I am an impressionable person, and I read this ...
And now I don't know what to do ... I ask myself:
How, after all this, to preserve faith in a person, in his kindness and mercy, and not hate him for that transcendent cruelty to his own kind, which throughout history periodically makes itself felt with such outbursts of sadism.
I don't know where different people from different countries pass the very border that separates their concepts of good and evil. Where is the line beyond which it is impossible for them to cross? Or do many have no such trait at all, and these concepts are completely blurred? ...
I do not know if there is any way to justify such atrocities with a scientific purpose. But if we now use the results of these wild experiments, it means that to some extent they are already unwittingly justified by us. Ethics and science - how, in general, do they intersect somewhere? And should they?
Terrible, to physical pain, terrible information that I, to my shame, did not know before, and which now just flattened me ...
Naturally, it is not for the faint of heart ...
And the main horror of all this is that both I and others, who so keenly perceived what they read and saw, having recovered from the shock, in the end we will go to the cinema, we will chew sandwiches, we will discuss fashion and weather ... we will continue to live how we lived ... Nothing will change for us ... Is it good? Probably good ... Until it touched us personally.
God forbid, not to touch!
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How do encyclopedias know how many people can live without water, food, air, or even a liver? The answer is simple: the data was obtained from real sadistic experiments. The story is so terrible that they try not to remember it.
The current negative attitude towards Japan from China, the DPRK and South Korea is mainly due to the fact that Japan has not punished most of its war criminals. Many of them, after the Second World War, continued to live and work in the Land of the Rising Sun, as well as to occupy positions of responsibility. Even those who performed biological experiments on humans in the infamous special "unit 731". This is not much different from the experiments of Dr. Josef Mengel. The cruelty and cynicism of such experiments does not fit into modern human consciousness, but they were quite organic for the Japanese of that time. After all, the “victory of the emperor” was at stake then, and he was sure that only science could give this victory.
Once on the hills of Manchuria, a terrible factory started working. Thousands of living people became its "raw material", and its "products" could destroy all of humanity in a few months ... Chinese peasants were afraid to even approach a strange city. Nobody knew for certain what was going on inside, behind the fence. But in a whisper they told horror: they say, the Japanese kidnap or lure people there by deceit, over whom they then conduct terrible and painful experiments for the victims.
The beginning of this terrible case was laid in 1932, when the secret services of Japan decided to open an experimental biological center on the territory of occupied China. A cross between a concentration camp, a science laboratory, and a torture complex.
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The detachment was stationed in 1936 near the village of Pingfang (at that time the territory of the state of Manchukuo). It consisted of nearly 150 buildings. The detachment included graduates of the most prestigious Japanese universities, the flower of Japanese science.
The squad was stationed in China, not Japan, for several reasons. First, when it was deployed on the territory of the metropolis, it was very difficult to maintain the secrecy regime. Secondly, if the materials were leaked, the Chinese population would be affected, not the Japanese.
The main task of the "Unit 731" was the study of viruses, bacteria, natural poisons and the development of effective methods of mass killing with their help. To clear the site for the research center, 300 peasant houses were burned down. In parallel, the gendarmes and the military began to supply human material. These were mainly Chinese and Russian living nearby. But "Detachment 731" did not disdain the Mongols and Koreans either.
People (here they were called "logs") were infected with plague, cholera, anthrax and other pictorial diseases, and, naturally, they were not engaged in treatment at all, but observing the process. If a person recovered, he was infected again and again until he died in hellish suffering. It was very important to provide a variety of materials, therefore, both men and children and pregnant women were used.
“We believed that the logs were not people, that they were even lower than cattle. However, among the scientists and researchers who worked in the detachment, there was no one who at all sympathized with the "logs". Everyone believed that the extermination of the “logs” was a completely natural thing, ”said one of the officers of“ Detachment 731 ”.
“Our experiments have shown that the endurance of a person is approximately equal to the endurance of a pigeon. In the conditions in which the pigeon died, the experimental person also died,” said another employee.
But if the matter were limited solely to bacterial and viral experiments ... No, the curiosity of Japanese doctors extended far beyond the boundaries of human reason and morality! People were frozen, filming the process of transformation of living tissues and the development of gangrene. People were cut open alive, gradually removing one organ after another and observing how long this body survived. And, of course, no anesthesia during vivisection!
In addition to surgical amputation of internal organs and limbs, experiments on freezing the hands and feet of living people and their subsequent breaking off flourished. Try to imagine with what crunch a frozen hand breaks off a person. And also try to imagine that both legs were cut off, and then they were attached back, just the other way around: the right in place of the left, and the left in place of the right. Yes, and this was also regularly done within the walls of Detachment 731. And around the patient, doctors in white coats with a stopwatch are spotted when the last blood from the "log" flows out.
Women prisoners were raped to study how pregnancy would go if a woman was infected with cholera or syphilis. This is what a lab employee recalled:
“One of the researchers told me that he has planned an experiment on a person, but he still has time to kill someone. Together with a colleague, he took the keys and opened the cell where the Chinese woman was sitting. While the officer raped her, another took the keys and unlocked the adjacent cell. There was a Chinese woman who had recently been subjected to a freezing experiment. Several of her fingers were broken off and blackened bones with signs of gangrene protruded. But the employee was going to rape her anyway. He was only stopped by what he saw: her genitals were rotting and pus was dripping from them onto the floor. So he gave up this idea and went on to experimental work. "
It was from the pedantically made notes of "doctors" that the world learned how long people can live without air, water, sleep or in extreme frost.
So in the "unit 731" another "discovery" was made: the human body is 78% water. For this, people were placed in a hotly heated room with low humidity. The man was sweating profusely, but he was not allowed to drink until he was completely dry. Then the body was weighed, and it turned out that it weighs about 22% of the original mass.
In total, Unit 731 consisted of three departments, consisting of twenty research groups. So torture science was delivered on a grand scale and worked with the power of a rapid conveyor belt. The total number of victims was about three thousand people, of which almost a third were Russians.
In July 1944, it was only the position of Prime Minister Tojo that saved the United States from disaster. The Japanese planned to use balloons to transport strains of various viruses to American territory - from those that are fatal to humans to those that would destroy livestock and crops. But Todjo understood that Japan was already clearly losing the war, and when attacked with biological weapons, America could respond in kind, so the monstrous plan never materialized.
The Soviet Union put an end to the existence of Detachment 731. On August 9, 1945, Soviet troops launched an offensive against the Japanese army, and the "detachment" was ordered to "act at its own discretion." The evacuation work began on the night of August 10-11.
Some materials were burned in specially dug pits. It was decided to destroy the surviving experimental people. Some of them were gassed, and some were honorably allowed to commit suicide. The exhibits of the "exhibition room" were also thrown into the river - a huge hall where severed human organs, limbs, heads cut in various ways were kept in flasks. This "exhibition room" could have become the clearest proof of the inhuman nature of "Unit 731".
“It is unacceptable that even one of these drugs should fall into the hands of the advancing Soviet troops,” the leadership of the special squad told its subordinates.
But some of the most important materials have been preserved. They were taken out by the leaders of the detachment, passing all this to the Americans - as a kind of ransom for their freedom.
And, as the Pentagon said at the time, "due to the extreme importance of information about the bacteriological weapons of the Japanese army, the US government decides not to accuse any member of the Japanese army's bacteriological warfare preparation unit for war crimes."
Therefore, in response to a request from the Soviet side for the extradition and punishment of members of "Detachment 731", a conclusion was sent to Moscow that "the whereabouts of the leadership of" Detachment 731 "are unknown, and there are no grounds to accuse the detachment of war crimes."
