Inconvenient Truth |
Unit 731 – Maruta Experiment |
by Minsu Kang |
I. Historical Background of Korea in 20th Century
A. Annexation of Korea
Early twentieth century, Japan, one of nations who believed in imperialism, colonized Korea with Japan-Korea Protocol of 1904 and Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty of 1907. In May 1910, the Minister of the Army of Japan, Terauchi Masatake set absolute Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty which finalized Japanese control over Korea after previous treaties. Lee Wan-Yong, Prime Minister of Korea, was forced to sign the treaty by Terauchi who became the first Japanese Governor-General of Korea.
B. Social Hierarchy between Japanese and Korean
After the annexation of Korea, Japan encouraged its people to immigrate to Korea by giving them extremely low price of land ownership which was taken from Korean people. Over its colonization period, Japanese land ownership jumped from 36.8% to 63.2%. The landowners were mostly Japanese, and the tenants were all Koreans. Korean tenants were forced to pay over half their crop as rent, and they were often forced to send wives and daughters to factories or to sell daughters into prostitution to pay for taxes.
II. Unit 731 and Maruta Experiment
A. Unit 731
Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army, based in Harbin, China during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
B. Maruta
Maruta refers to the people who were victimized by Unit 731 for human experiments. Most of them were Korean, Japanese, and Mongolian prisoners and citizens who were captured by the Imperial Japanese Army. Even some of American and Russian military forces who were captured were victimized for human experiments. Maruta means “log” in Japanese, which indicates that Japanese did not regard them as human beings but just subjects to their experiments.
1. Maruta was not given a human name. They were classified as experiment subjects with three digit numbers.
2. Maruta was provided nutritious meals; every meal included nourishing food, desserts, and even vitamin peels were provided to Maruta.
3. Maruta had to recover their health as soon as possible to be perfect subjects for the experiment.
C. Formation of Unit 731
The Imperial Japanese Army concluded that in order to occupy China, it was necessary to make the army as efficient as possible. For efficient battle, Japan came up with biochemical weapon to annihilate Chinese Protestant Army. Ishii Shiro, one of the most famed Japanese Bacteria scholars, was selected as the leader of Unit 731 for the mission of mass destruction weapon, biochemical weapons.
Ishii established the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory in a village 100km south of Harbin. In 1935, Ishii forced the villagers to leave the village and forced local males to build facilities for bacteria experiment. After the establishment, all of laborers were killed.
D. Maruta Experiments
Unit 731 conducted various experiments on human body in order to research the effects of disease and hazardous circumstances such as severe cold. The subjects, Maruta, to the experiments were diverse from infants, pregnant women to the elderly and the healthy.
1. Vivisection
Vivisection of Maruta was conducted without anesthesia in order to avoid the decomposition process would affect the results. At least two vivisections and autopsies were performed each day from 1936 to 1945, killing over 3,000 subjects of the experiments.
a. Maruta with diseases were vivisected.
b. Fetuses were removed from mothers’ wombs.
c. Maruta’s limbs were amputated to study blood loss.
d. Amputated limbs were often re-attached to the other side of body.
e. Maruta’s limbs were frozen and amputated.
f. Maruta’s limbs were frozen then thawed to study the result of untreated gangrene and rotting.
g. Maruta’s stomach was removed and the esophagus was directly connected to the intestines.
h. Some part of Maruta’s lungs, brain, and liver was removed.
2. Weapon
a. Human targets for grenades were positioned in different distance and angle.
b. Flame throwers were tested on humans.
c. Maruta were objects to test biochemical bombs.
3. Biochemical warfare tests
a. Maruta were injected with disease to study the effects of them, and the injection was disguised as vaccination.
b. Male and female Maruta were intentionally infected with syphilis and gonorrhea to study untreated venereal diseases.
c. Cholera, anthrax, Tularemia, and plague in bombs were dropped on various regions, resulting approximately 200,000 Chinese villagers.
4. Other experiments
a. Maruta were put into a centrifugal separator to study the movement of blood from body to outside of body.
b. Maruta were given a blood transfusion with bloods from different animals such as horses and monkeys.
c. Maruta were positioned in a line to test the piercing power of guns.
d. Maruta were put into a pressure room. The pressure of the room decreased until Marurta’s eyeballs and organs were popped out.
e. Maruta were not given any food or water to estimate the time it took.
f. Urine of horses was put into Maruta’s kidneys.
g. Sea water was put into Marutat’s body in order to test if sea water can replace saline.
E. The End of Unit 731
1. The Withdrawal of Unit 731
In 1945, Japan kept losing the battles so Unit 731 started to withdraw. Ishii destroyed every facility, kept important documents with him, and burned other documents. All of Maruta were killed and burned. Unit 731 dispersed bacteria even when they were withdrawing back to Japan.
2. The Result of Unit 731 after World War II
After World War II finished, one of Ishii’s subordinates, Kawashima was captured by soviet military and revealed about Unit 731. Ishii successfully returned to Japan and was put into war crimes trial held by the United States. However, an American general Douglas MacArthur exonerated the emperor of Japan Hirohito and Ishii with the condition of receiving every result of the experiments. The members of Unit 731 were granted the positions of professors and main surgeons in Japan and lived rest of their lives with honor and respect. Ishii became a doctor and used the results of Maruta experiments to medical science.
III. The violation of Catholic Social Teaching of Unit 731 and Maruta experiment
Apparently, Unit 731’s inhumane experiment severely violated Catholic Social Teaching. The dignity of human being was brutally ignored by Unit 731 members and Maruta, as its name means, was not considered as a human being but just a subject of experiment.
Even though the results of the experiments were also used to the advance of medical science, the experiment was extremely inhumane and the original goal of the experiments was the development of biochemical weapon. Therefore, Maruta experiment violated the second theme of Catholic Social Teaching, Common Good and Community.
Unit 731 and Maruta experiment ignored the Stewardship of God’s Creation as well. According to Catholic Social Teaching theme 7, “the goods of the earth are gifts from God, and they are intended by God for the benefit of everyone.” However, Unit 731 used the goods of the earth as a weapon to harm people.
IV. Conclusion
It is tragic that Maruta experiment was conducted. Unit 731’s inhumane experiments violated so many teaching of Catholic Church and destroyed numerous people’s lives. The reason why I researched about Unit 731 and Maruta experiment is to prevent them from being forgotten by people. We should be aware of this tragic incident to prevent it from happening again.
“History forgotten is the history destined to be repeated.”
–Mr. Steve Habetler
★ Resources ★
Naver Encyclopedia
Wikipedia – with validation from other sources
Written By Minsu Kang
