In this space last week, I
mentioned
the strange story of Takeo Tamiya, who, in becoming president of the
Japan Medical Association, rose to the highest pinnacle of the Japanese
medical profession in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
To say the least this was an undeserved triumph. With the possible
exception of Nazi Germany’s diabolical Dr. Josef Mengele, Tamiya must
rank as the most notorious medical doctor in history. The fact is he had
played a particularly significant role in Japan’s war effort as chief
recruiter for Unit 731, the Japanese imperial army’s notorious
biological warfare research organization. All the evidence is that he
was highly effective in persuading the brightest young medical graduates
to join the satanic effort.
As documented by, among other authors, Sheldon Harris (
Factories of Death), and Peter Williams and David Wallace (
Unit 731: The Japanese Army’s Secret of Secrets),
Unit 731 committed some of the most abominable war crimes in history.
In a shocking breach of one of the oldest and most universally observed
rules in medicine, Unit 731 used human beings as guinea pigs in
countless grotesquely cruel experiments.
The victims, most of them Chinese, may have numbered as
many as 12,000, according to Harris. Some were injected with horse
blood. Others died an agonizing death suspended upside down. One
unfortunate was placed in a centrifugal separator to extract the blood
from his body. Then there were the vivisection experiments — conducted
without an anesthetic As the war ended in August 1945, those human
guinea pigs who were still alive were summarily executed to keep Unit
731’s activities secret.
Police photograph of Dr. Josef Mengele: his Japanese counterpart was luckier. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
How come Tamiya went on to such a prestigious postwar career?
As the reaction to last week’s commentary has demonstrated,
apologists continue to this day to suggest that postwar Japan somehow
did not know who Tamiya was. For anyone familiar with Japan this is
simply not credible.
As the late Sheldon Harris, a historian at California State
University, has documented, the true significance of Unit 731’s “water
purification plant” in Manchuria, where the most notorious experiments
were conducted, was widely understood in the higher reaches of Japanese
society even during the war. Over a fifteen-year period – from 1930 to
1945 – Unit 731’s military chiefs often spoke to large audiences at army
medical colleges, civilian universities, and scientific conferences,
and made little secret of the fact that humans were used. On occasion,
they used motion pictures of human experiments and even showed preserved
human parts to make their point.
Writing in 1994, Harris explained: “Knowledge of BW [biological
warfare], including human experimentation, was shared by many Japanese
who belonged to a certain stratum of society. The military, the
scientific community, key elements within the Diet, and members of the
extended royal family were privy to the secret…Thousands, perhaps tens
of thousands, of army medical doctors, veterinarians, biologists,
chemists, microbiologists, technical staff, and the like were rotated
regularly to Manchuria and to occupied China. Many of these people were
employed in the human experiment stations, and either participated
directly in the experiments or were told about them by others who did
work with humans. At the least, they heard rumors concerning offensive
BW work with humans conducted in their workplace.”
Almost as soon as the war ended, Unit 731 leaders moved to do a deal
with the U.S. Army, and in return for sharing their knowledge they
received immunity from prosecution for war crimes. In a classic
illustration of how Americans allow themselves to be out-negotiated in
Japan, the deal was entered into by Colonel Murray Sanders, a young
medical officer, before he discovered that human guinea pigs had been
used.
Soon the truth began to leak out. In January 1946, the Japanese
press carried allegations by Japanese Communist Party leaders that
members of the Japanese army medical corps had infected Chinese and
American prisoners of war with bubonic plague. These were also reported
by the U.S. Army newspaper
Pacific Stars and Stripes and the
New York Times.
Then in a war crimes trial in the Soviet Union in 1949, many of the
most appalling details of Unit 731 emerged for the first time, when
twelve captured Japanese army officers were put on trial. Although the
trial was dismissed by the Japanese establishment as a show trial, the
Soviets subsequently demonstrated the validity of their charges beyond a
reasonable doubt by making a massive dossier available in several
languages including Japanese and English.
All this notwithstanding, Tamiya was appointed president of the Japan
Medical Association in 1950. Although his tenure was cut short by
officers of the American occupation, who forced him to stand down, as
soon as the occupation ended in 1952, he was reinstated. He therefore
ranked as the only person in the association’s history to serve two
separate spells as president.
Although Tamiya is far beyond justice — he died in 1963 — this does
not mean the case is closed. In a war in which particularly shocking
things were done on all sides, the Japanese medical profession’s role in
Unit 731 was uniquely shocking. If Americans have it within them to
atone for Hiroshima (Jimmy Carter and Nancy Pelosi have visited the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and U.S. Ambassador John Roos attended
commemoration ceremonies in 2010 and 2012), it is past time the Japanese
establishment got over its “amnesia” about Unit 731.