Despite the fact that many of the leaders and employees of Detachment 731 were sentenced in 1949 by the Soviet authorities to impressive terms of imprisonment, they nevertheless escaped execution, since in 1947 this capital punishment was abolished in the USSR. Many scoundrels managed to escape justice in time, some even later made a glorious medical and scientific career in Japan and the USA.
Thus, all the scientists of the "death squad" (which is almost three thousand people), except for those who fell into the hands of the USSR, escaped responsibility for their crimes.
If anyone is interested, here is a cut from the 1988 Chinese feature film "Man behind the Sun", where the eerie story of "Unit 731" is shown through the eyes of Japanese cadets without any embellishment or concealment. It's entirely on YouTube.
I used the information from two sources:
Our correspondent visited the territory of the once secret facility, where during the war the Japanese experimented on prisoners, among whom were Russians
This monstrous fact from the history of World War II, probably, everyone has heard something somewhere. This page of history is voluminous, voluminous emotionally. The cruelty of some, the resignation of others - but also the courage of people doomed to martyrdom. The Red Army put a fat point in the existence of the Japanese "detachment 731", where experiments on living people were carried out en masse. Soon this point turned into an ellipsis: the American government sheltered the main executioners in white coats from legal retaliation, providing them with a comfortable and long life. The correspondent of our newspaper visited the walls where thousands of people were tortured.
Preparing for a conversation that never took place
Harbin today is a modern city with a multi-million population. Skyscrapers, avenues with an endless stream of cars, crush. After we, a group of Irkutsk residents, examined all the must-see sights of the capital of Heilongjiang province, the Chinese accompanying us sent an excursion bus to the territory of the infamous "Manchu detachment 731".
In the evening after that excursion, Anatoly Kataleev and I decided to return to Irkutsk to arrange a conversation on the pages of our newspaper about whether there is any special morality in wartime. About whether it is possible to justify experiments on humans, hiding behind the prospect of probable scientific discoveries.
Anatoly Kataleev had the right to discuss these topics. He is a military doctor, retired lieutenant colonel, worked as the head of the medical service of the East Siberian Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. After a business trip to Nagorno-Karabakh, he was awarded a state award for saving the life of one of the cadets of the Irkutsk fire school. In personal conversations on an expedition to Mongolia and North China, we called him simply a doctor.
Preparing for an interview with the doctor to get into the topic, I decided to read a documentary book by the famous Japanese writer Seiichi Morimura<Кухня дьявола>, in which the author has collected unique materials. According to the stories of eyewitnesses he found, as well as on the basis of secret documents obtained in various ways, he reconstructed in detail and with chronological accuracy the terrible events of the late 30s and the first half of the 40s of the last century, when a secret existed 20 kilometers from Harbin. the city where, as peasants from the surrounding villages whispered, people disappear.
A book about fanatics with advanced degrees
To be honest, I have had several attempts to master this book. But each time I stopped when I felt that my state was getting close to shock. I returned to another attempt at reading in two or three weeks.
For the first time, I could only read to the chapter where fanatics (by the way, some with advanced medical degrees) cut a living boy on the operating table, essentially disassembling it into separate organs (in the literal sense of the word!).
In the second attempt, I reached the place where the Russian prisoner managed to attack the guard, open the cells with the other prisoners and capture one of the buildings. The Japanese did not expect the "test material" to be able to do this.
Alas, the path to freedom did not exist. For more than an hour, the broad-shouldered brown-haired man, whose name is unknown, stood bravely under the barrels of dozens of rifles and spoke. The Japanese, armed to the teeth, were embarrassed, they were afraid to approach him. They were translated from Russian: "Better kill right away. It's better than being guinea pigs for your experiments." That man was shot at close range, and all the inhabitants of the rebellious bloc were poisoned with poisonous gas.
When I once again picked up Morimura's book, terrible news came. Anatoly Kataleev, our doctor, with whom we conceived this material, is gone. He was brutally killed in the forest on the Irkutsk-Angarsk highway.
So with the help of Seiichi Morimura and in memory of the doctor ...
Water Supply Base - Secret Division
Probably, I was lucky that when I got into the territory of "Detachment 731" I didn't know anything about it. There was, of course, some information that this is a secret unit of the Kwantung Army, officially disguised as the Main Base of the Directorate for Water Supply and Prevention of the Kwantung Army units. The fact that here bacteriological weapons were actively and successfully created for waging an invisible war against the Soviet Union, and the sight was precisely on Siberia. About the fact that these devilish methods were tested on living people - prisoners of war of the Chinese Red Army, fighters against the Japanese occupation, our Red Army men and simply local peasants kidnapped in the vicinity. Much has been said about the cruel time of World War II ...
Having already returned to Irkutsk and familiarized myself with the historical evidence, I realized the most terrible thing that the Chinese guide did not say, leading us through the dark corridors of the special corps until now. Some - ordinary employees of "Detachment 731" - killing "experimental material" did not even think that they were people too. Others, those whose immediate future was the only one - death in agony, managed to maintain courage and faith in their ideals.
In the log warehouse
Two brick buildings, connected by a passage in the shape of the letter N. Behind them, massive foundations sticking out of the ground are all that remains of two secret and specially protected buildings No. 7 and No. 8. Access here was allowed only to a limited circle of laboratory staff. There was a "log warehouse" here. At a short distance from the trees, concrete pipes and part of the wall are visible - the ruins of one of the buildings for the production of deadly bacteria. Perhaps this is all that remains of the sinister and largest in the world research center for the creation of bacteriological weapons.
And around - a small, but buried in greenery park and cheerful pinkish high-rise buildings. Harbin grew, and the lands of the former "detachment 731" were built up with residential buildings. Why should a place be lost?
In the summer of 1938, this territory, which had the shape of a square with a side of about six kilometers, was declared a special military zone of the Kwantung Army. In just a year, a huge military structure was built in the middle of the steppe, surrounded by a moat and a fence with barbed wire through which a high voltage current was passed. Inside there are numerous laboratories, residential buildings for about three thousand employees, a training center, an equestrian training arena, a large lecture hall, a stadium, and even a Shinto shrine. And besides that, an airfield, a power station, a railway line. And a prison for a hundred people.
Everything that happened behind the fence was hidden behind an impenetrable curtain of the highest military secrecy. Detachment 731 even had its own fighter aircraft. She was instructed to shoot down any aircraft, even those belonging to her army, that would fly over the territory of the detachment without permission.
Recipes for a deadly enemy
According to Morimura, since the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese army considered Russia its sworn enemy. To defeat the USSR - in this she traditionally saw her mission. That is why the "defender of the northern borders" - the Kwantung Army - made all its plans, considering the USSR as a potential enemy.
But how can a small island nation defeat such a powerful neighbor? The strategy of military operations, which covered Manchuria, Korea and South Sakhalin, was developed in the so-called "Kantokuen" ("Special Maneuvers of the Kwantung Army") plan of 1941. Special emphasis was placed on a new weapon - bacteria, invisible death, capable of covering vast territories and simultaneously hitting thousands of people.
The chief ideologist and creator of bacteriological weapons was the head of Detachment 731, General Shiro Ishii, who tied science and war into a devil's knot and came up with the idea of \u200b\u200busing living people for experiments.
"Know the photo!"
Later, looking at the diagram of the Main Base of the Directorate for Water Supply and Prevention of the Kwantung Army units, I determined which building we were walking inside.
