Unit 731: The War Laboratory Traded for Silence

In August 1945, as Japanese forces withdrew from Manchuria, a compound at Pingfang, south of Harbin, was destroyed in a matter of days. Buildings were burned, records went into the fire, and the prisoners inside were not left as witnesses. The compound was known as Unit 731. On military paperwork, however, it carried a harmless-sounding name: the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army.

The unit did not merely study disease. It cultured pathogens, tested ways to spread them, and used prisoners as experimental subjects. Its commander was the military doctor Ishii Shiro. After the war, Ishii did not stand trial in Tokyo. Instead, American intelligence and scientific teams questioned him repeatedly, asked for his data, and then worked to keep him and his associates from prosecution. At the same time, the Soviet Union put twelve Japanese officers on trial in Khabarovsk in 1949.