawless as far as like ethics

11:39

and morals regarding civilian treatment

11:41

and war crimes goes. It was the

11:43

kind of place where you could set up

11:45

a medical experimentation

11:49

machine using unwilling

11:51

participants. It was that kind of place. And

11:54

it also had a steady supply of inferior

11:56

human beings. I just made scare quotes

11:58

for those of you who can't see me, who

12:00

were the Koreans and the Russians and the

12:03

Chinese and the Mongolians who lived

12:05

in the area and were just unfortunate

12:07

to have lived in this area that Japan

12:09

now controlled.

12:11

Yeah. Absolutely, So in nineteen thirty

12:13

TWOHI

12:15

became the head of the and this is a

12:18

new operation, but it was called the Epidemic

12:20

Prevention Research Laboratory. This

12:23

was at the Japanese Military Medical

12:25

School in Tokyo, and Unit

12:28

seven thirty one was known officially

12:31

we call it Unit seven thirty one now for short, but

12:33

it was the Kwan Kwantung

12:35

Armies Epidemic Prevention and Water

12:37

Purification Department or Manchu

12:40

Detachment seven thirty one.

12:43

But like I said, we call it Unit

12:45

seven thirty one now. And this was the

12:47

main base of operations.

12:49

It was a there were like eight village

12:51

basically where they kicked

12:53

all the villagers out and said this is ours

12:56

now they built

12:58

I mean, it was like a prison camp basically.

13:01

You know, it was surrounded by barbed wire, there were guard

13:03

towers. No one was coming in

13:05

or getting out of there without explicit permission.

13:08

But some of the people invited in were

13:12

doctors and nurses and engineers

13:14

and pathologists and people

13:16

that specialize in bacterial

13:19

cultures and stuff like that. So they

13:21

were just sort of staffing up with you

13:24

know, legitimate and medical personnel

13:26

because they were they

13:29

were set to and as you'll see, it

13:31

was sort of like, hey, let's

13:33

figure out anything we ever wanted to know about

13:36

the human body and how it responds

13:38

to anything you could throw at it, from

13:41

bullets to knives to anthrax.

13:43

Right, And so they actually

13:45

started out with a fairly legitimate

13:48

mandate, which was figure

13:50

out how to essentially

13:52

treat things like communicable

13:55

diseases or things that soldiers,

13:58

Japanese soldiers might find useful, like, you

14:01

know, if there were fighting in the Pacific theater, figure

14:03

out how to treat malaria

14:06

or something like that. But under

14:08

the guidance of General Ashi, it

14:10

became they moved from willing,

14:13

initially willing Japanese soldiers who

14:16

signed consent waiver saying you can

14:18

test on me, to unwilling,

14:21

unfortunate civilians. And

14:23

there's a lot, as

14:25

we'll see, there's a lot of debate

14:28

and discussion about what happened when,

14:30

who is involved, And if we

14:32

were doing this podcast twenty years ago, we

14:35

would be completely lost by this point

14:37

totally. So much has come out that

14:39

we essentially know exactly what happened.

14:42

And one of the things that has

14:44

really been established over the years is that awareness

14:47

of Unit seven thirty one and the unwilling

14:50

medical experimentation war crimes

14:52

that was carrying out went all the way to the top.

14:55

The Emperor was involved the Emperor's

14:57

family was involved, Prime Minister Tojo

15:00

was involved. Everybody knew

15:02

about this. It was incredibly well

15:04

funded and it was a huge prong

15:06

of the Japanese military. It was just also

15:08

kept incredibly secret too.

15:10

Yeah, for sure. And when we say unwilling

15:13

subjects because of where it

15:15

was located, like we said near Korea and Russia

15:17

and Mongolia. Sometimes that were Russians

15:20

and Koreans and Mongolians, but most

15:22

of them were Chinese citizens. Some

15:24

of them were criminals, some

15:27

of them were just communists

15:29

that were arrested basically and rounded up,

15:32

and they were brought in like

15:34

you said, sort of initially like hey, let's see what

15:38

Let's see what happens when you don't eat for a while if

15:40

our soldiers are out there and kate get their hands on food

15:42

and water, Like how long can humans

15:44

go without food and water? Or what is

15:47

this? What does milaria do? Like you were saying,

15:49

like diseases they might encounter, But

15:51

it really morphed pretty quickly into

15:54

hey, and this might be a good time

15:56

to break but hey, I think we can develop biological

15:59

weapons, so let's see

16:01

how they react to the human body.

16:03

Yeah, that's when it really took a terrible

16:06

left turn.

