The Epidemic Prevention Unit in Harbin, China (eventually known as Unit 731), opened in 1932 under the guise of a mobile unit tasked to provide pure drinking water to Japanese military men. This unit also actively searched for antibodies and antidotes to combat infection and diseases contracted by men during the campaign. At the time, the climate of Inner Mongolia and Northern China left the Japanese soldiers exposed to harsh elements dissimilar of the tropical Japanese climate leaving room for disease to spread wildly and exposing men to frostbite . Additionally, many men that sought sexual comfort from Comfort Women risked catching sexually transmitted diseases even though the military screened the women providing the sexual favors. The …show more content…
In Unit 731, the production of bacteria firstly focused on the survival of cultures for further study. Each disease had its own process of being cultivated and relied heavily on precise measurements to avoid spreading of plague, dysentery, typhoid, and others to the doctors’ accidentally. In his entire affidavit, Ishii denies his knowledge of the use of biological weapons used offensively during the war. Though it is hard to believe that the leader of an entire unit knew nothing about non-defensive uses of the diseases he cultivated while in control of Unit 731.
The outright denial of most of the experiments performed in Unit 731 did not fool the interviewer since Col. Smirnov had testimony from others in the unit. However, Ishii’s interrogation did not yield enough critical evidence to force him to trial since he ordered most physical evidence of Unit 731 destroyed once Japan declared their official surrender. It came down the hearsay between the leaders of Unit 731 and, though Ishii clearly lied in his interrogation, nothing at the time could prove that he had carried out biological