Building No. 1. Two floors, each has a long corridor, on both sides of which there are rooms of different sizes. At a glance, there are all the signs of an ordinary museum - a large number of photo stands, glass cases with some kind of flasks, a gas mask. In the corner is a cutaway ceramic aerial bomb invented by General Ishii to deliver deadly bacteria to enemy congestion areas. All around there are incomprehensible hieroglyphs and a guide muttering something under his breath.
And only large showcases, inside of which, in volume and scale, were recreated terrible pictures of experiments on people, and the lightning-fast reaction of the staff to my flashlight ("Know the photo!") Spoke about what kind of museum it was.
The spacious room, where I was not allowed to take pictures, judging by the scheme, was the so-called exhibition room. Thousands of its exhibits in 1945, during the days of the evacuation of the detachment, were destroyed first. Large jars of drugs were simply thrown into the river. Interestingly, to which shore they then landed?
However, according to the stories of employees of the economic department, Morimura managed to restore the exposition of that wild "exhibition".
Exhibition Room - Sophisticated Torture
"So, the" exhibition room ", although it was called a room, was equal in size to the area of \u200b\u200bthree departments of the economic management: general, financial and personnel department. Anyone who, walking along the corridor from the economic management, reached the" exhibition room "and opened the door to it , first of all, the sharp smell of formalin hit the nose, then a sudden nervous shock forced the person to close his eyes.
“The one who first entered this room fell into a state of shock, and even seasoned people staggered, looking for support,” recalls a former employee of the detachment.
On shelves arranged in two or three rows along the walls, there were formalin-filled glass vessels with a diameter of 45 and a height of 60 centimeters. There were human heads in formalin solution. Separated from the neck, with eyes open or closed, with flowing hair, they swayed quietly in a glass vessel.
Heads with crushed faces like a pomegranate fruit.
Heads cut in two from crown to ear.
Sawed heads, with exposed brain.
Heads with decayed faces, on which it is impossible to recognize eyes, nose or mouth.
Heads with wide open mouths, with red, blue, black spots on the skin.
Chinese, Mongols, Russians ...
The heads of people of different races, men and women, old and young, looked out of a brownish formalin solution at the one who entered the room and turned to him with a silent question: why are we here?
There were more than just heads in the "showroom". Human legs cut off at the thigh, torsos without heads and limbs, stomachs and intestines intricately entwined in solution, uterus, some with fetuses. In short, it was an exhibition of all the constituent parts of the human body.
A former member of the detachment says: "The detachment's leadership claimed that these were preparations of corpses picked up on the battlefield near Khalkhin-Gol, but no one believed this, because as a result of the dissection of living" logs "more and more exhibits appeared."
Among them were absolutely incredible. For example, a human hand cut off at the elbow. The owner of this hand was a member of the detachment. Once a month he came to the "exhibition room", stopped in front of his hand and looked at it for a long time. "
"Material" is worthy only of death
Were the specialists and workers of Detachment 731 normal people? This is difficult to grasp, but - yes, conducting monstrous experiments on their own kind, they were normal. Many came to the "squadron" with their families - to work and do research. Quite a few among them were those who, receiving a good salary for their work, sent money to Japan - to train younger brothers and sisters or to treat their parents.
A former member of the detachment said: “We had no doubt that we were fighting this war so that poor Japan would become rich, in order to promote peace in Asia ... We believed that 'logs' are not people, that they are even lower than cattle. in the detachment of scientists and researchers there was no one who at least in the least bit sympathized with the "logs." Everyone - both the military personnel and the civilian detachments - believed that the extermination of the "logs" was a completely natural thing. "
They were constantly taught that "experimental material" or, as they said here, "logs" are worthy only of death. And the staff of the detachment did not even have a shadow of doubt about this. But, judging by some interviews with former members of the squad, which Morimura conducted, they still had an epiphany - however, decades later. And despair.
"Logs" are prisoners who were in the "unit 731". Among them were Russians, Chinese, Mongols, Koreans, captured by the gendarmerie or the special services of the Kwantung Army.
The gendarmerie and special services captured Soviet citizens who were on Chinese territory, commanders and soldiers of the Chinese Red Army who were captured during the fighting, and also arrested participants in the anti-Japanese movement: Chinese journalists, scientists, workers, students and their families. All these prisoners were to be sent to a special prison of "Detachment 731".
The logs did not need human names. All prisoners of the detachment were given three-digit numbers, according to which they were assigned to operational research groups as material for experiments.
The groups were not interested in either the past of these people, or even their age.
In the gendarmerie, before being sent to the detachment, no matter how cruel interrogations they were subjected, they were still people who had a language and who had to speak. But from the time these people got into the detachment, they became just experimental material - "logs", and none of them could get out of there alive.
“Logs” were also women - Russians, Chinese women - caught on suspicion of anti-Japanese sentiments. Women were used primarily for the study of sexually transmitted diseases.
In the center of the ro block was a two-story concrete structure. Inside, it was surrounded by corridors, where cell doors opened. Each door had a viewing window. This structure, communicating with the premises of the operational research groups, was a "warehouse of logs", that is, a special prison for the detachment.
According to the testimony of the defendant Kawashima at the Khabarovsk trial in 1949, the detachment constantly contained from 200 to 300 "logs", although these figures are not known exactly.
"Logs", depending on the objectives of the research, were placed in separate chambers or common. The common cells contained from 3 to 10 people.
Upon arrival at the detachment, all torture and cruel treatment to which the prisoners in the gendarmerie were subjected stopped. "Breven" was not interrogated or forced to do hard work. Moreover, they were well fed: they received full three meals a day, which sometimes included dessert - fruit, etc. They had the opportunity to sleep enough, they were given vitamins. The prisoners had to recuperate as soon as possible and become physically healthy.
The "logs" who received abundant nutrition recovered quickly, they had no work. From the moment they began to be used for experiments, either certain death awaited them, or suffering comparable only to the torments of hell. And before that, empty days dragged on, similar to one another. "Logs" languished from the forced idleness.
But the days when they were well fed passed quickly.
The circulation of the "logs" was quite intense. On average, every two days, three new people became test subjects.
Later, the Khabarovsk trial in the case of former servicemen of the Japanese army, based on the testimony of the accused Kawashima, will register in its documents that during the period from 1940 to 1945, "detachment 731" consumed at least three thousand people. In reality, this number was even higher, the former members of the detachment unanimously testified.
The Kwantung Army highly appreciated the special secret missions carried out by Detachment 731, and took all measures to provide its research work with everything necessary.
These measures included an uninterrupted supply of "logs".
People, when it was their turn to become experimental, were inoculated with the bacteria of plague, cholera, typhus, dysentery, syphilis spirochete and other cultures of living bacteria. They were introduced into the body with food or in some other way. There were also experiments on frostbite, gas gangrene infection, and executions were carried out for experimental purposes. "
Seiichi Morimura, as a result of a long and painstaking work, managed to collect, probably, the most complete list of experiments carried out in "Unit 731". Reading their brief description, you understand how far the study of human capabilities can go. And from this description, the hair stands on end.
<Изуверские вскрытия живых людей проводились в отряде для ответа на следующие вопросы: когда человек подвергается эпидемическому заражению, увеличивается его сердце или нет, как изменяется цвет печени, какие изменения происходят в живой ткани каждой части тела?
