The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 3 | Issue 11 | Nov 24, 2005

Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army's Biological Warfare

Program

Tsuneishi Keiichi

Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army’s the way in waging biological warfare on
Biological Warfare Program numerous occasions throughout the war, the
best documented being attacks on Ningbo and
By Tsuneishi Keiichi throughout Zhejiang province. As in the case of
the Nanjing Massacre and the “comfort
Translated by John Junkerman women,” casualty figures remain contested.
The figure of 3,000 persons exterminated at
[Japan's Unit 731 remains central to the Pingfan, the major experiment site of the Ishii
fiercely contested China-Japan controversy over Network, is widely accepted among specialists
war crimes and war memory, and to the for the period ending in 1945. The post-
international debate on science and ethics. surrender destruction by the Japanese
With a staff of more than 10,000, including authorities both of the research sites and the
many of Japan’s top medical scientists, 731 and military documents, has made precise casualty
its affiliated units conducted human estimates difficult.
experiments, including vivisection, on Chinese
and other victims in Manchukuo and
As Tsuneishi documents, attacks in Zhejiang
throughout China between 1933 and 1945. The
resulted in more than 10,000 Japanese military
experiments tested, among other things, the
casualties including the death of 1,700
lethality of biological weapons and sought to
Japanese soldiers, revealing the difficulty of
determine the ability of the human body to
waging effective biowarfare. No estimate is
survive in the face of various pathogens and in
provided here of Chinese deaths. a reminder of
conditions such as extreme cold.
contemporary practice in providing only
American body counts in Iraq, but also of the
Tsuneishi Keiichi is Japan's leading specialist
on biowarfare. His voluminous studies
difficulty of establishing Chinese casualties.
conducted over thirty years in Japan, China, the
United States and Europe, have provided core Japan’s grim experiment with biowarfare pales
material for all writing hitherto on the Ishii in comparison with the estimated 10-30 million
Network. In the following careful resumé essay, Chinese who died as a result of war and
he concentrates on organization and function, associated conditions of famine in the years
omitting much of the horrific detail covered 1931-45. But the findings of Ishii and his
elsewhere. Drawing on Japanese military colleagues were important enough for
records, this study documents the deaths of American authorities to grant immunity from
850 victims in the years up to 1943, the largest prosecution in exchange for evidence of the
number infected with plague, cholera, and research findings of Unit 731. The 731
epidemic hemorrhagic fever. It also makes use scientists, who were evacuated to Japan prior
of American records and interviews. to the defeat, continued their careers as
eminent figures in the postwar medical and
Unit 731 not only conducted tests but also led scientific establishment. ms]

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The Ishii Network The Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory

was created under the initiative of Ishii Shiro
Unit 731 was the common name of a secret unit after he returned from two years of field study
of Japan’s Manchuria-based Kwantung Army of American and European research facilities. It
whose official name was the Epidemic was set up, with the approval of top-level army
Prevention and Water Supply Department. [1] authorities, as a facility to develop biological
The leader of the unit was Ishii Shiro, who held weapons. It is said that Ishii first became
the rank of lieutenant general at the end of convinced of the need to develop biological
World War II. The unit epitomized the extensive weapons with the signing of the Geneva
organization for the development of biological Protocol in 1925.
weapons within the imperial army, which was
referred to, beginning in the late 1930s, as the The biological weapons Ishii sought to develop
Ishii Network. had humans as their target, and Unit 731 was
established with this goal in mind. In order to
The network itself was based at the Epidemic produce biological weapons as quickly as
Prevention Research Laboratory, established in possible, Ishii considered it essential to have a
1932 at the Japanese Army Military Medical human experimentation site at the disposal of
School in Tokyo. Unit 731 was the first of his research laboratory. Japan had occupied
several secret, detached units created as northeastern China and in 1932 the puppet
extensions of the research lab; the units served state of Manchukuo was established. Within
as field laboratories and test sites for this “safe zone,” Ishii set up what was called
developing biological weapons, culminating in the Togo Unit, based in the village of Beiyinhe,
the experimental use of biological weapons on about 100 kilometers south of Harbin. Human
Chinese cities. The trial use of these weapons experimentation began there in the fall of 1933.
on urban populations was a direct violation of The Togo Unit was a secret unit under the vice
the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which outlawed the chief of staff of the Kwantung Army. It was set
use of biological and chemical weapons in war. up to determine whether it was possible to
It was also understood by those involved that conduct human experiments in northeastern
the use of human subjects in laboratory and China, and if it was possible, whether the
test site experiments was inhumane. This was experiments would produce useful results. The
why it was deemed necessary to establish Unit launching of this feasibility study reflects the
731 and the other secret units. deliberate nature of Ishii as the organizer of
the research, and you could say it was marked
with his character. All of those involved in this
research and development were military
doctors, but they all used false names. At this
stage, the scale of the project involved about
ten doctors, along with a staff of about one
hundred.

