Editing Unit 731 (section)

=== Weapons testing ===
Human targets were used to test [[grenade]]s positioned at various distances and in various positions. [[Flamethrower]]s were tested on people.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hickey |first1=Doug |last2=Li |first2=Scarllet Sijia |last3=Morrison |first3=Ceila |last4=Schulz |first4=Richard |last5=Thiry |first5=Michelle |last6=Sorensen |first6=Kelly |date=April 2017 |title=Unit 731 and Moral Repair |doi=10.1136/medethics-2015-103177 |journal=Journal of Medical Ethics |volume=43 |issue=4 |pages=270–276|pmid=27003420 |s2cid=20475762 }}</ref> Victims were also tied to stakes and used as targets to test [[Germ warfare|pathogen-releasing bombs]], [[chemical weapon]]s, shrapnel bombs with varying amounts of fragments, and explosive bombs as well as [[bayonet]]s and knives.

{{Blockquote|To determine the best course of treatment for varying degrees of shrapnel wounds sustained on the field by Japanese Soldiers, Chinese prisoners were exposed to direct bomb blasts. They were strapped, unprotected, to wooden planks that were staked into the ground at increasing distances around a bomb that was then detonated. It was surgery for most, autopsies for the rest.|Unit 731, Nightmare in Manchuria<ref>Monchinski, Tony (2008). ''Critical Pedagogy and the Everyday Classroom''. Volumen 3 de Explorations of Educational Purpose. Springer, p. 57. {{ISBN|1402084625}}</ref><ref>Neuman, William Lawrence (2008). ''Understanding Research''. Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, p. 65. {{ISBN|0205471536}}</ref>}}

==== Frostbite testing ====
[[File:Scan Of Yoshimura Hisato's Frostbite Research Data.png|thumb|Scan of [[Yoshimura Hisato]]'s [[frostbite]] research data]]

Army Engineer Hisato Yoshimura<!--Yoshimura is the family name as per http://www.lit.osaka-cu.ac.jp/user/tsuchiya/gyoseki/presentation/UNESCOkumamoto07.html, but this article should generally use Western order for Japanese people.--> conducted experiments by taking captives outside, dipping various appendages into water of varying temperatures, and allowing the [[Frostbite|limb to freeze]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lit.osaka-cu.ac.jp/user/tsuchiya/gyoseki/presentation/UNESCOkumamoto07.html|title=Self Determination by Imperial Japanese Doctors|website=www.lit.osaka-cu.ac.jp|access-date=2019-05-31|archive-date=2019-05-31|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190531063454/http://www.lit.osaka-cu.ac.jp/user/tsuchiya/gyoseki/presentation/UNESCOkumamoto07.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Once frozen, Yoshimura would strike their affected limbs with a short stick, "emitting a sound resembling that which a board gives when it is struck".<ref name="Kristor" /> Ice was then chipped away, with the affected area being subjected to various treatments. Military personnel of the Unit referred to Yoshimura as a "scientific devil" and a "cold-blooded animal" due to his strictness and involvement in mass killings and inhumane scientific tests, which included soaking the fingers of a three-day-old child in water containing ice and salt.<ref>{{cite book |last1=LaFleur| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gGQYOvo9-AsC&q=Yoshimura+ |first1=William |last2=Böhme |first2=Gernot |last3=Shimazono |first3=Susumu |title=Dark medicine: rationalizing unethical medical research |date=2007 |publisher=Indiana University Press|pages=76–77 |location=US| isbn=978-0-253-22041-7 }}</ref>

Naoji Uezono, a member of Unit 731, described in a 1980s interview a grisly scene where Yoshimura had "two naked men put in an area 40–50 degrees below zero and researchers filmed the whole process until [the subjects] died. [The subjects] suffered such agony they were digging their nails into each other's flesh."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Emanuel |first1=Ezekiel |last2=Grady |first2=Christine |last3=Crouch |first3=Robert |last4=Lie |first4=Reidar |last5=Miller |first5=Franklin |title=The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics |date=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=US|page=36}}</ref> Yoshimura's lack of remorse was evident in an article he wrote for the Japanese Journal of Physiology in 1950 in which he admitted to using 20 children and a three-day-old infant in experiments which exposed them to zero-degree-Celsius ice and salt water.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Yoshimura |first1=Hisato |last2=Iida |first2=Toshiyuki |title=Studies on the Reactivity of Skin Vessels to Extreme Cold |date=1950 |publisher=Japanese Journal Of Physiology |location=Japan}}</ref> Although this article drew criticism, Yoshimura denied any guilt when contacted by a reporter from the ''[[Mainichi Shimbun]]''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kei-ichi |first1=Tsuneishi |last2=Asano |first2=Tomizo |title=Kieta saikin-sen butai to jiketsu shita futari no igakusha |script-title=ja:消えた細菌戦部隊と自決した二人の医学者|trans-title=The biological warfare unit and two physicians who committed suicide |language=ja |date=1982 |publisher=Shinchosha |location=Tokyo |isbn=9784103440017}}</ref>