Another purpose of autopsy of a living person was to study the various changes that occurred in the internal organs after the "logs" were injected with certain chemicals. What processes occur in organs when air is introduced into the veins? The fact that this entails death was known, but the detachment's employees were interested in more detailed processes. In how many hours and minutes death will come, if the "log" is hung upside down, how do the various internal organs change? Such experiments were also carried out: people were placed in a centrifuge and rotated at high speed until death occurred. How will the human body react if urine or blood from a horse is injected into the kidneys? Experiments have been conducted to replace human blood with the blood of monkeys or horses. It was found out how much blood can be pumped out of one "log". The blood was pumped out using a pump. Everything was literally squeezed out of a person. What happens when a person's lungs fill up with smoke? What happens if the smoke is replaced with a poisonous gas? What changes will occur if poisonous gas or decaying tissue is introduced into the stomach of a living person? "
Sadists in white coats were interested in many things. Overshadowed by another devilish thought, the "doctors" called the prison and made an order: "Pick up healthy" logs "of any body type at your discretion and send 20 pieces." Real hell awaited each of them.
The subject was placed in a vacuum pressure chamber and the air was gradually pumped out, - recalls one of the trainees. - As the difference between external pressure and pressure in the internal organs increased, his eyes first got out, then his face swelled up to the size of a large ball, the blood vessels swelled like snakes, and the intestines began to creep out. Finally, the man just exploded alive ...
All this was filmed on film - this is how the height ceiling for the pilots was determined.
During that period, there were quite a few cases of frostbite among the soldiers of the Kwantung Army. The detachment wanted to collect data as soon as possible on the process of frostbite, methods of its treatment, as well as on how bacterial infection proceeds in conditions of severe frosts.
Freezing experiments were carried out in the detachment from November to March, says an eyewitness. - At temperatures below minus 20, the experimental people were taken out into the yard at night, forced to lower their bare arms or legs into a barrel of cold water, and then put under an artificial wind until they got frostbite. After that, they knocked on the hands with a small stick until they made the sound of a board ...
Witnesses recall that the hands of the test subjects were taken away literally before our eyes: at first they turned white, then reddened, became covered with blisters. Finally the skin turned black and paralysis set in. Only then were the martyrs returned to a warm room and thawed with water. If her temperature was higher than plus 15, the dead skin and muscles fell off, bones were exposed. Now only amputation of mutilated limbs could save from gangrene.
Someone suffered another terrible fate: they were turned alive into mummies - placed in a hotly heated room with low humidity. The man was sweating profusely, but he was not allowed to drink until he was completely dry. Then the body was weighed, and it turned out that it weighs about 22 percent of the original. This is exactly how another "discovery" was made in the "unit 731": the human body is 78% water.
Despite the fact that a whole department worked in the detachment, scrupulously recording all stages of each experiment on film and photographic film, this evidence was almost completely destroyed. But the sufferings of people who died painful deaths are very accurately and naturalistically conveyed by the voluminous "illustrations" of experiments on people, which we viewed through glass in the gloomy corridors of "Detachment 731".
The end follows.
The current negative attitude towards Japan from China, North Korea and South Korea is mainly due to the fact that Japan has not punished most of its war criminals. Many of them continued to live and work in the Land of the Rising Sun, as well as to occupy positions of responsibility. Even those who performed biological experiments on humans in the infamous special "unit 731". This is not much different from the experiments of Dr. Josef Mengel. The cruelty and cynicism of such experiments does not fit into modern human consciousness, but they were quite organic for the Japanese of that time. After all, the “victory of the emperor” was at stake then, and he was sure that only science could give this victory.
Once on the hills of Manchuria, a terrible factory started working. Thousands of living people became its "raw material", and its "products" could destroy all of humanity in a few months ... Chinese peasants were afraid to even approach a strange city. Nobody knew for certain what was going on inside, behind the fence. But in a whisper they told horror: they say, the Japanese kidnap or lure people there by deceit, over whom they then conduct terrible and painful experiments for the victims.
"Science has always been a killer's best friend"
It all started back in 1926, when Emperor Hirohito took the throne of Japan. It was he who chose the motto "Showa" ("Age of the Enlightened World") for the period of his reign. Hirohito believed in the power of science: “Science has always been the best friend of assassins. Science can kill thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people in a very short period of time. " The Emperor knew what he was talking about: he was a biologist by training. And he believed that the biological will help Japan to conquer the world, and he, the descendant of the goddess Amaterasu, - to fulfill his divine destiny and rule this world.
The emperor's ideas about "scientific weapons" found support among the aggressive Japanese military. They understood that a protracted war against the Western powers could not be won with the samurai spirit and conventional weapons alone. Therefore, on behalf of the Japanese military department, in the early 1930s, the Japanese colonel and biologist Shiro Ishii made a voyage through the bacteriological laboratories of Italy, Germany, the USSR and France. In his final report, presented to the highest military ranks of Japan, he convinced everyone present that biological weapons would be of great benefit to the Land of the Rising Sun.
“Unlike artillery shells, bacteriological weapons are not capable of instantly killing manpower, but they silently strike the human body, bringing a slow but painful death. It is not necessary to produce shells, you can infect completely peaceful things - clothes, cosmetics, food and drinks, you can spray bacteria from the air. Let the first attack not be massive - all the same bacteria will multiply and hit targets, ”Ishii said. It is not surprising that his "incendiary" report impressed the leadership of the Japanese military department, and it allocated funds for the creation of a special complex for the development of biological weapons. Throughout its existence, this complex has had several names, the most famous of which is “detachment 731”.
They were called "logs"
The detachment was stationed in 1936 near the village of Pingfang (at that time the territory of the state of Manchukuo). It consisted of nearly 150 buildings. The detachment included graduates of the most prestigious Japanese universities, the flower of Japanese science.
The squad was stationed in China, not Japan, for several reasons. First, when it was deployed on the territory of the metropolis, it was very difficult to maintain the secrecy regime. Second, if the materials were leaked, the Chinese population would be affected, not the Japanese. Finally, in China, "logs" were always at hand - as the scientists of this special unit called those on whom the deadly strains were tested.
“We believed that 'logs' are not people, that they are even lower than cattle. However, among the scientists and researchers who worked in the detachment, there was no one who sympathized with the "logs" in the least bit. Everyone believed that the extermination of the “logs” was a completely natural thing, ”said one of the officers of“ Detachment 731 ”.
The profile experiments that were put on the experimental were testing the effectiveness of various strains of diseases. Ishii's "favorite" was the plague. Towards the end of World War II, he developed a strain of the plague bacterium 60 times superior in virulence (the ability to infect the body) the usual.
The experiments were carried out mainly as follows. The detachment had special cells (where people were locked up) - they were so small that the prisoners could not move in them. People were infected with an infection, and then they watched for days the changes in the state of their body. Then they were dissected alive, pulling out the organs and observing how the disease spreads inside. People were spared their lives and did not have them sewn up for days on end, so that doctors could observe the process without bothering themselves with a new autopsy. At the same time, no anesthesia was usually used - the doctors feared that it could disrupt the natural course of the experiment.
More "fortunate" were those of the victims of the "experimenters" on whom they tested not bacteria, but gases: these died faster. “All the test subjects who died from hydrogen cyanide had crimson-red faces,” said one of the officers of “Detachment 731”. “Those who died of mustard gas had their whole bodies burned so that it was impossible to look at the corpse. Our experiments have shown that human endurance is approximately equal to that of a pigeon. In the conditions in which the pigeon died, the experimental person also died. "
When the Japanese military became convinced of the effectiveness of the Ishii special detachment, they began to develop plans for the use of bacteriological weapons against the United States and the USSR. There were no problems with ammunition: according to the employees' stories, by the end of the war, so many bacteria had accumulated in the storerooms of Detachment 731 that if they were scattered across the globe under ideal conditions, this would have been enough to destroy all of humanity.