The Inauguration of Unit 731

Unit 731 was officially established in 1936. Its

establishment is reflected in a memo dated
April 23, 1936, entitled “Opinion Regarding the
Reinforcement of Military Forces in
Lt. General Ishii Shiro Manchuria,” from the chief of staff of the

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Kwantung Army to the vice minister of the in the fall of 1939, after the hostilities at
Ministry of War (contained in the Ministry of Nomonhan (on the border between Manchuria
War Journal for the army in Manchuria, and Mongolia) had ended.
Rikuman Mitsu-dainikki). Under the heading
“Establishment and Expansion of the Kwantung With the construction of the Pingfan facilities,
Army Epidemic Prevention Department,” the the primary research staff changed in
memo states that the department will be composition from the military doctors of the
“newly established” in 1936 and “one part of Togo Unit to private-sector medical researchers
the department will be expanded in fiscal affiliated with universities and other
1938.” This is the oldest official document institutions. The first group to be posted to the
concerning Unit 731 that has been found to unit was a team of eight assistant professors
date. and instructors from Kyoto Imperial University
in the spring of 1938. The group consisted of
In addition to inaugurating Unit 731, this memo two bacteriologists, three pathologists, two
also laid the foundation for establishing two physiologists, and one researcher specializing
other units. It called for the establishment of an in experiments using animals. Within a year, a
additional biological weapons development second group had arrived at the facility, and
unit, independent of Ishii’s unit, which was the research staff had expanded considerably.
called the Kwantung Army Military Horse The prominence of researchers in pathology
Epidemic Prevention Workshop (later referred and physiology in the development of biological
to as Manchuria Unit 100), and for weapons reflected the need for specialized
preparations to set up a chemical weapons judgment in assessing the results of human
development unit called the Kwantung Army experimentation.
Technical Testing Department (later referred to
as Manchuria Unit 516).

Several months later, the memo’s

recommendations were approved by Emperor
Hirohito, the two units were established, and
preparations began for creating the Testing
Department. The Ministry of War Journal for
May 21, 1936 recorded this development under
the heading. “Imperial Hearing on Military
Force Improvement Consequent upon Budget
Approval.” The journal noted: “Units concerned
with epidemic prevention: One unit each is
established for epidemic prevention among The Unit 731 Building
humans and horses.” Reconstructed as a
Museum at Pingfan
Having been officially established, Unit 731
moved its facilities from Beiyinhe to a newly With the expansion of the war front throughout
established laboratory at a hospital in Harbin. China after 1937, sister units affiliated with
This laboratory served as a front-line Unit 731 were established in major Chinese
headquarters while the unit’s permanent cities. These units were also called Epidemic
facilities were being built in Pingfan, outside of Prevention and Water Supply Departments.
the city of Harbin. These facilities were (Unit 1855 was established in Beijing on
completed and capable of conducting research February 9, 1938; Unit 1644 in Nanjing on

