Doctor Shiro Isshi was considered a selfish man but, above all, a disturbed one. A medical graduate from Kyoto Imperial University, he specialized in biological warfare by studying the devastating effects of chemical weapons during World War I.
Under the patronage of the ultranationalist Sadao Araki, Minister of War between 1931 and 1936, Isshi led the shadowy Unit 731, a group that subjected between 3,000 and 250,000 men, women and children to cruel experiments and medical procedures to develop the military capacity of Japan.
The main center where these inhumane tests were carried out was in an underground bunker located in northeast China, near the city of Anda, in Heilongjiang province. The facility has just been discovered by archaeologists from the Heilongjiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, according to an article published in the Northern Cultural Relics magazine.
The methods used by Unit 731 in this space were at the same level as that of the Nazi scientists in the Dachau or Buchenwald concentration camps, to give just two examples. The Japanese infected the prisoners with virulent strains of anthrax, plague, cholera, and other diseases. These captives often suffered excruciating cuts to their bodies without the use of anesthesia to observe the real-time effects of these deadly diseases.
The “horrifying experiments with biological weapons” were carried out until 1945, the researchers explain. The underground bunkers where some of the most brutal tests in history took place were designed to contain and control the spread of infectious agents.
Former Unit 731 commander Sakaki Hayao described an “extremely cruel” experiment conducted at the Anda camp in his testimony before the Shenyang special military court in 1956. Hayao said he saw people tied to wooden posts and exposed to anthrax at through bacteria-filled bombs dropped from planes or detonated at point blank range. “It was an especially brutal act,†he noted.
The researchers, who began their investigation in 2019 using techniques such as geophysical prospecting and drilling, have not yet been able to enter the bunkers. What they have discovered so far is an underground facility consisting of tunnels and interconnected chambers located 1.5 meters below the surface.
The structure is U-shaped and consists of about 33 meters long and 20.6 meters wide, stretching from east to west with a room on each side. There is also a 5 x 3.8-meter room in the northeast corner and a 3-meter-diameter circular room at the southeast end of the group, Chinese archaeologists say.
Built in 1941, the Anda center was the largest, best equipped and most used of those Unit 731 had, according to their records. It was supervised by the Germ Warfare department, which mainly experimented on living people held in special prisons.
Experts believe that the Japanese army brought some of its prisoners here to observe and dissect them after being infected with diseases or exposed to chemical agents. Although small, the rooms are large enough to suggest that they were used as a laboratory.
The facility was heavily guarded by Japanese troops and was surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Aboveground infrastructure included an airstrip, warehouses, barracks, wells, and triangular metal frames used as bombing targets.
Laboratories, observation and dissection rooms, as well as holding cells were built below ground to keep the experiments secret and protect the center from air raids. There were also barracks, garages, bathhouses, mess halls and wells, some connected by tunnels, according to the study.
In August 1945, coinciding with Japan’s surrender in World War II, the site was destroyed to erase evidence of their experiments. “Most of the surface buildings were demolished, with the exception of the runway,†according to the archaeologists.
Declassified documents from the 1990s revealed that Dr. Isshi and his aides traded information from their tests with the US government in exchange for granting them immunity from the Tokyo Trials, the Asian version of the Nuremberg trials. against the Nazis.
The data collected by Unit 731 was transferred to the US Army research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where it was used to develop biological weapons during the Cold War.