In July 1944, it was only the position of Prime Minister Tojo that saved the United States from disaster. The Japanese planned to use balloons to transport strains of various viruses to American territory - from those that are fatal to humans to those that will destroy livestock and crops. But Todjo understood that Japan was already clearly losing the war, and when attacked with biological weapons, America could respond in kind, so the monstrous plan never materialized.
122 degrees Fahrenheit
But Detachment 731 was not only concerned with biological weapons. Japanese scientists also wanted to know the limits of endurance of the human body, for which they conducted terrible medical experiments.
For example, doctors from the special squad found that the best way to treat frostbite was not rubbing the affected limbs, but immersing them in water at a temperature of 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Found out empirically. “At temperatures below minus 20, the experimental people were taken out into the courtyard at night, forced to lower their bare arms or legs into a barrel of cold water, and then put under artificial wind until they got frostbite,” said a former special squad officer. “Then they tapped the hands with a small stick until they made a sound, as if hitting a piece of wood.” Then the frostbitten limbs were placed in water of a certain temperature and, changing it, we observed the death of muscle tissue on the hands. Among such experimental subjects was a three-day-old child: so that he would not squeeze his hand into a fist and not violate the "purity" of the experiment, a needle was stuck in his middle finger.
Some of the victims of the special squad suffered another terrible fate: they were turned alive into mummies. For this, people were placed in a hotly heated room with low humidity. The man was sweating profusely, but he was not allowed to drink until he was completely dry. Then the body was weighed, and it turned out that it weighs about 22% of the original mass. This is exactly how another “discovery” was made in the “unit 731”: the human body is 78% water.
For the Imperial Air Force, experiments were carried out in pressure chambers. “The subject was placed in a vacuum chamber and the air was gradually pumped out,” recalled one of the Ishii detachment trainees. - As the difference between the external pressure and the pressure in the internal organs increased, his eyes first crawled out, then his face swelled up to the size of a large ball, the blood vessels swelled like snakes, and the intestines began to crawl out as if alive. Finally, the man just exploded alive. " This is how the Japanese doctors determined the permissible high-altitude ceiling for their pilots.
There were also experiments just for "curiosity". Individual organs were excised from the living body; cut off the arms and legs and sewn back, swapping the right and left limbs; poured the blood of horses or monkeys into the human body; put under the most powerful X-ray radiation; scalding various parts of the body with boiling water; tested for sensitivity to electric current. Curious scientists filled the lungs of a person with a large amount of smoke or gas, injected rotting pieces of tissue into the stomach of a living person.
According to the recollections of the employees of the special squad, during its existence, about three thousand people died within the walls of the laboratories. However, some researchers argue that there were much more real victims of the bloody experimenters.
"Information of extreme importance"
The Soviet Union put an end to the existence of Detachment 731. On August 9, 1945, Soviet troops launched an offensive against the Japanese army, and the "detachment" was ordered to "act at its own discretion." The evacuation work began on the night of August 10-11. Some materials were burned in specially dug pits. It was decided to destroy the surviving experimental people. Some of them were gassed, and some were honorably allowed to commit suicide. The exhibits of the "exhibition room" were also thrown into the river - a huge hall where severed human organs, limbs, heads cut in various ways were kept in flasks. This "exhibition room" could be the clearest proof of the inhuman nature of "Unit 731".
“It is unacceptable that even one of these drugs fell into the hands of the advancing Soviet troops,” the leadership of the special squad told its subordinates.
But some of the most important materials have been preserved. They were taken out by Shiro Ishii and some other leaders of the detachment, passing all this to the Americans - as a kind of ransom for their freedom. And, as the Pentagon said at the time, "due to the extreme importance of information about the bacteriological weapons of the Japanese army, the US government decides not to accuse any member of the Japanese army's bacteriological warfare preparation unit for war crimes."
Therefore, in response to a request from the Soviet side for the extradition and punishment of members of "Detachment 731", Moscow received a conclusion that "the whereabouts of the leadership of" Detachment 731 ", including Ishii, are unknown, and there are no grounds to accuse the detachment of war crimes." ... Thus, all the scientists of the "death squad" (which is almost three thousand people), except for those who fell into the hands of the USSR, escaped responsibility for their crimes. Many of those who dissected living people became deans of universities, medical schools, academicians, and businessmen in post-war Japan. Prince Takeda (cousin of Emperor Hirohito), who inspected the special squad, was also not punished and even headed the Japanese Olympic Committee on the eve of the 1964 Games. And Shiro Ishii himself, the evil genius of "Unit 731", lived comfortably in Japan and died only in 1959.
Experiments continue
By the way, as the Western media testify, after the defeat of Detachment 731, the United States successfully continued a series of experiments on living people.
It is known that the legislation of the absolute majority of countries in the world prohibits conducting experiments on humans, with the exception of those cases when a person voluntarily agrees to experiments. However, there is information that Americans practiced medical experiments on prisoners up to the 70s.
And in 2004, an article appeared on the BBC website claiming that Americans were conducting medical experiments on children in orphanages in New York. It was reported, in particular, that children with HIV were fed extremely poisonous drugs, from which the babies had seizures, their joints swelled so that they lost the ability to walk and could only roll on the ground.
The article also quoted a nurse from one of the orphanages, Jacqueline, who adopted two children, wishing to adopt them. Administrators of the Office of Children's Affairs took the babies away from her by force. The reason was that the woman stopped giving them the prescribed medication, and the inmates immediately began to feel better. But in court, the refusal to give medicine was regarded as child abuse, and Jacqueline was deprived of the right to work in children's institutions.
It turns out that the practice of testing experimental drugs on children was sanctioned by the US federal government back in the early 90s. But in theory, every child with AIDS should be assigned a lawyer who could require, for example, that children be prescribed only drugs that have already been tested on adults. As the Associated Press found out, most of the children who participated in the tests were deprived of such legal support. Despite the fact that the investigation caused a strong resonance in the American press, it did not lead to any tangible result. According to the AR, such tests on abandoned children are still going on in the United States.
Thus, the inhuman experiments on living people, which were "inherited" by the killer in the white coat Shiro Ishii, continue even in modern society.
dir. E. Masyuk
The documentary film by Elena Masyuk tells about the events that took place on the territory of modern China during the Second World War.
In 1939 in Manchuria, a special detachment 731 was formed. A laboratory was organized under it, in which experiments were carried out on living people.
What happened to the victims of this research? How was the fate of their executioners? The main focus of the film is on the fate of the former executioners in the post-war period.
However, if a visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial in Germany causes the Germans to feel shudder, hatred for Nazism and pity for the tortured, then the Japanese, especially the young, most often leave the museum with such an expression as if they had visited a national shrine.
Still, after all, visiting the museum, they learn that after the Second World War many members of Detachment 731 continued to live and work peacefully in their native Land of the Rising Sun, and even hold positions of responsibility. Including those who performed monstrous biological experiments on people who were brutally brutal than the SS doctor Joseph Mengel.
The beginning of this factory of death was laid back in 1926, when Emperor Hirohito took the throne of Japan. As you know, he chose the motto "Showa" ("Enlightened World") for the era of his reign.
But if the majority of mankind assigns science the role of serving good purposes, then Hirohito, without hiding, directly spoke about its purpose: “Science has always been the best friend of killers. Science can kill thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people in a very short period of time. "
The emperor could judge such terrible things competently: he was a biologist by education. He sincerely believed that biological weapons would help Japan conquer the world, and he, a descendant of the goddess Amaterasu, would help him fulfill his divine destiny and rule the universe.