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April 18, 1939; and Unit 8604 in Guangzhou on dated December 12, 1947 by Edwin Hill and
April 8, 1939). Later, after Japan occupied Joseph Victor, concerning human
Singapore a similar unit (Unit 9420) was experimentation by Unit 731 and related
established there on March 26, 1942. These facilities; and a list of specimens brought back
affiliates comprised the scope of the Ishii to Japan by a Unit 731 pathologist in July 1943.
network through the end of the war. As of the Aside from Ishii and another unit leader, Kitano
end of 1939 (that is, before the establishment Masaji, the names of individual researchers do
of the Singapore unit), the network had a total not appear; they are identified as military
staff of 10,045, of which 4,898 were assigned to personnel (M, primarily military doctors), (C)
the core units in Tokyo and Pingfan. civilian technicians conducting research within
the military, and (PT) part-time researchers
Human Experimentation working outside of the military.

Human experimentation took place at all of the The number of specimens reflects the number
units of the Ishii network, but it was conducted of subjects who died as a result of human
systematically by Unit 731 and Unit 1644. Of experimentation as of July 1943. Consequently,
these two, there are extant reports from a US the total number of victims of human
Army survey of human experimentation by Unit experimentation at the time of Japan’s
731, so the general outline of its program is surrender two years later would be higher than
known. these figures. The figures also do not include
victims of germ bomb tests at the Anda field
test site or from other experiments.

Subject Researcher Total Specimens Medically

Usable Specimens
anthrax M 36 31
botulinus Ishii 2 0
brucellosis Ishii, M, C, M 3 1
CO poisoning 1 0
cholera C, C 135 50
dysentery M, M, PT, PT, M 21 12
glanders Ishii, C 22 20
meningitis Ishii, C 5 1
mustard gas 16 16
plague Ishii, C, M, C 180 42
plague (from the Shinkyo [Changchun]
epidemic) 66 64
poison 2 0
salmonella M, C 14 11
Songo (epidemic hemorrhagic fever) C, Kitano,
C 101 52
smallpox Ishii, C 4 2
Exterior remains of streptococcus 3 1
Unit 731 at Pingfan suicide 30 11
tetanus Ishii, PT, C 32 14
The following table was compiled from two tick encephalitis C, Kitano 2 1
sources: a report to US occupation authorities tsutsugamushi (scrub typhus) C 2 0

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tuberculosis C, Ishii 82 41 drum filled with contaminated water while

typhoid C, C 63 22 dumping it into the river. He died of typhoid
typhus C, M, C, Kitano, C 26 9 fever at an army hospital in Hailar.
vaccine 2 2
Total 850 403 During the following year, 1940, larger scale
field trials were conducted in central China,
Technicians who were civilian employees of the using biological weapons dropped from
army were treated as officers. The status of airplanes. The pathogens were cultivated by
civilian employees ranged from infantry-class Unit 731 and shipped to Unit 1644 in Nanjing,
to general-class, but technicians were treated which served as the forward base for the
as lieutenants and above. Ranking below the attacks, which continued until 1942. During the
technicians were operators, clerks, and staff. first two years, these attacks were carried out
For the most part, the Ishii network took on in cities along the Chang River. Of these, the
university researchers as technicians. The part- large-scale attack on the city of Ningbo on
time researchers were part-time employees of October 27, 1940 is well documented and has
the Military Medical School Epidemic also been thoroughly investigated by the
Prevention Research Laboratory; they were Chinese.
professors at Tokyo and Kyoto imperial
universities who were contracted to perform The attack took place at 7 a.m. from heavy
research in their own laboratories. In short, a bombers flying a low-altitude run at 200
large number of civilian researchers were meters. The bombers dropped fleas, grain, and
mobilized. strips of cotton on the streets in the center of
the city. The fleas were infected with the
Biological Warfare Trials plague. They had ingested blood from plague-
infected rats and were called “plague fleas.”
For the most part, the use of the biological The plague bacteria were not dissipated
weapons developed by the Ishii network directly, as it was considered more effective to
amounted to field trials. infect the carrier fleas and release them, in
order to target a specific area with a focused
The first of these trials took place during the attack. It was also expected that the bacteria
Nomonhan Incident in 1939. In August, toward would live longer in the bodies of the fleas. The
the end of the hostilities, pathogens that cause fleas were dropped with grain and cotton to
gastrointestinal disease were placed in the ensure that they reached the target area, and it
Holsten River, a tributary of the Halha River was also thought that the cotton would absorb
that the Soviet Army used as its source of some of the shock of impact on the ground.
water. It is not clear how many Soviet soldiers
suffered from this attack, but it is thought that The first death was recorded on the fourth day,
casualties were not widespread. This was October 30, and casualties increased rapidly in
because the typhoid bacillus and the other the days that followed. By November 2, it was
pathogens that were used lose their infectivity clear that the disease was an epidemic, and the
when placed in water. This fact was known to area was sealed off as disease-contaminated.
Ishii’s group. It is thought that they The next day, it was determined that the
nonetheless carried out the attack because they disease was the plague. By then 37 deaths had
wanted to conduct a field test of biological been reported. The quarantine imposed on the
weapons in combat. While there were likely few area slowed the spread of the epidemic.
Soviet casualties, at least one Japanese soldier
became infected when he spilled liquid from a The plague epidemic ended on December 2