16:06

Yeah, all right, so we'll be right back. And

16:09

it gets worse than act too, We'll

16:11

be right.

16:12

Back, okay,

16:33

Chuck. So when we were last talking, the

16:36

Unit seven thirty one had started to veer

16:38

off into developing biological weapons,

16:42

and they did so apparently

16:44

because in nineteen twenty

16:46

five, under the Geneva Convention, a bunch of

16:48

countries outlawed biological

16:51

weapons, and apparently that caught the attention of

16:53

the Japanese, who were like, wow, if it's

16:55

worth outlawing, those things must really work

16:57

at killing, so let's try those, right. It

16:59

pequed their interest enough that they started a program,

17:02

and so they developed a really

17:04

extensive pathological development

17:07

section where they apparently could develop

17:10

a trillion microorganisms

17:12

every few days. Like, they just grew

17:15

so many communicable diseases that

17:17

I saw in some field tests they would have one hundred

17:20

and fifty kilograms of it, Like

17:22

that's how much they could produce. And they were doing

17:24

things like producing malaria, cholera,

17:26

typhus, the plague. They

17:29

were growing this stuff. Yeah, and then

17:31

they were testing it on those unfortunate,

17:33

unwilling test subjects to see

17:36

what happened. And that's where the essentially

17:38

the medical torture, the war crimes

17:40

really began.

17:42

Yeah, and if you want to see

17:44

what happened to someone that was infected with

17:47

typhus or cholera, you don't

17:49

just ask a bunch of questions and check

17:51

vitals and see how Say how are you feeling,

17:54

and we'll write it down. You mentioned vivisection

17:56

earlier, and that's what

17:58

would happen. Vis Section is, you

18:01

know, the dissection of a live thing.

18:04

So whether it's a frog in biology

18:07

class or in this case, a human being,

18:09

it is a live human being

18:12

in these cases being cut

18:14

open and studied from the inside out,

18:17

and a lot of times without

18:19

anesthesia. I think

18:21

they did use anesthesia for some stuff here and there,

18:24

at least a documentary said they did, But a lot of times

18:26

they didn't even use anesthesia when

18:29

they would amputate someone's limb or

18:31

take someone's kidney out to study

18:33

it.

18:34

So on vivisection. Nicholas

18:37

Christoff, the New York Times reporter, went

18:39

to Japan in nineteen ninety five as some of

18:41

this stuff was really coming out and talked

18:44

to some people who are actually in Unit seven thirty

18:46

one, and he actually interviewed a

18:49

man who was a doctor at Unit

18:51

seven thirty one who had performed one

18:53

of these unanesthetized

18:55

vivisections, and he

18:58

quoted the guy in the article. If you want to

19:00

hear it, it's it's just insane

19:02

that people have ever done this to other people.

19:05

So what the guy said was that the the and

19:07

I'm paraphrasing this first part, that when they brought the prisoner

19:10

in, he knew that it was over for him, that

19:12

his life was about to be executed, but he

19:14

didn't know how, so he wasn't he wasn't

19:16

fighting along the way. He came in essentially

19:19

willingly. But when they put him down on

19:21

the examination table

19:23

and a scalpel was produced, he

19:25

started screaming, and he said that

19:28

this is this guy, this doctor who performed this said

19:30

quote. I cut him open from chest to

19:32

the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and

19:35

his face was all twisted in agony. He

19:37

made this unimaginable sound. He was

19:39

screaming so horribly, but then

19:41

he finally stopped. This is all in a

19:44

day's work for the surgeons, but it really left

19:46

an impression on me because it was my first time

19:49

that that happened. A guy did that to another

19:51

guy. He killed him by performing

19:53

surgery on him without anesthesia and

19:56

opening his his abdomen and removing

19:58

the organs.

20:00

Yea, and this happened a lot at

20:02

unit seven thirty one. And

20:05

we'll say that that part and like

20:07

the next probably five to seven minutes

20:09

an we're gonna kind of go through

20:12

some of the worst of it. Yeah,

20:14

so feel fear to skip ahead, and

20:17

then you know, we'll talk about kind of ramifications

20:19

and all that stuff.

20:20

But yeah, just listen for the sound of one

20:22

of us wretching while the other one's talking. You know,

20:24

we're still in that five to seven minute part.

