READER DISCRETION REQUIRED : The following content would include some very disturbing experiences and anecdotes from history of biological warfare and hence, might disturb readers mentally and emotionally. People who are afraid of reading such content, may kindly stop here itself
When the whole world is going frenzy over weather COVID-19 is a biological warfare programme which got out of human control, we all forgot that one person who is responsible for killing over 10 million people in Occupied China under the Imperial Japanese Army. It wasn’t a massacre by the edge of a sword or bullets of a gun, but through smaller, invisible but far deadlier microorganisms. The person, who cleverly masterminded this, is none other than Surgeon General Shirō Ishii, who spearheaded the infamous Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), responsible for developing biological weapons to the then ongoing Second World War.
Born to Katsuya Ishii, a wealthy landlord, on 25th June 1892, Ishii was both a good academician as well as a very patriotic person. Unlike most people of Japanese ethnicity, Ishii was rather tall, almost 6”1’, and had an exceptionally strong photographic memory. He excelled in his studies back in his home town Chiba. Ishii served as a field medical officer with the IJA starting from 1922. Furthermore he even qualified with a PhD in microbiology from the University of Kyoto in 1927. He was disliked by his peers and students, because he used to perform experiments with the remaining equipment, left uncleaned by his students, but leaving it dirty himself. He was also known to be growing “bacterium pets”, during his post graduate studies in the University of Kyoto
When it seemed that war in China was imminent, Ishii proposed the idea for setting up a biological warfare unit in order to use Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), against potential enemies. He extensively toured the Western countries, to understand how would his experiments impact warfare, which he determined to be quite valuable.
When Japan advanced into the Ping Fang city in Harbin province in 1935, a separate installation was set up by the Kempeitai, the IJA’s secret police department, to overlook experimentation. Already the Japanese were infamous for being brutal in their executions, this unit became an icing on the cake. The unit was responsible for bringing in epidemics upon epidemics in North East China, to massacre the Chinese, who were against the invasion. Ishii would also be the first to use Anthrax as a biological weapon in China. This is just a part of something which would be known as “Nanking Massacre” as a whole.
Ishii was known to be very ruthless. He used to oversee dreaded experiments by himself. Some of his ruthless experiments included exposing victims to frostbite, leading to gangrene, and futher amputation without anaesthetic, until only the head and the torso were left. The remaining body, still alive, would be injected with bubonic plague, and dissected without any anaesthetic, to observe how the disease spread across the body. The body was then let to rot outside the facility and then buried in mass graves. Other experiments incuded forces pregnancies, gassing subjects with airborne diseases, making rats eat away subjects to death, pressurising the human body until the subjects eyeballs popped out of the skull. One such surgeon recollected how he smashed a skull open, with an axe, because Colonel Ishii wanted a brain to experiment on. None were spared, from infants to senior citizens.
When the war began to change tides, Shirō personally ordered the facility to be destroyed, and let the bubonic rats free. Hs even ensured that tanks containing dangerous gases be exploded, so that it would contaminate the surrounding areas. The impact of this decision is still observable to this date. He managed to escape arrest until 1946, when the Americans identified and arrested him, but unlike other war criminals, he was given immunity against sharing his research with American pharmaceutical companies, the main of which was how to cure frostbites with minimal medical attention.
Shirō died on 9th October 1959, due to cancer in Tokyo. Upon further research on his childhood, it seemed eminent that most of Ishii’s behaviour was due to the way he was nurtured. He suffered from Antisocial Personal Disorder, which made him extremely ruthless in his experiments. It is also quite common amongst people od his generation to be ruthless, as there was a cultural change in Japan, which glorified the “Bushido” od the warriors code, and expected soldiers to be extremely loyal to the emperor and be ruthless on the battlefield. He is still considered as one of the most intelligent pathologist, but that his deeds have brought him a very bad reputation amongst the kith and kin of those who died under his cruelty…
Arjun Writes 