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with the death of the last two victims. Deaths Health document, “At the time that the plague
totaled 106 people. These figures were epidemics were continuing in Ningbo and its
reported in a survey, conducted by two Ningbo vicinity, three Japanese airplanes flew over
researchers and published in March 1994 by Jinhua and dropped a large number of small
Dongnan University Press. This historical granules the size of small shrimp eggs. These
account of the epidemic tracked down all of the strange objects were gathered and examined at
victims and listed them by name, and it is thus a local hospital. . . . They showed the physical
a very valuable document. characteristics of the bacteria that cause the
plague. In any case, the plague did not break
This attack, killing more than one hundred out in Jinhua and as far as this town was
people, was the most lethal in this series of concerned the Japanese experiment in germ
attacks on Chinese cities. However, when one warfare ended in failure.”
considers that the attack was carried out by
heavy bombers on a risky low-altitude run, No effort was made to collect the material
these results have to be considered a military dropped from the airplanes on Ningbo, but one
failure. month later the objects dropped on Junhua
were gathered and analyzed. There had been
There were two primary reasons for this
rapid progress in securing evidence in response
failure. First, the bacteria used was so
to the attacks. It is also likely that townspeople
infectious that it immediately set off alarms
were warned to stay inside their houses. As a
among its victims. Second, the effort suffered
result, the Japanese experiment was deemed a
from exaggerated expectations of the ability to
failure.
artificially spark an epidemic. In February 1941
Ishii reported to his superior officer, Lt. Gen.
Biological weapons are not only useful as
Kajitsuka Ryuji, chief of the medical
potent means of war; their use can also be
department of the Kwantung Army: “It is not as
accompanied by an important element of
easy as some people think, and as I once
strategic disinformation, if it is claimed that the
thought, to deliberately spread infectious
enemy itself used them, or if it is implied that
disease. While infectious disease spreads
readily in natural circumstances, numerous they were used in retaliation. In this sense,
obstacles are encountered when artificially when biological weapons are used, one tactic is
spreading infection, and sometimes great pains to cause confusion as to whether they were
must be taken to overcome these.” [2] It was used or not, but if the enemy deems the trial
expected that pathogens dropped in a densely uses a failure, the tactic itself fails decisively.
populated area like Ningbo would quickly
spread person to person, but these Nonetheless, the trial use of biological weapons
expectations were betrayed. on central Chinese cities continued in the fall of
1941. One of the targets was the city of
Great Failures Changde, about 1000 kilometers east of
Shanghai in the Chinese interior. The Chinese
In November 1940, the month after the attack applied the lessons they learned the previous
on Ningbo, the Chinese began to take year and were able to keep casualties in the
countermeasures in response to biological single digits. Thus the results of the trials
warfare attacks on urban populations. On through the end of 1941 indicated that
November 28, the central Chinese city of dropping plague fleas from airplanes as a
Jinhua suffered an attack. The result was a means of attacking urban areas was quite
failure. According to a Chinese Ministry of ineffective.