20:26

Yeah, exactly. So I mentioned

20:28

amputations and stuff like that. Organ

20:31

removal. Boy,

20:33

this one is tough. They had men that were

20:35

infected with different venereal diseases

20:37

like syphilis, that were forced

20:40

to rape women there to see

20:42

how syphilis spreads. There

20:44

were women who were raped and impregnated

20:49

that had you know, where the men had communical

20:51

diseases like you know, make her pregnant

20:53

so we can see the effects on developing

20:56

fetuses. Sometimes

20:58

babies were born. Those babies were

21:00

experimented on elderly

21:03

people. You know that they wanted to get a range of not

21:06

just what would this do to a Japanese soldier, but what

21:09

would these weapons do to a

21:11

range of humans, like from literal

21:13

babies to elderly people. So

21:15

that's what they did. You

21:18

want to take over.

21:21

Sure, So some of the things in addition

21:23

to studying what communicable diseases

21:26

the effects that had on the body. And

21:28

that's actually the reason why they would give

21:30

later on why they didn't use anesthesia.

21:32

Sometimes they were concerned that the anesthesia

21:35

would affect the effects

21:37

and that they wouldn't have like an actual picture of what

21:39

was really going on in the body, So they

21:41

just didn't anesthetize. But

21:44

they studied other things too, like what

21:47

happens when we crush your limb? What

21:49

happens if you are only allowed to drink seawater

21:52

for several days? Like just imagine

21:55

like completely losing all of your morals

21:57

and ethics being a doctor and

22:00

saying like what can I pursue here?

22:02

What just crazy experiments can I

22:04

come up with and then actually carrying them

22:07

out? And that's essentially what happened at ping Von.

22:09

Yeah, what if you had a blood transfusion

22:12

of cow's blood? Like

22:15

what would that do to a human being or a blood

22:17

type that didn't match your own? What

22:19

would that do to somebody? There

22:22

was one guy, he was a physiologist name

22:25

Yoshimura Hissato that

22:27

focused on frostbite. So they would, you know,

22:29

purposely give people frostbite to

22:31

see what happened to their body and their limbs. They

22:35

did publish some of this stuff, I believe. The second

22:37

in command, his name was Masagi

22:40

Kitano, said that, yeah, we published

22:42

some of this stuff, but when we published it during the war,

22:45

we said that we were using you know, research monkeys

22:47

and stuff like that, and certainly keeping

22:50

all, you know, anything about humans a secret.

22:52

Yeah, so it's not like they didn't realize

22:54

that what they were doing was considered unethical

22:57

and immoral.

22:58

Yeah, they knew it.

22:59

That's also they kept the whole thing secret

23:01

too, and yet they did it anyway.

23:03

That frostbite work is very

23:06

frequently cited as you know, evidence

23:08

that actual scientific findings

23:11

came out of this, because apparently before the

23:14

way that they thought to revive a frostbit

23:16

and limb was to rub it back into

23:18

health, and they found that actually

23:20

makes it worse. That you want to dunk it in

23:23

water that's between one hundred and one hundred and twenty

23:25

two degrees farentheight, And so

23:27

people are like, see, that's a scientific finding.

23:30

It's weird. It's almost as if they're trying to excuse

23:33

it in some way, shape or form or say that

23:35

it was in any way justified. And

23:37

from what I can tell, that's the only one

23:39

that anyone's actually able to point

23:41

to as a scientific experiment that

23:43

produced actual scientific findings that

23:46

we weren't aware of before.

23:47

Yeah, for sure. So

23:50

not only were they like saying, you

23:52

know, what kind of bomb can we

23:54

make out of poison gas or a plague

23:56

culture or you know, something

23:59

that as like infected fleas,

24:02

like animal fleas as a payload that have the

24:04

plague dropped on a town. But I

24:07

mentioned earlier just you know, regular

24:09

weapons, guns and knives and stuff like, let's

24:12

just tie people up at a stake and

24:14

shoot them with different things from different distances

24:17

to see like how far the bullets travel,

24:19

what kind of wounds they would produce, you

24:21

know, flame throwers, knives, swords,

24:24

anything they could think of to just

24:26

log sort of what the human body could take

24:29

and what kind of effect it would have.

24:31

Yeah, that area

24:33

where you're talking about was a second

24:35

kind of satellite site at

24:37

a town called Hoda. It's

24:40

about ninety miles away from Harbin, which

24:42

is where the ping Fon complex was, right,

24:45

and everything we're talking about to this point has

24:47

was carried out at ping Fon and this one huge,

24:50

sixty five square acre complex

24:53

of just horror, every single day

24:55

horror. And imagine hundreds of other people

24:57

working with them, and all of them are walking around

25:00

of doing the same thing, hearing the same screams,

25:02

like carrying out the same atrocities. Yeah,

25:04

and it's just like the guy said, like it was just

25:07

all in a day's work. That's just what we were doing.

25:09

Like imagine that, like try.