Four years after the end of World War II, in December 1949, at the tribunal of the Primorsky Military District, held in the city of Khabarovsk, a sensational trial was held in the case of former Japanese servicemen who were in secret special detachments No. 731, 100 and 1644. The soldiers of the Japanese army were charged in the development and use of bacteriological weapons during the war. In addition, at the tribunal it was established that residents of the cities of the Soviet Far East - Vladivostok, Ussuriisk, Khabarovsk, Blagoveshchensk and Chita almost became victims of this weapon. It was on these cities that the command of the Japanese army planned to drop air bombs filled with plague-infected fleas and other deadly bacteria.
Only 12 people were sentenced to different terms at the Khabarovsk court on December 25-30, 1949. All the defendants served in the “unit 731”, in which they were engaged in the testing and production of bacteriological weapons and experiments on “logs” - this is how the prisoners of Russia and Chinese were called in the unit. , Mongols. “We believed that "Logs" are not people, that they are even lower than cattle, - admitted one of the experimenters. - Among the scientists and researchers who worked in the detachment, there was no one who at least somewhat sympathized with the "logs". Both the servicemen and the civilian detachments believed that the extermination of "logs" was a completely natural thing. "
The Japanese, like the Nazi "researchers" in their time, performed many experiments on hypothermia: the subjects' legs and arms were immersed in ice-cold water, and then, naked and wet, they were taken out into the street. To determine if frostbite had occurred, they beat hands and feet with a stick - if the "logs" felt pain, frostbite was considered incomplete. Returning to the room, the limbs of the victims were immersed in warm water at different temperatures - this is how the optimal treatment regimen for Japanese soldiers was developed. Sometimes the injuries in the unfortunate test subjects turned out to be so serious that the meat literally peeled off the arms and legs, bones were exposed. But the suffering of the "logs" did not end there - with amputated limbs, they continued to move along this deadly "conveyor of experiments." They tested bacterial and viral weapons, poisons.
To study in detail how tankers die, tanks with people trapped in them were set on fire with flamethrowers. To observe in real mode how organs change when infected with various infections or under the influence of poisons, people were euthanized and dissected alive, all their organs were removed and distributed between departments - for scientific purposes. Once, a Chinese child was “disassembled” in this way, and he was simply stolen because the experiment required children's organs.
20 km from Harbin in the 1930s. a super-secret settlement was built for the squad. Experimenters, servants lived there, there were laboratories and a "log warehouse" - a prison, where up to 300 people were constantly housed. In total, over the years of the war, more than 3 thousand passed through the detachment, and not one was released.
Why were all these atrocities not considered at the Tokyo trial, which began in 1946? “Much more in this history remains unclear, since not all archives in Russia and the United States are open, - says Victoria Romanova, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of the Department of History of Medicine, History of the Fatherland and Culturology of the First Moscow State Medical University. I.M.Sechenov. - I managed to work in the Russian Foreign Policy Archive and study previously unpublished documents. This is how these events appear to me.
By the beginning of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, held in Tokyo, the USSR and the USA had facts about the use of bacteriological means by the Japanese during the war, but this information was scarce. In August 1946, the Americans there for the first time voiced the accusation that the Japanese were producing bacteriological weapons and testing them on humans. The court demanded additional evidence. The American side - and she played the main role at this tribunal - first turned to the Soviet for help in investigating those crimes. In the USSR, in the camps of Japanese prisoners of war, people were identified who served in the "unit 731" and were involved in the development of bacteriological weapons and experiments on people. It was decided to send them to the Tokyo trial as witnesses.
However, the United States soon abandoned the idea of \u200b\u200bcooperation with the USSR, possibly because it intended to single-handedly obtain classified information on the production of such weapons. By that time, they had already been able to locate the leader of the "Unit 731" Ishii Shiro and his colleagues. They were offered judicial immunity in exchange for technological secrets for the production of bakorunov. The Japanese made great strides in this direction, and there is an opinion that the United States believed that repeating such studies would require much more costs than moral losses due to the silence of those crimes.
Shiro Ishii - Commander of Unit 731
As a result, Ishii Shiro was not tried and extradited to the USSR, which we insisted on, and, according to some reports, he was transferred to the United States, where he was engaged in his professional activities. He died in 1959. Moscow decided to organize a separate trial in the USSR, which was held in Khabarovsk on December 25-30, 1949. Key figures and archives were in the hands of the United States, a smaller bipod was put on trial in Khabarovsk, and these were the only convicted Japanese military , involved in the development and human testing of bakoruzhniy. China, as the most aggrieved party - after all, "Detachment 731" worked in the occupied Chinese territory in Manch-juria - did not put forward accusations at the Tokyo process, since the functions of protecting its interests were transferred to the United States. "
After the war, many members of the 731 squad made a brilliant career, becoming famous doctors and scientists. There were simply incredible cases. Gynecologists who infect women with sexually transmitted diseases opened a private maternity hospital famous in Japan. And the "fighters" of the detachment met annually and remembered the "days gone by."
Test subjects tied to a pole while waiting for a plague-flea bomb to explode, 1940s Photo: Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents
Some of the medical experiments of Unit 731:
* People were infected with the causative agents of plague, cholera, typhus, dysentery, syphilis, inoculated with other live bacteria, and infected with gas gangrene.
* Shot for experimental purposes, studying the penetrating properties of the bullet and how different organs are affected.
* Find out how much blood can be pumped out of a person using special pumps.
* Air was injected into the veins, smoke and toxic substances were introduced into the lungs, toxic substances and decaying tissues were introduced into the stomach, the horse's urine and blood were introduced into the kidneys; replaced human blood with the blood of monkeys or horses - studied the consequences of all this.
* Suspended upside down or rotated in a centrifuge at high speed, watching a person die.
* A person was irradiated with X-rays for many hours in order to investigate their destructive effect on the body.
Beginning at no. 5 (309)
By 1945, Japan was practically ready to deliver a powerful bacteriological strike against the Far Eastern and Siberian territories of the Soviet Union. In a highly classified subdivision of the Kwantung Army - "Detachment 731" located in Manchuria, huge reserves of bacteria have already been created that can cause massive epidemics. But the Soviet army, literally sweeping away the samurai, closed this terrible page in history. Detachment 731 was evacuated from Harbin in panic a few days before the arrival of Soviet troops. Our correspondent, who recently visited the site of those events, continues his story.
Returning to the first part of this publication, I will repeat that, wandering through the dimly lit corridors of the surviving corps of "Detachment 731", which have now been turned into a completely civilized museum, I had no idea what events took place here more than 60 years ago. And a Chinese tour guide could hardly convey the feeling of horror that these walls have absorbed by memorized phrases in Russian. The walls where more than three thousand people were brutally tortured - Red Army prisoners, Chinese soldiers, local patriots, journalists, just civilians, peasants who were accidentally arrested in Harbin or kidnapped in the surrounding villages. Men, women, children, babies ...
But the Japanese publicist Seiichi Morimura succeeded in his book "The Devil's Kitchen", in which, on the basis of documents found and interviews with participants in those events, he dispassionately restores the terrible history of the world's largest plant for the development and production of bacteriological weapons. This terrible book is difficult to read.