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Beginning in 1942, Japan began dropping requirements, to deliver massive carnage while
pathogens from airplanes into battlefield zones, maintaining the safety of the attacking troops.
on a scale that amounted to a combat At the same time, the only way to prevent
operation. In April, Japan launched the disasters like that of the Zhejiang campaign
Zhejiang campaign. In this campaign, Ishii and was to improve communication among the
company carried out massive biological troops.
weapons attacks. Cholera bacteria was the
main pathogen employed, and the attacks Two hurdles confronted the effort to load
resulted in more than 10,000 casualties. It has bombs with pathogens. The first was the need
also been reported that some victims to keep the pathogens alive for long periods of
contracted dysentery and the plague. More time. The second was the need to develop a
than 1700 soldiers died, mostly from cholera. bomb made of materials that would break apart
This would have been considered a great upon impact using little or no explosives; this
success for the Ishii group, but for the fact that would prevent the pathogen from being
all of the victims were Japanese soldiers. destroyed by heat. Alternatively, if a bombshell
could not be made of fragile material, a
A Japanese medic captured by American forces pathogen that could withstand the heat of an
at the end of 1944 described the casualties
explosion would have to be selected. When a
among the Japanese army during his
bomb or a shell lands, people do not
interrogation: “When Japanese troops overran
immediately gather at the point of impact, so it
an area in which a [biological weapons] attack
was necessary to convey the pathogen from
had been made during the Chekiang [Zhejiang]
that spot to wherever people were. Again a live
campaign in 1942, casualties upward from
host like a plague flea that would physically
10,000 resulted within a very brief period of
carry the pathogen and infect people was
time. Diseases were particularly cholera, but
considered the best solution to this problem.
also dysentery and pest [bubonic plague].
Victims were usually rushed to hospitals in
A bacteria bomb using the plague bacteria was
rear. … Statistics which POW saw at Water
developed to satisfy most of these
Supply and Purification Dept Hq at Nanking
showed more than 1,700 dead, chiefly from requirements. The bomb used plague fleas
cholera; POW believes that actual deaths were packed in a shell casing of unglazed pottery
considerably higher, ‘it being a common made from diatomaceous earth (a soft,
practice to pare down unpleasant figures.’” [3] sedimentary rock containing the shells of
microscopic algae). This same material was
A New Type of Bomb used in a water filter that Ishii had developed
and patented. As this bomb would break apart
After the 1942 failure, the Japanese army using minimal explosive, it was expected that
general staff lost all confidence in the efficacy the plague fleas inside would survive the heat
of biological weapons. The pressure was on to and scatter in all directions, to bite people and
find a new approach that would ensure the spread the disease. This bomb, called the Ishii
safety of friendly troops and deliver a more bacterial bomb, was perfected by the end of
reliable, more devastating blow to the enemy. 1944. In the beginning of 1945, the collection
of rats went into high gear, and Unit 731 went
The new approach developed was to pack the to work cultivating fleas to be infected with the
pathogens in bombs or shells, which would be plague.
dropped from airplanes or delivered by
artillery. This would satisfy both of the Japan’s Defeat

