Event 2: Unit 731 Museum

For the second event, I went to the Unit 731 Museum in Harbin, China. Unit 731 was a Japanese army unit that was devoted to chemical research and experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The museum is built at the old site of where the actual Unit existed. I will give a brief background about Unit 731. The Unit mainly concerned with creating chemicals that can be used in the war with Chinese people. The soldiers in the Unit would capture random Chinese citizens and do experimentations, such as injection of germs into the bloodstream, dissection without anesthesia, and frozen experiment.

(The front sign of the museum)

(Me with the ticket)

(Front view of the main building)

(This is a video that was displayed in the museum. I found the clip on Youtube. It was originally from the movie Man Behind the Sun. The video can be very disturbing for some people so I will summarize it a bit here. Basically in the video, two Japanese soldiers left a Chinese woman out in the cold during the winter (Harbin can go down to -22 to -40 degrees Fahrenheit. They poured cold water on her hands to exacerbate the frozen process. Then, after going inside of the laboratory, the woman was required to dip her hands in 59 degrees Fahrenheit water. After doing so, the Japanese scientist easily peeled off the skin on her hands. The point of the experiment was to find the perfect temperature of water in which they can peel off the skin.)

In the museum, there are many pictures and documentations of the experiments done by the Japanese army. There are also remnants of the tools, clothes, bombs, and medical containers left by the Unit. Because the existence of this Unit was top secret, they tried to bomb the building before they left. However, they only destroyed part of the place before the Chinese army came in and preserved the rest.

(The front of bombs)

(Guns and grenades)

(Japanese gas mask)

While looking through the various documentations of the types of experiments and chemicals used to torture the Chinese citizens, I thought of the lesson about medicine and art. As we discussed in class, medicine is supposed to be used to help people and save lives, as promised by the Hippocratic Oath. However, the Japanese people wrongly used medical researches to develop chemicals weapons to do evil deeds. This violates the morals that doctors and scientists should follow.

(Pictures of victims with injuries resulted from chemical weapons)

(Model of Japanese Scientists burning dead bodies)

(Model of Japanese Scientists dissecting)

There is a chart that documented all of the experiments done on the Chinese people. Some of the experiments were designed just for fun in the Japanese army’s eyes. One of the experiments that especially hit me was the oxygen test. The Japanese soldiers would place a live person into a closed space and then slowly suck the oxygen out of the space. They would record down the amount of time needed for the person to die. The experiment served no purpose and was done just for fun.

(Oxygen test)

The museum also displayed a chart that shows all the toxic agents that they have tested on the Chinese citizens. The main purpose of Unit 731 was to come up with chemical weapons that can wipe out large scales of Chinese armies. Japanese soldiers would tie Chinese people on wooden sticks and then drop weapons with toxic agents inside. After getting in contact with the weapons, the Chinese citizens will become infected or injured by the toxic. A model that hit me the most was one with a Japanese soldier and a horse. The Japanese army gave the horse a gas mask, yet they test chemical weapons on live Chinese people. They treated the Chinese people as lower than horses and animals. To them, Chinese are nothing but pieces of trash.

(Toxic agent chart)

(Dropping toxic bombs)

From the remnants left by the Japanese scientists, we can see that medical researches were very advanced in Japan at that time. They had various medical tools that enabled them to perform difficult experiments. One of the remnants that the Chinese government found was documentation of toxic agents left by Japanese scientists. In those documents, the scientists had detailed drawings of various body parts, cells, and effects that different toxic will produce on human body.

  (Utensils)

 (Documentation)

There are many more displays that are very brutal and heartbreaking. Through touring this museum, I begin to understand why some older generation Chinese people despise Japan so much. Although I don’t have much negative feelings towards Japan, I do feel that they have wrongly used medicine as a medium to kill people and that the Chinese people deserve apologies from them.