Interests of Papa Ishii
General Shiro Ishii, head of Detachment 731, the chief ideologist of bacteriological warfare against the Soviet Union, who came up with the idea of \u200b\u200busing living people in their diabolical experiments, was called a monkey by his colleagues behind his back. Seiichi Morimura in his book "The Devil's Kitchen" recalls one of them: "Ishii's father was the most cunning of all monkeys, a learned monkey."
While still a teacher at the military medical academy in Japan, says another eyewitness, Ishii used living people - his assistants for experiments. Several people who worked on bacteria research as Ishii's assistants are known to have died from bacterial contamination. Among the relatively small number of acute epidemic diseases, Ishii paid most attention to the plague. Now it is difficult to establish from what diseases Ishii's assistants died, but I think it was a plague.
Ishii did not stop at the bacteria of the plague, as the most powerful weapon, by chance. From his espionage trips to Europe in the early 1930s, he brought back the main news: all European countries (even Nazi Germany!) Have excluded plague bacteria from the number of bacterial agents that can be used as weapons. The horror of the Europeans associated with the plague epidemics, which was transmitted there from generation to generation, was too great.
But Papasha Ishii's interests were multifaceted. In his laboratories, in addition to the plague, they studied and bred the bacteria typhus, cholera, dysentery, tetanus, tuberculosis, anthrax, leprosy - that was the range of products of this "factory".
Morimura was able to completely restore the production of these deadly bacteria. This entire process was put on stream and took place in special clean rooms. The employees' faces were covered with masks. It was impossible to recognize anyone. In order not to breathe in living bacteria, they did not utter a word and explained only with gestures. White hats, white robes, aprons, big glasses - the silent figures moving slowly made a mysterious impression.
The bacteria were bred on agar-agar, a product obtained from red and brown algae. After the completion of sowing, the nutrient medium was transferred to the cultivation chamber. Having received illumination of the required intensity, the required temperature and agar-agar for nutrition, the bacteria multiplied rapidly, forming milky-white clusters on the surface of the nutrient medium. After a certain time, the team members began to collect bacteria. The accumulations of bacteria were scraped off into special beakers.
"At the bottom of the beaker there were bacteria in the form of a milky white mass, reminiscent of the wort for making Japanese sweet sake (rice vodka. - Author's note)," recalled one of the former employees of this laboratory.
Plague flea attack
But according to Ishii's plan, carriers of pathogens were needed to use bacterial agents in war. Fleas are the most effective carriers of plague. If you infect a large number of fleas with bacteria and scatter them in the right place, then in a fairly short time you can cause a plague epidemic. The experimenters started to implement this idea.
From the materials of the trial of the killers in white coats, which took place in Khabarovsk at the end of December 1949:
"The experimental people used for these experiments, in the amount of 15 people, were taken from the internal prison of the detachment and tied in the territory where the experiment was made to pillars specially dug into the ground ... A special plane dropped about two dozen bombs on the test site, which did not After reaching the ground from 100 to 200 meters, they exploded, and plague fleas, which were stuffed with bombs, fell out of them, and these plague fleas spread throughout the territory.
After the bombing was carried out, a considerable period of time was waited for the fleas to spread and infect the experimental people. "
One of the former members of the detachment recalls numerous experiments with ceramic bombs stuffed with fleas:
“It took four to five hours for the insects to get to the 'logs' and begin to suck their blood. The 'logs', seeing how a myriad of fleas first dig into their legs and then spread throughout their body, fought and screamed desperately, but since their arms and legs were tied to the posts, they could not do anything. Each bomb contained about 30,000 fleas. "
Microbes with the highest activity were isolated from the tissues of deceased people and transferred to the production facilities of the detachment.
Morimura writes: "Numerous experiments were carried out at the test site near Anta station, both with the aim of improving ceramic bombs and with the aim of finding ways to increase the activity of plague fleas."
At the landfill, pillars were dug into the ground at a distance of 5-10 meters from one another. People were tied to them, whose bodies were completely protected by blankets and metal shields.
To improve bacteriological weapons and determine their effectiveness, it was necessary to detonate bombs at different angles to the ground and at different heights. This made it possible to obtain accurate data on the relationship between the point of explosion of the bomb and the area of \u200b\u200bbacterial contamination.
If the subjects were injured by fragments of bombs or artillery shells and this would be the cause of their death, the whole point of the experiment would be reduced to zero. It was necessary to establish the exact death rate from bacterial contamination. For this purpose, blankets and shields were used.
People tied to poles were subjected to a wide variety of experiments. Sometimes in a dozen or two, only the buttocks were left naked and an experiment was conducted on infection with pathogens of gas gangrene.
Shrapnel bombs contaminated with gas gangrene pathogens were detonated at extremely close distance from the test subjects. Countless pieces of shrapnel dug into people's bare buttocks. The test subjects screamed in unbearable pain, while the squad members coolly examined them, trying to find out if the gas gangrene bacteria hit the target or not.
After that, the people were returned to the special prison of the detachment. There, the development of the disease was carefully monitored - until death. They were not given any help. There could be no question of help, because the experimenters were interested in the process of continuous multiplication of bacteria and their destruction of the human body. After a week passed, the test subjects, who emanated a terrifying stench, died.
All these experiments were recorded on film.
A former member of the detachment says: “Experiments on infection with gas gangrene were carried out many times. And not only these ... Experiments were also carried out using a bacteriological pistol in the form of a fountain pen, and simpler experiments were also performed. studied how the shrapnel entered the body; shot in the head from different angles with a rifle, then removed and dissected the brain; sometimes people were simply killed with a blow with a club, and then the damaged tissue was examined ... "
Information through the thickness of the walls
We have to deliberately omit and not cite many other passages from the book of Morimura, which does not just restore the terrible details of the "scientific work" of fanatics from the imperial army. The publicist honestly paints the face of the war prepared by his compatriots, talks about people who were doomed, but did not surrender.
What thoughts live in the head of a person who knows that in a day or two he will die in terrible agony?
The people imprisoned in blocks 7 and 8 knew that the fate of the "logs" was in store for them. The prison guards could not do anything about how it happened, but there was a connection between the cells. Information was transmitted through walls 40 centimeters thick. The members of the special group could not figure out the secret, calling it a miracle.
Some of the prisoners did not want to feel doomed, they retained their fortitude until the last minutes of their lives. No matter how inhumanely the "logs" were treated in the detachment, considering them only material for experiments, they still remained human. Shackled hand and foot, imprisoned in an isolated space, during the day "logs" accumulated energy, lying on their bedding and hiding from the eyes of the guards. At night, a secret struggle began in the prison. Signals flew from camera to camera: people called themselves, transmitted what was happening with them.
There was such a case. For the purpose of the experiment, the prisoners were given sweet pies infected with typhus bacteria. But not a single prisoner touched them. Obviously, those who knew about such experiments passed on to all the cells that the pies may be contaminated with bacteria.
Riot "logs"
When and under what circumstances the "logs" riot took place in the special prison of the detachment, nothing is known for sure. They only remember that it was a "sunny day before noon" in the first decade of June 1945.
In one of the prison cells, located in the left wing of the 7th building on the second floor, two Russian prisoners were held. That morning, one of them began to call the guard to explain to him that his cellmate was ill. The squad members reacted sharply to any changes in the state of the "logs" - observing the test subjects was an important part of their daily work.
When the guard entered, he immediately received a powerful blow to the bridge of the nose with a chain from the handcuffs. The handcuffs were removed from both prisoners. “How they managed to take off the handcuffs - afterwards everyone racked their brains for a long time,” recalls a former member of the detachment. “Either the two of them managed to break the handcuffs, or they were specialists in this kind of devices, or, finally, the handcuffs themselves were with flaw ".