25:12

I can't even conceive

25:14

of putting myself in a place like that

25:16

and just going along with it, because you know

25:18

that there were people who were there who

25:21

were worried about not going along with

25:23

it because they knew they would be next on

25:25

the slab if they spoke up

25:27

or spoke out against it. I just can't

25:30

imagine it. When when my brain tries

25:32

to put me in that that place

25:35

at that time, it's just like stop, I

25:37

don't want to go there.

25:38

Yeah, did you see the zone of

25:40

interests yet, No, you

25:43

should check that out.

25:44

What is it a movie? Is it a play?

25:46

Yeah, it was a movie

25:49

from last year, won

25:51

the Oscar for Foreign Film and was

25:53

nominated for Best Picture overall. Jonathan

25:56

later, it's basically a movie true

25:58

story obviously about the guy

26:01

who led who

26:03

was sort of the head of the concentration

26:05

camp. I think it was Auschwitz and not

26:08

docu. But you

26:10

know, it doesn't go in

26:12

the camp at all. The whole movie is just

26:14

told from the perspective of the fact that he had

26:17

his house next door on

26:19

the other side of the wall, where he had his wife

26:22

and kids in garden, and they just they

26:24

live this normal life and it's a very

26:26

The way that Glazer did it was very, very effective

26:29

and different than I've seen in any other

26:31

war movie to get across this sort

26:34

of horrors without seeing any

26:36

of them happen.

26:38

Wow. Yeah, that's really interesting. I've

26:40

heard about that. Yeah, I haven't heard anything

26:43

more than what you just said. So I'll check

26:45

it out though, because I trust your recommendations.

26:48

Yeah. I mean, it's a great film and very effective, And you

26:50

know, the reason I brought it up is because that's sort of the same

26:52

idea because I did a little research

26:54

after about this guy and he

26:57

was like, you know, I felt like I was, you

26:59

know, I had to do this stuff or

27:01

else I would be, you know, shot for not following

27:04

orders. And that's always sort of

27:06

the line that you hear.

27:09

Sure, no, for sure, especially further down

27:11

the pecking order.

27:13

Yeah.

27:14

The thing is is there were very very clearly

27:16

people who were there who were totally

27:18

into this and were totally fine with

27:20

it all in a day's work. Yeah,

27:23

it's just what they did. Yeah,

27:26

But I guarantee there were people who were there

27:28

just crumbling inside every day.

27:30

I don't know, maybe there weren't. Maybe you couldn't

27:32

possibly keep quiet in a place

27:34

like that, who knows. But there were hundreds

27:37

of people, like you said, from all different fields

27:39

and professions that were coming together

27:41

to work to experiment on unwilling

27:44

humans at ping Fon. And that was just ping

27:46

Fon because what we said earlier

27:48

was that their ultimate goal was

27:50

to create biological weapons.

27:53

Yeah, and you can sit there and come up

27:55

with a trillion microorganisms

27:57

every few days, all like, all

28:00

year long, and it doesn't amount to anything

28:02

if you can't infect your enemy with them.

28:04

If you wanted to carry a biological warfare

28:06

program, I should say. And so

28:09

one of the other things that they experimented

28:12

on was how to deliver, like you said, payloads

28:14

of plague infected fleas or

28:17

cholera into local wells, and

28:19

they did it sometimes successfully.

28:22

And I think the number for the

28:25

people who died just at Pingfon was

28:28

three thousand. That's the number that's generally

28:30

cited. And they had one hundred

28:32

percent mortality rate among

28:34

prisoners. There no one survived

28:36

Pingfon. Not a single person survived

28:39

ping Fon. If you went in there as a prisoner, you

28:41

died just at

28:44

ping Fon. That was three thousand. When it

28:46

goes to the actual experiments

28:48

that they carried out trying to deliver

28:52

biological weapons in Manchuria,

28:55

it expands, by some estimates

28:57

into the hundreds of thousands of deaths.

28:59

Yeah. Yeah, And we should point out too when

29:01

you say that there were no survivors of ping

29:03

Fan when they closed

29:06

down, and you know, we're skipping

29:08

towards the end, but when they did shut it down, whoever

29:12

was still living, they just murdered straight

29:14

up to cover up any sign of

29:16

evidence, and then just dynamited the place

29:18

beyond recognition.

29:20

Yeah, and then they destroyed all

29:22

the records and then all of the people

29:25

there took a last order from

29:27

General Ishi that was never

29:29

talk about this and never implicate anyone

29:32

that's ever worked here. They basically

29:34

took a vow of silence about it.