Yoshimura developed a "resistance index of frostbite" based on the mean temperature 5 to 30&nbsp;minutes after immersion in freezing water, the temperature of the first rise after immersion, and the time until the temperature first rises after immersion. In a number of separate experiments it was then determined how these parameters depend on the time of day a victim's body part was immersed in freezing water, the surrounding temperature and humidity during immersion, how the victim had been treated before the immersion ("after keeping awake for a night", "after hunger for 24 hours", "after hunger for 48 hours", "immediately after heavy meal", "immediately after hot meal", "immediately after muscular exercise", "immediately after cold bath", "immediately after hot bath"), what type of food the victim had been fed over the five days preceding the immersions with regard to dietary nutrient intake ("high protein (of animal nature)", "high protein (of vegetable nature)", "low protein intake", and "standard diet"), and salt intake (45&nbsp;g NaCl per day, 15&nbsp;g NaCl per day, no salt).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Eckart |first1=Wolfgang |title=Man, Medicine, and the State: The Human Body as an Object of Government Sponsored Medical Research in the 20th Century |date=2006 |publisher=Franz Steiner Verlag |page=191}}</ref> This original data is seen in the attached figure.

==== Syphilis ====
Unit members orchestrated forced sex acts between infected and non-infected prisoners to transmit the disease, as the testimony of a prison guard on the subject of devising a method for transmission of [[syphilis]] between victims shows:

{{blockquote|Infection of venereal disease by injection was abandoned, and the researchers started forcing the prisoners into sexual acts with each other. Four or five unit members, dressed in white laboratory clothing completely covering the body with only eyes and mouth visible, rest covered, handled the tests. A male and female, one infected with syphilis, would be brought together in a cell and forced into sex with each other. It was made clear that anyone resisting would be shot.<ref name="gold-testimony"/>}}

After victims were infected, they were vivisected at different stages of infection, so that internal and external organs could be observed as the disease progressed. Testimony from multiple guards blames the female victims as being hosts of the diseases, even as they were forcibly infected. Genitals of female prisoners that were infected with syphilis were called "jam-filled buns" by guards.<ref name="gold-testimony"/>

Some children grew up inside the walls of Unit&nbsp;731, infected with syphilis. A Youth Corps member deployed to train at Unit&nbsp;731 recalled viewing a batch of subjects that would undergo syphilis testing: "one was a Chinese woman holding an infant, one was a [[White émigré#In China|White Russian]] woman with a daughter of four or five years of age, and the last was a White Russian woman with a boy of about six or seven."<ref name="gold-testimony"/> The children of these women were tested in ways similar to their parents, with specific emphasis on determining how longer infection periods affected the effectiveness of treatments.

==== Rape and forced pregnancy ====
Female prisoners were forced to become pregnant for use in experiments. The hypothetical possibility of [[vertical transmission]] (from mother to child) of diseases, particularly syphilis, was the stated reason for the torture. Fetal survival and damage to mother's reproductive organs were objects of interest. Though "a large number of babies were born in captivity", there have been no accounts of any survivors of Unit&nbsp;731, children included. It is suspected that the children of female prisoners were killed after birth or [[Abortion|aborted]].<ref name="gold-testimony"/>

While male prisoners were often used in single studies, so that the results of the experimentation on them would not be clouded by other variables, women were sometimes used in bacteriological or physiological experiments, sex experiments, and as the victims of [[sex crimes]]. The testimony of a unit member that served as a guard graphically demonstrated this reality:

{{blockquote|One of the former researchers I located told me that one day he had a human experiment scheduled, but there was still time to kill. So he and another unit member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. One of the unit members raped her; the other member took the keys and opened another cell. There was a Chinese woman in there who had been used in a frostbite experiment. She had several fingers missing and her bones were black, with [[gangrene]] set in. He was about to rape her anyway, then he saw that her sex organ was festering, with [[pus]] oozing to the surface. He gave up the idea, left and locked the door, then later went on to his experimental work.<ref name="gold-testimony"/>}}