Last June, Japan's ministry of education ordered editors of textbooks for use in senior high schools and down to revise the descriptions of Japanese aggression and atrocities committed during World War Ⅱ in an attempt to exonerate the country from its responsibility. This immediately aroused an outcry among the victimized nations and peoples, from the Republic of Korea in the north to Hong Kong in the south, and including some conscientious Japanese themselves.
Actually, the Japanese began to distort their history of aggression even before the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, which triggered an all-out war with the Republic of China. They coined such euphemistic terms as: "economic cooperation," and "joint efforts against Communism." After the war, they dismissed their aggression against China and other countries with the excuse that "the military men acted against government policy." Gen. Douglas C. MacArthur knew the Japanese character well. After the war, he ordered restraints on the Japanese militarist tendency by censoring textbooks. In addition, he prepared for the Japanese a peaceful constitution, under which war is prohibited.
Unfortunately, the United States was forced to rearm Japan after the outbreak of the Korean war in order to contain Communist expansion. Japan could not build up its army, but it has boosted its military strength in general.
Now, Japan has become a global economic giant. This has engendered a sense of superiority in the hearts of Japanese industrialists and businessmen. They have started to condemn anti-war elements for uglifying wartime Japan. Undoubtedly, they are also unhappy with the peace-oriented constitution. This lies at the heart of the education ministry's textbook revisions. Even earlier, Tojo, the most heinous war criminal, and prime minister of wartime Japan, had been enshrined as a national hero to be worshiped by all the people.
The war brought disasters not only to China, Korea, the Philippines and Singapore, but also to Japan itself. The Japanese who suffered came to realize there was an urgent need to educate future generations so they would not repeat wartime errors. This realization has fueled the fury of conscientious Japanese over the textbook revisions. The Japan Times said that Japanese children have the right to know how Japan behaved in violation of international criteria, and how the country was almost ruined in the resulting catastrophe.
On July 31, the Government of the Republic of China filed a protest through the Association of East Asian Relations. People in Taipei held protest rallies and signed a protest document to demonstrate their opposition to the revisions. Two civic bodies held exhibitions to expose Japanese atrocities which were perpetrated after the Mukden Incident of Sept. 18, 1931, the day Japan launched an offensive to dislodge Chinese troops in the northeastern provinces, better known as Manchuria.
When Japanese troops captured Nanking, capital of the Republic of China, they unleashed a massacre in an attempt to force the Chinese to submit. A quarter of a million citizens, old and young, men and women, were killed. The Japanese flaunted a picture showing a smug soldier holding high a Chinese baby skewered on a fixed bayonet.
These accounts reveal great cruelty, but they are dwarfed by Japan's own records. In Nov. 1981, a Japanese author published in Japanese a book whose title translates as "A Gluttonous Feast of Demons," describing how the Japanese in Manchuria conducted bacteriological and death experiments on Chinese and Koreans in Manchuria. It became an instant bestseller, with a circulation of more than a million in less than four months.
The conquest of China had long been Japan's primary objective. This ambitious goal was threatened, however, by China's unification in 1928 under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's leadership. The Chinese government launched a gigantic national construction program and encouraged Chinese citizens to resettle in Manchuria. Fearing that China would become increasingly strong, the Japanese militarists mounted an unabashed offensive in Manchuria, dislodging Chinese influence and establishing a puppet regime which they called Manchukuo.
After capturing Manchuria, Japan began to feel it could not subdue and occupy China by conventional means. Therefore, it established a mysterious unit with the code name "Togo" to develop germ warfare. In 1933, it established its first germ warfare unit in the suburbs of Harbin, Manchuria, and euphemistically called it the "quarantine squad" of the expeditionary force. In 1936, the year before an all-out invasion against China proper, the squad was expanded into a "quarantine department." In the Pingfang area, 20 kilometers south of Harbin, the Japanese established a "special military zone," which served as head-quarters for germ warfare. This was called "the quarantine and water supply department" of the Japanese expeditionary force in Manchuria or Manchurian 731 unit. Five branches were set up at Mutankiang, Sunwu, Likou, Dairen and Halar, all in Manchuria.
The Japanese military authorities assembled 2,600 technicians and research workers to serve in the unit with scholars of the medical school of Kyodo Imperial University as its backbone. This was a large-scale germ laboratory. Without the permission of the highest Japanese commander in Manchuria, no one was allowed to enter the area.
Chinese, Korean and also some Russian "prisoners" were held in two two-story buildings to serve as experimental "stock." All told, more than 1,000 experiments were carried out. The following are some of the most notorious:
Experiment on reversing the position of the intestines and stomach so a man's reaction to such physical changes could be observed.
Blood experiment-one end of the artery was connected to a centrifugal apparatus to remove every drop of blood from the body to be made into serum.
Vacuum experiment--To record with 16 mm movie camera the physical effects of placing a man in a vacuum.
Experiment on blood interchange--To transfuse animal blood into the human body.
Penetration experiment--"Prisoners" were forced to form a single file and then shot from the front to measure the penetrating power of a bullet.
Hunger experiment--To measure how long a man would live after he was deprived of all food and given water only. Another experiment--reversed the procedure.
Dehydration experiment--A man was weighed before and after being put in a dehydration room to determine the proportion of moisture in his body.
According to Prof. Hsu Chieh-lin of National Taiwan University, the 731 unit experimented with the anatomies of three men every two days on average in the period between 1941 and 1945, during which about 3,000 men were victimized.
Besides these laboratory experiments, the Japanese injected bacteria into plants on the Manchurian plains, and countless numbers of civilians died mysteriously.
All the prisoners were poisoned and their bodies soaked in gasoline and burned before the Japanese troops left. The buildings were dynamited in an attempt to destroy all evidence. Medical reports, films and slides were sent to Japan, however, and these finally fell into the hands of U.S. forces.
This account represents only the tip of the iceberg as far as Japanese wartime atrocities are concerned. But the horror is engraved in the hearts of the Chinese people as well as recorded on paper, and in films and books. It cannot be erased by the current Japanese whitewash attempt.
[Picture Caption]
1: Prof. Hsu Chieh-lin talks about atrocities committed by the 731 Unit. 2: The 731 Unit's headquarters for germ warfare. 3: Japanese "medical" researchers at work. 4: After they were of no further use, the Japanese burnt the bodies of their victims to destroy all traces of Japanese atrocities.
1,2,3: Leaders of the 731 Unit. 4: The Japanese surprisingly considered experimenting on living humans of great medical benefit; no wonder they would celebrate at the end of each experiment. 5: Japanese M.P.'s forced this child to stand at attention with a rifle. 6: Chinese prisoners were used for bayonet practice.
Top: During the War of Resistance, the citizens of Nanchang faced death and destruction. Bottom: Nanking after a bombing run.
The 731 Unit's headquarters for germ warfare.
Japanese "medical" researchers at work.
After they were of no further use, the Japanese burnt the bodies of their victims to destroy all traces of Japanese atrocities.
Leaders of the 731 Unit.
Leaders of the 731 Unit.
Leaders of the 731 Unit.
The Japanese surprisingly considered experimenting on living humans of great medical benefit; no wonder they would celebrate at the end of each experiment.
Japanese M.P.'s forced this child to stand at attention with a rifle.
Chinese prisoners were used for bayonet practice.
During the War of Resistance, the citizens of Nanchang faced death and destruction.
Nanking after a bombing run.
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