29:36

Yeah. So you mentioned, you

29:38

know, using actual biological weapons that

29:40

was mainly against Chinese

29:43

civilians, and this is some

29:45

of the stuff that you know, they had sort of considered when

29:47

they dropped like cotton

29:49

or wheat or rice infested

29:52

with disease carrying fleas on

29:54

different Chinese cities, and they

29:57

testified in court later on civilians

30:01

did about like what happened

30:03

to their community communities, these illnesses

30:05

that spread through there. It's

30:09

just it's hard to fathom that this was

30:12

going on and largely

30:14

gotten away with, you know.

30:16

Yeah. Yeah, there were a couple more

30:19

that I found, Chuck, that I were just reprehensible.

30:21

They would infect dogs with cholera,

30:24

I believe, and release them

30:26

into villages and collar outbreaks

30:29

would start. They gave

30:31

local children chocolate lace with salmonella.

30:35

The one thing that was super effective they found

30:38

was mixing wheat grain with

30:41

plague infested fleas or infected

30:43

fleas and dropping it from airplanes

30:45

and then the villagers would feed the grain to

30:48

their chickens and plague outbreak

30:50

would start and again. Like over time, at

30:54

least tens of thousands of people in Manchuria

30:56

died from these plague and collar outbreaks.

30:59

Colera is no oh joke. Apparently there was

31:01

a researcher who was a

31:03

pathologist at Unit seven thirty one who

31:05

boasted that they produced enough calera to kill

31:08

every single person in the world. And

31:11

they didn't succeed in that, thankfully, but

31:13

they definitely killed a significant number of people

31:15

in Manchuria with things like cholera

31:17

and the plague from just trying

31:20

to figure out how to get that to

31:22

those people. Fortunately,

31:24

that was something they really failed at. They

31:27

never really figured it out.

31:29

Yeah, I mean, mainly we've been talking

31:31

about like people that they arrested

31:33

and you know, practice on or

31:35

when it was like you know, actual biological

31:38

weapons, it was on civilians, but they

31:40

also did this on prisoners

31:42

of war in different places

31:44

outside of Unit seven thirty one, specifically

31:47

Singapore and the Philippines. You

31:50

mentioned US prisoners of war early on. There

31:52

was one documented case, at least

31:54

one documented case in May

31:56

of nineteen forty five when there

31:59

was a down US plane where they captured

32:01

eight airmen and in

32:03

May of nineteen forty five, they were

32:06

basically medically tortured. There

32:08

was one medical student

32:10

later on that said, you know

32:12

what was going on was just torture at

32:15

this point, there was no scientific value happening.

32:17

Yeah, and that wasn't even Unit seven thirty one.

32:20

That's how badly like this whole

32:22

German infected Japanese

32:25

military. Essentially, the military is like, hey, we got

32:27

these POWs. We want to we want

32:29

to do a number on them. So basically just operate

32:32

on them until they're dead. And that's what it would

32:34

be dressed up as is like practice surgeries.

32:38

Like I want to learn how to remove an arm,

32:40

so that's what they would practice on. Or I want to learn how

32:43

to remove an appendix, so I'm going to practice

32:45

that, and like eventually

32:47

the patient would just die because they didn't

32:49

have enough organs left to sustain themselves, or

32:51

they lost so much blood that they died,

32:55

but they died from surgery. That was how

32:57

they died.

32:58

Well, and if they happened to live through this, they

33:00

would strangle them till they died.

33:02

Yeah. I heard one other thing it's kind

33:04

of unrelated to this, but it's just stuck

33:06

out to me, and it's kind of haunted me actually,

33:09

that there was a group

33:11

of POWs, American POWs

33:14

that were being held in Japan, and

33:17

hours after the

33:20

surrender had taken place and where

33:22

it had spread that Japan surrendered.

33:25

Rather than release these POWs, this group

33:28

of Japanese soldiers took them to this hillside

33:30

and decapitated them, killed them, just

33:33

completely wasted their lives

33:35

for nothing after a surrender.

33:37

Somehow, it's bad enough to do that in the context

33:39

of war, but within hours of surrendering,

33:41

it makes it exponentially worse.

33:44

It's way worse than even if that happened

33:47

five years later, Like they just held them for five

33:49

years and then killed them somehow within

33:51

hours of surrendering. It

33:54

just makes it worse to me. And I can't really get

33:56

that one out of my head, so I wanted to make sure it

33:58

was in everybody else's head, I guess.

34:02

I guess you want to think that after something

34:04

as horrific of a war has

34:06

ended, then everyone

34:09

just wants to go home and have it

34:11

be over, you know, and

34:13

that you know clearly isn't always the case.

34:16

Well, I remember also just kind of tied into it.