In this space last week, I
mentioned
the strange story of Takeo Tamiya, who, in becoming president of the
Japan Medical Association, rose to the highest pinnacle of the Japanese
medical profession in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
To say the least this was an undeserved triumph. With the possible
exception of Nazi Germany’s diabolical Dr. Josef Mengele, Tamiya must
rank as the most notorious medical doctor in history. The fact is he had
played a particularly significant role in Japan’s war effort as chief
recruiter for Unit 731, the Japanese imperial army’s notorious
biological warfare research organization. All the evidence is that he
was highly effective in persuading the brightest young medical graduates
to join the satanic effort.
As documented by, among other authors, Sheldon Harris (
Factories of Death), and Peter Williams and David Wallace (
Unit 731: The Japanese Army’s Secret of Secrets),
Unit 731 committed some of the most abominable war crimes in history.
In a shocking breach of one of the oldest and most universally observed
rules in medicine, Unit 731 used human beings as guinea pigs in
countless grotesquely cruel experiments.
The victims, most of them Chinese, may have numbered as
many as 12,000, according to Harris. Some were injected with horse
blood. Others died an agonizing death suspended upside down. One
unfortunate was placed in a centrifugal separator to extract the blood
from his body. Then there were the vivisection experiments — conducted
without an anesthetic As the war ended in August 1945, those human
guinea pigs who were still alive were summarily executed to keep Unit
731’s activities secret.
Police photograph of Dr. Josef Mengele: his Japanese counterpart was luckier. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
How come Tamiya went on to such a prestigious postwar career?
As the reaction to last week’s commentary has demonstrated,
apologists continue to this day to suggest that postwar Japan somehow
did not know who Tamiya was. For anyone familiar with Japan this is
simply not credible.
As the late Sheldon Harris, a historian at California State
University, has documented, the true significance of Unit 731’s “water
purification plant” in Manchuria, where the most notorious experiments
were conducted, was widely understood in the higher reaches of Japanese
society even during the war. Over a fifteen-year period – from 1930 to
1945 – Unit 731’s military chiefs often spoke to large audiences at army
medical colleges, civilian universities, and scientific conferences,
and made little secret of the fact that humans were used. On occasion,
they used motion pictures of human experiments and even showed preserved
human parts to make their point.
Writing in 1994, Harris explained: “Knowledge of BW [biological
warfare], including human experimentation, was shared by many Japanese
who belonged to a certain stratum of society. The military, the
scientific community, key elements within the Diet, and members of the
extended royal family were privy to the secret…Thousands, perhaps tens
of thousands, of army medical doctors, veterinarians, biologists,
chemists, microbiologists, technical staff, and the like were rotated
regularly to Manchuria and to occupied China. Many of these people were
employed in the human experiment stations, and either participated
directly in the experiments or were told about them by others who did
work with humans. At the least, they heard rumors concerning offensive
BW work with humans conducted in their workplace.”
Almost as soon as the war ended, Unit 731 leaders moved to do a deal
with the U.S. Army, and in return for sharing their knowledge they
received immunity from prosecution for war crimes. In a classic
illustration of how Americans allow themselves to be out-negotiated in
Japan, the deal was entered into by Colonel Murray Sanders, a young
medical officer, before he discovered that human guinea pigs had been
used.
Soon the truth began to leak out. In January 1946, the Japanese
press carried allegations by Japanese Communist Party leaders that
members of the Japanese army medical corps had infected Chinese and
American prisoners of war with bubonic plague. These were also reported
by the U.S. Army newspaper
Pacific Stars and Stripes and the
New York Times.
Then in a war crimes trial in the Soviet Union in 1949, many of the
most appalling details of Unit 731 emerged for the first time, when
twelve captured Japanese army officers were put on trial. Although the
trial was dismissed by the Japanese establishment as a show trial, the
Soviets subsequently demonstrated the validity of their charges beyond a
reasonable doubt by making a massive dossier available in several
languages including Japanese and English.
All this notwithstanding, Tamiya was appointed president of the Japan
Medical Association in 1950. Although his tenure was cut short by
officers of the American occupation, who forced him to stand down, as
soon as the occupation ended in 1952, he was reinstated. He therefore
ranked as the only person in the association’s history to serve two
separate spells as president.
Although Tamiya is far beyond justice — he died in 1963 — this does
not mean the case is closed. In a war in which particularly shocking
things were done on all sides, the Japanese medical profession’s role in
Unit 731 was uniquely shocking. If Americans have it within them to
atone for Hiroshima (Jimmy Carter and Nancy Pelosi have visited the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and U.S. Ambassador John Roos attended
commemoration ceremonies in 2010 and 2012), it is past time the Japanese
establishment got over its “amnesia” about Unit 731.
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