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The main force of Unit 731 left the unit instructed by Lt. Gen. Arisue Seizo, the
headquarters by train soon after the Japanese Japanese chief of intelligence, that he should
surrender and returned to Japan between the not talk about “human experimentation and
end of August and early September 1945. Some biological weapons trials,” Kitano later told this
members of the unit and officers of the writer. In other words, until that time, these
Kwantung Army were captured by the Soviet two subjects had been effectively concealed.
military. Twelve of these POWs were tried by
the Soviet Union at a war crimes trial in 4. Body disposal at Unit 731
Khabarovsk in December 1949. In addition to
members of Unit 731, officers of the Kwantung However, at the end of 1946, American
Army and the army’s chief medical officer were authorities received notice from the Soviets
also charged as responsible parties. All of those that they intended to try cases involving human
charged were given prison sentences ranging experimentation and biological warfare. Ishii
from two to twenty-five years, but aside from and others were interrogated again, and they
one man who committed suicide just before confirmed the general content of the Soviet
returning to Japan, all had been repatriated by claims. The American investigation began
1956. The record of the Khabarovsk trial was
anew, headed by new investigators. Two
published in 1950 as Materials on the Trial of
additional reports were produced: the Fell
Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army
Report (dated June 20, 1947) and the Hill and
Charged with Manufacturing and Employing
Victor Report (dated December 12, 1947).
Bacteriological Weapons (Foreign Languages
These documents described the human
Publishing House, Moscow).
experiments conducted by Unit 731 and its
related units, based primarily on the
On the other hand, not one of the members of
interrogation of researchers involved in the
Unit 731 who returned to Japan was tried as a
experiments.
war criminal. Instead, the American military
began investigating the unit in September
The Hill and Victor Report concludes with the
1945, and unit officers were asked to provide
following evaluation: “Evidence gathered in
information about their wartime research, not
as evidence of war crimes, but for the purpose this investigation has greatly supplemented and
of scientific data gathering. In other words, amplified previous aspects of this field. It
they were granted immunity from prosecution represents data which have been obtained by
in exchange for supplying their research data. Japanese scientists at the expenditure of many
The American investigation continued through millions of dollars and years of work.
the end of 1947 and resulted in four separate Information had accrued with respect to human
reports. The investigation took place in two susceptibility to those diseases as indicated by
phases. specific infectious doses of bacteria. Such
information could not be obtained in our own
The first phase resulted in the Sanders Report laboratories because of scruples attached to
(dated November 1, 1945) and the Thompson human experimentation.”
Report (dated May 31, 1946). These two
reports contained information on the unit’s The above account makes clear the nature of
bacteria bombs, but did not address the subject the crimes committed by the Ishii Unit. At the
of human experimentation or the trial use of same, it is necessary to question the
biological weapons. Kitano Masaji, who was in responsibility of the American forces who
Shanghai at the time of Japan’s surrender, was provided immunity from prosecution in
interrogated in January 1946, but he was exchange for the product of these crimes.

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This essay was written by Tsuneishi Keiichi for Sources

publication in Sekai senso hanzai jiten
(Encyclopedia of world war crimes) (Bungei Tsuneishi Keiichi, 731 Butai: Seibutsu heiki
Shunju, 2002), edited by Hata Ikuhiko, Sase hanzai no shinjitsu (Unit 731: The true story
Masamori, and Tsuneishi. behind the biological weapons crimes)
(Kodansha, 1995).
Tsuneishi Keiichi is a Kanagawa University Tsuneishi Keiichi, Igakushatachi no soshiki
professor specializing in the history of science, hanzai (The organized crime of medical
and Japan’s leading specialist on biological practitioners) (Asahi Shimbun, 1994; reprinted
warfare and Unit 731. 1999).
Kobayashi Hideo and Kojima Toshiro, eds., 731
Translated by John Junkerman, a documentary saikinsen butai: Chugoku shin shiryo (The
filmmaker living in Tokyo. His most recent film, bacteriological war unit 731: New Chinese
“Japan’s Peace Constitution,” will be documents) (Fuji Shuppan, 1995).
distributed in North America by First Run Tanaka Akira and Matsumura Takao, eds., 731
Icarus Films. He is a Japan Focus Associate. Butai sakusei shiryo (Documents produced by
Posted at Japan Focus November 20, 2005. Unit 731) (Fuji Shuppan, 1991).
Tsuneishi Keiichi, Mokuteki: Ishii (Target: Ishii)
(Otsuki Shoten, 1984).