34:18

The Nazis did that too, Like the truest

34:21

believers would just walk around executing

34:23

people who, like at the end of the war, like

34:25

they knew, like Hitler was dead and the war was over,

34:27

but they were executing people who were like

34:29

trying to go home or running away or whatever.

34:33

Just a complete waste of life. Yeah,

34:35

yeah, I don't really have anything else

34:37

to add to that. Maybe we'll edit that part out, but it

34:40

just has stuck with me.

34:41

Yeah, all right, we'll take our last

34:44

break, and we're going to come back and finish

34:46

up with the investigations and kind

34:49

of what happened afterward, and prepared to

34:51

be unsatisfied right after this. All

35:14

right, we are back. We promised, talked

35:16

of investigation and you

35:18

know kind of what happened afterward, it

35:21

you know, became pretty clear that the

35:24

war was ending. So general is

35:26

she e like

35:29

you said earlier, said, you know, no one can ever speak

35:31

of this. Beginning on August ninth,

35:33

they started destroying everything, started blowing that place

35:35

up, killed everyone else who was there, which,

35:38

as we'll see is you know, one reason they got

35:40

away with some of these atrocities is because

35:43

there were no surviving people to testify.

35:46

So the US started investigating this

35:50

at a place called Camp Dietrich in

35:52

Maryland. It was an army base, a pretty new one,

35:55

and when they started questioning,

35:58

they kind of realized what was going on. And

36:01

Japan said, you know, the Cold

36:03

War is sort of taking hold

36:05

now, and you know, we're really afraid that

36:08

some of this stuff might get into the hands of the Soviets.

36:10

So America made a decision to

36:14

rather than pursue prosecution,

36:17

was like, hey, let's work with them, just to get

36:19

as much much data and information as

36:21

we can from them that is

36:23

useful to us, and

36:26

that in itself is a pretty

36:28

horrific thing.

36:29

Yeah, we actually paid them. We

36:31

paid them, We paid the unit seven thirty one

36:33

scientists like, general, is she money

36:36

to work

36:39

with us? And it's weird. There's

36:41

like a lot of papers. I read one from

36:43

the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare

36:46

Ethics in twenty fourteen that

36:49

compared like the two prongs that were

36:51

taken like two different, two different

36:53

approaches, one toward the Nazis and their

36:56

medical atrocities, one toward the Japanese

36:58

and their medical atrocities. And there was one

37:00

guy in particular named John W. Thompson,

37:02

who was Canadian who really led the charge

37:05

to prosecute the Nazi

37:07

doctors who carried out these horrible

37:10

experimentations as war criminals. There

37:13

wasn't a guy like that dealing with the Japanese

37:16

in the tribunal for war

37:18

crimes in the Far East, and so

37:21

the US military and intelligence was

37:23

able to keep a lid on the whole thing. The

37:25

Russians were talking about it because their people had

37:27

been killed, the Chinese were certainly talking about it because

37:29

their people had been killed, And people as

37:31

high up as Douglas MacArthur were publicly

37:33

saying this is communist propaganda, This

37:35

isn't true, knowing full well

37:38

it was true, because he was collaborating

37:40

and the people under him were collaborating

37:42

with the very people who had performed these

37:44

atrocities in order to get

37:47

their medical data. We paid them

37:49

for it, and we gave them immunity. Some

37:51

of them apparently even visited Fort

37:53

Dietrich to help with America's

37:55

own biological warfare program

37:58

that we essentially lifted from the Japanese

38:00

after World War Two.

38:01

That's what happened, yeah,

38:03

I mean, that is that's blood on the hands of the United

38:06

States because what they're basically

38:08

saying, they're basically you

38:11

know, they wouldn't outright say that, but they're justifying

38:14

these experiments by saying that the data

38:17

was useful.

38:18

Well, yeah, they said that Americans couldn't

38:21

possibly ever get data like this because

38:23

we have scruples, but apparently the Japanese

38:25

don't, so we'll just take their data because

38:27

they don't have scruples. But that means that by

38:29

proxy, you don't have scruples if you're willing to

38:31

use this, And that's what happened with the

38:34

Nazi stuff like that guy John W.

38:36

Thompson wanted to make an example

38:38

out of those Nazi doctors, like attention

38:41

all scientists everywhere in the world. Even

38:44

the cover of World War two can't

38:46

save you like you like you were

38:48

going to be hung if we ever catch

38:51

any of you doing something like this, hanged.