Taking possession of the keys, one of the Russians ran out into the corridor and began to open the cameras, shouting and gesturing the prisoners up: "Get out! Run!"
But there was nowhere to run: the door to the staircase was already blocked by a special group that had arrived in time. The prison block itself was surrounded by dozens of armed Japanese - the frightened guards called for reinforcements. In a panic, even the civilian employees of the detachment engaged in household work were assembled and armed.
Based on the story of one of the witnesses of the riot, whom he managed to talk, Morimura writes:
"On the left side of the corridor, one of the prisoners, grabbing the bars, began to shout something loudly to the detachment officers who were aiming at him. It was Russian, brown-haired, about forty, broad-shouldered. His powerful voice rang throughout the courtyard. did not understand the Russian language, but in the guise of the prisoner and in his voice there was a protest. The civilians were stunned by the angry speech of the Russian and his energetic movements, but continued to hold him at gunpoint. there are already many people ... You have pointed your rifles at us, but we are not afraid anyway ... All the Japanese are cowards ... Free us immediately ... Or kill us right away. It's better than being guinea pigs for your experiences. "
The Russian, striking himself in the chest with his fists, continued to bravely stand at the muzzles of his rifles in his black clothes with a number sewn on it. Other prisoners crowded around him to support him.
A strange situation arose in the courtyard of the special prison. People who, it seemed, should have been paralyzed under the muzzles of the rifles pointed at them, felt, however, more and more confident and prevailed over the officers of the detachment, armed to the teeth.
The Russian, spreading his arms wide and straightening his chest, grabbed the bars of the lattice. With all his appearance he seemed to be calling: "Well, shoot!" His loud, confident voice and angry intonations embittered the officers of the detachment.
"Ah, you scoundrel! Die!" - with these words one of the young civilians, who lost his nerves, pulled the trigger ...
Here is what a detachment employee at the scene of the incident says: “When you think about it now, it becomes clear that the voice of the Russian was the cry of the soul, from which freedom was taken away ... But then I could not correctly understand his anger.“ Breven ”we are not people However, the protest of this Russian, the way he stood with his shoulders spread wide until his last breath, made a strong impression on us. We silenced him with a bullet, but he, unarmed and the prisoner, undoubtedly, was stronger than us. Then we all felt in our souls: the truth is not on our side. When I remember everything that happened then, I cannot sleep at night. "
On the same day, all the prisoners of the rebellious block were killed with poisonous gas through the ventilation system in the cells.
"Increase the number of bacteria, fleas and rats!"
In May 1945, General Ishii issued an order to increase production, which stated: "The war between Japan and the USSR is inevitable ... The detachment must mobilize all forces and in a short time increase the production of bacteria, fleas and rats." In other words, the stage of experiments is over, now bacteriological warfare begins in practice, it is necessary to increase production in anticipation of day X.
The geographical maps of the Soviet Far Eastern regions, indicating settlements, reservoirs and other objects for a bacteriological attack, have already been multiplied. Bacteriological weapons were planned to be used primarily in the area of \u200b\u200bKhabarovsk, Blagoveshchensk, Ussuriisk, Chita. It was planned to drop aerial bombs filled with plague fleas here, and the option of spraying bacteria from aircraft was also envisaged.
By this time, the detachment had already developed a technology for drying plague bacteria and a method for storing them in a dry form, a strain of plague bacteria was already being produced, 60 times superior in virulence to the usual one. The technique of spraying bacteria in the form of a rain cloud has reached a high level, the ceramic bomb has been improved, especially viable rats and fleas possessing great blood-sucking power have multiplied on a mass scale.
At the end of the war, there were so many "ready-to-eat" bacteria in "Detachment 731" that, as a former member of the detachment said, if they were scattered across the globe under ideal conditions, this would be enough to destroy all of humanity.
The number of rats was ordered to increase to 3 million ... The task was set to produce 300 kilograms of plague fleas, that is, about a billion individuals.
“Of course, getting a billion live, high-quality, ready-to-use fleas was a serious matter. says a former employee of the detachment.
However, the "bacchanalia" of bacteria, rodents and fleas that unfolded in the "unit 731" ended on August 9, 1945. At dawn on August 9, Soviet troops began military operations against Japan. "
"All employees commit suicide!"
The evacuation of Detachment 731 is a separate story. Former members of the squad agree on one thing: these were terrible days, similar to a nightmare.
That was only the order of General Ishii: the entire personnel of the branches of "Detachment 731", who were on the way of the Soviet offensive, as well as family members of all employees, to commit suicide, after which all those who remained to retreat to the south. And after all, they would have followed the order, but another high-ranking general, Kikuchi, forced Ishii to cancel it. However, vials of hydrocyanic acid were distributed to many families of employees.
The detachment was liquidated in a terrible panic. Under the news that the Soviet troops were already in Changchun, they loaded 15 trains of 20 cars each. Descriptions of experiments, drugs, jewelry (it has now been established that Ishii robbed the imperial army rather well). But most importantly, it was necessary to destroy all traces of the stay of this secret unit near Harbin.
The two buildings that I had to visit are all that remains of the whole secret city. In one place the corridor of the smaller one ends in ruins. The detachment buildings were blown up for a long time with the help of sappers. And before that, they destroyed all the prisoners and burned their corpses ...
On the night of departure, General Ishii slowly walked along the platform along the carriages with a candle in his hand and said to his subordinates: "Japan is defeated. We are returning you to your homeland. But under all conditions, you must keep the secret of Detachment 731. If someone does not keep it , then I - Ishii - will find such a person anywhere and deal with him. Got it? "
A well-fed life in exchange for results
But this was only a threat, although many of the detachment's employees, fulfilling the general's last order, without revealing the secrets of Detachment 731, died in poverty in peacetime.
Ishii himself, returning to Tokyo, opened a hotel. There he was found by the special services of the occupation forces. The Americans were jubilant: Ishii gave them valuable materials that could be used in further work on the bakurumen. A conclusion was sent to the Soviet side that the whereabouts of the leadership of Detachment 731, including Ishii, were unknown and there were no grounds to accuse the detachment of war crimes.
So many fanatical doctors escaped retribution, having perfectly settled in a peaceful life. In exchange for the results of the criminal research of Ishii and his henchmen, the United States not only saved their lives and saved them from the punishment they deserved, but also allowed them to live comfortably all the post-war years.
According to the press, at the beginning of the 1980s, when Morimura was writing his book, about 450 former employees of Detachment 731 and other similar formations occupied prominent positions in Japanese science, medicine, and industry. Among them were named R. Naito, president of the Green Cross pharmaceutical company, in which artificial blood was first created; one of the leading experts on the problem of human endurance in cold conditions H. Yoshimuru; Governor of Tokyo S. Suzuki and others.
This is what actually turned out to be a terrible in its cruelty and inhumanity story of two buildings of "detachment 731" preserved in Harbin, never told to me by a pretty Chinese guide.
From the editor
The history of Unit 731 continues. Two years ago, the Tokyo High Court rejected a lawsuit by ten Chinese citizens demanding that the Japanese government pay them 100 million yen (almost a million dollars) in compensation for the suffering caused by Japanese aggression in the last century. The plaintiffs identified themselves as victims and relatives of the victims of Unit 731.
And now China intends to apply to UNESCO with a request to include this Japanese concentration camp near Harbin in the list of protected historical monuments. However, the official application will be submitted after the area of \u200b\u200bthe museum is increased by about four times. Implementation of this plan will require about $ 60 million.