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Title: Unit 731 Testimony by Hal Gold ISBN: 4-900737-39-9 Publisher: Charles E Tuttle Co Pub. Date: March, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (21 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Powerful literature on disturing Japanese atrocities
Comment: Although the majority of literature on WWII atrocities focuses on Nazi Germany and it's "Final Solution," other horrible acts were being committed as well in Asia by the Russians and Japanese.
Among these were Stalin's Gulags, the Japanese comfort women, Bataan Death March and Rape of Nanking.
Gold's book, "Unit 731: Testimony," takes a look at another wartime atrocity the Japanese have refused to own up to for the past 50 years: a program set up by the military to experiment with biological weapons on humans and other heinous human tortures that were expounded as "scientific advancement."
Gold's book is divided into two sections, a Historical Overview in which he explains how the idea of a human experimentation lab began in the Russo-Japanese War and became a horrific reality due to one man, Ishii Shiro; and a second section in which testimonies are given on criminal acts by the participants, including researchers, Kenpeitai officers, nurses and professors.
The historical overview lays out factual groundwork of Unit 731 and gives explicit details on some of the experiments, including live autopsies, biological tests and frostbite trials; which is some of the most disturbing literature I have ever read. Even as the bilogical weapons scare makes the headlines today, Gold gives proof that this isn't a new event in the world as the Japanese unleashed fleas with the Cholera disease on the Chinese citizens. After the war is over in 1945, Gold continues to explain how Unit 731 was covered up (with American help), and how some of the war-time criminals became wealthy professors and businessmen in Japan and set up world-wide companies like Green Cross. Gold also discusses the Japanese's unwillingness to admit their guilt about such crimes and how the majority of the Japanese citizens either don't know of their country's war-time atrocities or scoff at such notions as unfair accusations. (And people wonder how there are nut-jobs out there who dispute the Holocaust as ever happening.)
The testimony section is equally as shocking in that the participants recall their brutal crimes with some even trying to defend their actions.
Overall, this is a very disturbing and powerful book that I highly recommend. It's one of those books where the reader is shocked as they read the words and a book that will force the reader to keep thinking about it even if they are not reading it at the time. I can only give it four stars though in that as Gold cites very good sources on Unit 731, including personal testimony, he hints at some very serious allegations about the US during the Korean War, including biological bombs dropped by US Troops and the creation of the AIDS virus by the American military, that he gives no evidence to. To throw out accusations like that should force the author into making two choices - backing it up with facts, documents, or other info - or leaving it out of the book.
Rating: 4
Summary: Recommened reading by nervegas.com
Comment: Unit 731 Testimonial is written as a sort of follow-up to a nationwide tour of the Unit 731 exhibition in Japan. This exhibition sought to educate Japanese citizens on what had been until recently an ignored part of their history.
What made these exhibits intereresting, and this book, is that it worked as a forum for veterans and victims alike to recount their stories. Privates, doctors, secret police all came out to speak (some anonimously) about their role in the horrific activities of Unit 731.
Unit 731 Testimonial does not describe the history of the Japanese Bilogical Warfare research. Rather it concentrates on the actual experiences of people involved in the human experiments. Some of those quoted were truly ignorant of what Unit 731 was really doing, others had suspicions, while a few knew in detail. Some of those quoted did not actually participate in Unit 731's activities, but had been personally involved in similar atrocities and compelled by the exhibit to recount.
Unit 731 is invaluable as a resource in understanding the mentality of the Japanese involved in BW related atrocities during World War II.
Rating: 5
Summary: A War Crimes Indictment for Japan and the USA
Comment: This book is probably not only an indictment of Japanese Human Biological Experiments but a condemnation of a US military industrial system that allowed the perpetrators to escape as long as the data fell into US hands and not the Soviets.
Basically before WWII the Japanese where world leaders in military medicine and during the Manchurian invasion took Chinese POWs to death camps for medical experimentation to advance science under the guidance of Professor Ishii Shiro, one of the most respected members of the Japanese medical community. The experiments were deemed so advantageous and necessary that the Japanese military built fortresses entirely devoted to human experimentation and bacteria stockpiling. This involved injecting a rat with a bacteria and then allowing a flea in a jar to feed on the rat. By creating stockpiles of infected fleas they would then design bombs to drop the fleas into towns and cities, but not before they experimented on POWs first. One experiment involved arranging POWs tied to crosses in circles in a field and then detonating the infected flea bombs in the centre to see how far the fleas could travel before infecting the host.
One of the most documented human experiment programs took place in a location called "Ping Fang" and included surgical work done on POWs not under anaesthetics, freezing POWs for frostbite tests and infecting POWs with Cholera, Epidemic Hemorrhagic Fever and THE PLAGUE all of which this book ties to the Japanese civil sector and the government under the control of a special branch called Unit 731.
This book even describes Japanese attempts at launching biological attacks on America and how after America took control of the Japans the whole thing was kept quiet so that the US military could get hold of the data as part of its Cold War. The second half of this important book is devoted entirely to witness testimony and confessions. The Japanese or US government have never admitted to these war crimes but the evidence is now available for everyone to see. Many of the death camps and human experimentation factories are still standing today. This is a pocket sized book, but an essential read. My only critic is that it does not contain some of the more famous photographs of Unit 731 in action.
This is an essential history lesson that is still a holocaust in denial.
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Title: Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up by Sheldon H. Harris ISBN: 0415932149 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 01 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang, William C. Kirby ISBN: 0140277447 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II (Transitions--Asia and Asian America) by Yuki Tanaka, Toshiyuki Tanaka, Yukiko Tanaka ISBN: 0813327180 Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: January, 1998 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War by George L. Hicks ISBN: 0393316947 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: October, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Good Man of Nanking : The Diaries of John Rabe by John Rabe ISBN: 0375701974 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 14 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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