38:53

I guess that that message

38:55

wasn't given to the Japanese doctors,

38:57

and in fact, because a lid

38:59

was kept so tightly on what had happened

39:02

and was just relegated to rumors

39:04

as far as America and Japan

39:07

was concerned, they

39:09

were allowed to re enter Japanese

39:12

society and actually become fairly prominent

39:14

and celebrated in their fields in a lot of cases.

39:17

Yeah, absolutely, there were some tribunals

39:19

from over the course of a couple of years

39:21

from forty six to forty eight. Other

39:23

countries were involved, including China and the Soviet

39:26

Union, but they did not talk

39:28

about Unit seven thirty one. There

39:31

was a separate tribunal in Yokohama

39:33

in nineteen forty eight that convicted

39:35

twenty three military

39:37

figures, some medical personnel that

39:40

were in the Kyushu University

39:43

torture, and these were specifically of uspows

39:46

only, and they got death or

39:48

life sentences, but those sentences were dropped

39:50

or commuted, I guess because the US

39:53

was trying to build a friend in Japan at

39:55

that point and an ally at

39:57

the start of the Korean War, and

39:59

then the Soviet you know, eventually in

40:01

nineteen forty nine said you

40:03

know, we have to expose some of this. So

40:05

they put and this is by themselves,

40:07

they put twelve members of Unit seven thirty one

40:09

on trial and you

40:12

know, accusing them of everything that they did,

40:15

and this is where a lot of like information

40:17

was brought out. They were sentenced between two

40:19

to twenty five years in prison, and

40:22

the US, because we were now in a Cold war

40:25

with Russia, said that this

40:27

is propaganda.

40:29

Yeah. So this trial where essentially

40:32

all of the information, the fact factual

40:34

information we had for decades

40:37

about what Unit seven thirty one did came

40:39

out of this trial. But it was just in the

40:41

USSR. And it

40:43

wasn't until nineteen eighty two that a journalist named

40:45

John W. Powell got his hands on

40:47

it and published an article on

40:50

what Unit seven thirty one had done during

40:52

the war and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

40:54

journal And it was through those court

40:57

transcripts, so they came back to haunt them

40:59

thirty years later, and

41:01

that's when it really became started

41:04

to become knowledge among historians,

41:07

the military, the government

41:10

in the West, in the United States,

41:12

and among allies that the Japanese

41:14

had actually done these things that they'd long been

41:16

accused of by the Soviets and Chinese, and

41:18

here was evidence of it by the testimony

41:21

by the very people who were there, who'd been captured

41:23

by the Soviets.

41:24

Yeah. I mean, most of this stuff has come out at

41:27

an alarmingly slow

41:29

rate, and over the course of decades,

41:32

I believe in nineteen eighty two, there was a

41:34

museum in China at that

41:36

ping Fan site obviously

41:38

that China established, But it took all the

41:40

way until nineteen eighty eight, you

41:43

know, forty plus years after

41:45

the war ended, that the Japanese government

41:47

finally admitted that it even happened. But

41:50

they still wouldn't release any information, like

41:52

most of the stuff that we know. Like

41:55

you said, if we had done this episode,

41:58

you know, at the beginning of our run,

42:00

and we probably wouldn't have known what we know now because a lot

42:02

of it came out in the nineties, the

42:04

early two thousands. Well I guess by that

42:06

time we were around. Yeah,

42:08

but that's neither here nor there. The point is, it

42:11

took a long time for this stuff to come out, and

42:14

you know, we can't go over everyone. You did mention that,

42:17

you know, many of them went on to have just great lives

42:19

and careers, but we should highlight a few of these.

42:22

The second in command that I mentioned earlier, Masaji

42:25

Kaitano. He co founded

42:27

a green Cross, a very large

42:30

Japanese pharmaceutical company,

42:32

with two other colleagues from

42:34

Unit seven thirty one. So they did well, they.

42:38

Did, and green Cross went on to infect

42:40

eighteen hundred people with hemophilia

42:43

with HIV because they were selling them unsterilized

42:47

blood clotting agents in the nineties.

42:50

Yeah, that was what about is she?

42:53

She became one of the most

42:55

celebrated doctors in all of Japan.

42:59

He supposedly, according to one British historian

43:01

named Richard Drayton, went to Fort

43:04

Dietrich to advise the US

43:06

on the bioweapons program. There. He

43:09

died in nineteen fifty nine at age sixty seven,

43:12

never having even been publicly

43:16

accused of what he had

43:18

done in Japanese society.

43:21

He was just a celebrated

43:23

doctor by that point when he died.

43:26

Yeah, the guy hasato that

43:29

the guy who led those frostbited experiments. He became

43:31

president of the Kyoto

43:34

Prefectural University of Medicine.

43:37

This one gets me though, This last one. You gotta

43:39

say that one.

43:40

Yeah, the communicable

43:42

disease researcher Amatani Shogo,

43:45

he won the Asahi Prize

43:48

for outstanding contributions to the

43:50

field of communicable disease research.

43:53

And part of that was some of the stuff

43:55

that he got from Unit seven thirty

43:58

one.

43:58

Yeah, and I looked all over like, hey, how did he

44:00

disguise that or how did the Asahi

44:02

Prize people miss that? I didn't see

44:05

anything like that. Apparently his research

44:07

came directly from medical experiments

44:10

on unwilling participants got him the Asahi

44:12

Prize. Yeah, that's insane,

44:14

man.

44:16

Yep.

44:18

So there's no clear evidence

44:20

that the United States gained much of

44:22

anything from the deal

44:25

it made with the Unit seven thirty one

44:27

leaders for all of their research.

44:30

Other people say, no, actually it's not true

44:32

at all. And in fact, the Chinese accused the

44:34

US of using the same kind

44:36

of germs for germ warfare

44:39

in Korea, and the US of course it's like, no, he didn't.

44:41

But Fort Dietrich is well known as being

44:43

like a biological

44:46

research facility. They're like, it's not biological

44:49

warfare. We're just using gain of function

44:51

research to see what happens when we make

44:53

this virus do this, you know, not

44:55

for biological warfare. It's very bizarre,

44:57

but it exists. It's definitely there,

45:00

and it's a strange place.

45:02

Apparently that's where a lot of MK ultra experiments

45:04

were carried out.

45:05

Yeah, wouldn't that where the men stared at goats?

45:09

I think so? Yeah, I mean that was definitely

45:11

about that, but I don't remember if that was at

45:14

said at Fort Tetrick or not. I got a funny

45:16

story about that. I got to tell you sometimes.

45:18

Oh well, how about now we could use it.

45:20

No, I can't really tell you here on the podcast.

45:23

Ah, copy of that, all right?

45:24

And then just one more thing, Chuck, This

45:27

has not revelations that Unit

45:29

seven thirty one carried out these

45:31

experiences has not exactly been like embraced

45:34

in Japanese society, right.

45:37

Like, there's a real divide on whether

45:39

to teach this horrific

45:41

but very true history of their own country

45:44

because of the obvious sort

45:46

of effects that this could have on

45:48

children and how they feel about their country.

45:51

Yeah, I've seen that they're

45:53

worried that they might make Japanese children

45:55

ashamed of their country. So you can't teach them

45:58

that kind of stuff. So

46:00

that's it. That's the last thing I've got.

46:02

All Right, you got anything else?

46:04

I got nothing else. I'm glad that one's over.

46:07

Same here, Thanks a lot, Amy, Yeah,

46:09

thanks Amy. If you want to know more about

46:11

you in seven point thirty one, Okay,

46:14

there's plenty of stuff you can read on the internet.

46:17

And since I said that it's time for listener

46:19

mail.

46:22

Yeah, this is a little further explanation about

46:24

backdraft from our Arts and Investigation

46:27

EP. Hey guys, it's a fan of your work. I

46:29

was excited to listen to the episode on an Arson Investigation

46:32

because I'm a firefighter and I've learned

46:34

about some of what you guys covered and got some cool

46:36

new information from you. I want to

46:38

let you know that you were so close on

46:41

backdraft, but just a little bit off. The

46:44

way backdraft works is when you have a working

46:46

fire that does not have access

46:48

to fresh oxygen. At a certain point, the

46:50

fire will have consumed all of the oxygen

46:52

in a space and basically begin to

46:54

smolder, so it will create a turbulent

46:57

smoke in a very high and very high

46:59

temperatures, but not actual flames. So

47:01

the backdraft occurs when oxygen is suddenly

47:04

added to the situation, if I say,

47:06

opening a door or a window. The sudden

47:08

addition of oxygen to the superheated gases

47:11

can create a pretty violent explosion,

47:13

and that explosion itself is

47:15

the backdraft. I figured I've learned so much

47:17

from you guys, I thought it'd be cool to share some info back

47:20

Hope this receives you well and that

47:22

is from Lindsey.

47:24

Thanks Lindsay. That was very cool. Apparently

47:26

the only way to fight a backdraft is to love it

47:28

too. I'll let that part out, Linda.

47:31

That's right, you got to joke in there. Very nice.

47:33

If you want to get in touch with us like Lindsay did

47:35

and let us know something cool that we didn't know,

47:38

you can do it. Send it via email

47:40

to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio

47:42

dot com.

47:47

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47:50

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47:52

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47:54

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