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April 12

Did any human subject of Unit 731 survive to talk about his or her experience?

There are a lot of notable Holocaust survivors who have talked about their experiences, but are there any notable Unit 731 survivors? 95.144.204.68 (talk) 16:26, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Heaven knows that I'm no expert in this grisly subject, but in reading Wikipedia's Unit 731 article itself, I found three statements that there were no such survivors at the main complex. (I don't know about its branch units in other places.

1. in the Information Box at the top:

"Deaths

Estimated 200,000 or 300,000

400,000 or higher from biological warfare

Over 3,000 from inside experiments from each unit (not including branches, 1940–1945 only)

At least 10,000 prisoners died

No documented survivors"

2, at the end of the second lead (top) paragraph:

"Estimates of those killed by Unit 731 and its related programs range up to half a million people, and none of the inmates survived."

3 in the section on Destruction of Evidence:

'Potential witnesses, such as the 300 remaining prisoners, were either gassed or fed poison while the 600 Chinese and Manchurian laborers were shot. Ishii ordered every member of the group to disappear and "take the secret to the grave".'—— Shakescene (talk) 17:47, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Shakescene, Wait, there are no recorded survivors. What if there are Unit 731 survivors but they just never talked about their experiences, because there are a lot of missing Holocaust survivors out there. 95.144.204.68 (talk) 18:19, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In the absence of evidence, any such "what if" is just guesswork at best. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:51, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Baseball Bugs, well what do you think, do you think any of the "logs" survived Unit 731 or do you think they all died. 95.144.204.68 (talk) 19:12, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What do the sources say? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:20, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Japanese assured that no Allied personnel could encounter survivors of Unit 731, because they left no survivors.^[1] --136.56.52.157 (talk) 20:08, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

However, the Guardian mentions The campaign to force the Japanese to admit what happened in Unit 731 and award the 180 survivors...; and the article relates the testaments of the survivors of Japan's notorious Unit 731.^[2] This seem to relate to the aftermath of intentional release of pathogenic agents rather than actual inmates of Unit 731. --136.56.52.157 (talk) 20:35, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

People survived the Holocaust because concentration camp guards abandoned the camps when it became clear that allied troops were coming. That doesn't seem to have happened with Unit 731. The retreat of the Japanese there seems to have been far more organised, e.g. they left behind a skeleton crew to demolish the buildings. There were also far fewer people there at the time of the abandonment. So killing all remaining survivors and demolishing the infrastructure was more feasible than it was for many European concentration camps. And of course the entire operation was far smaller than the system of concentration camps in Europe. Random person no 362478479 (talk) 01:35, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I heard that the only known survivors of Unit 731 are the ones who escaped from the Zhongma Fortress in 1934 (or 1939 according to Gold) during the Tsukimi. I also heard they joined Communist Resistance. 95.144.204.68 (talk) 13:56, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I did find this:^[3]

In 1934, a prisoner at Zhongma managed to overpower a guard and take his keys. He then freed forty of his fellow prisoners and scaled the walls of the fortress. Many of the prisoners attempting to escape were shot or recaptured, but a few managed to get away and spread the word of what was going on inside the prison. This escape and loss of secrecy lead Ishii and his superiors to close down their research at Zhongma and move to a new facility.

That source seems a bit too "pop-history" to be entirely reliable, IMO. --136.56.52.157 (talk) 21:06, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Brody, H; Leonard, SE; Nie, JB; Weindling, P (April 2014). "U.S. responses to Japanese wartime inhuman experimentation after World War II". Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics : CQ : the international journal of healthcare ethics committees. 23 (2): 220–30. doi:10.1017/S0963180113000753. PMID 24534743.
^ Hill, Amelia (2 March 2003). "The day the earth died". The Observer. The Guardian.
^ Redd, Wyatt (26 October 2017). "The True Story Behind Japan's WWII Human Experiment Division". History Collection.

[1] Brody, H; Leonard, SE; Nie, JB; Weindling, P (April 2014). "U.S. responses to Japanese wartime inhuman experimentation after World War II". Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics : CQ : the international journal of healthcare ethics committees. 23 (2): 220–30. doi:10.1017/S0963180113000753. PMID 24534743.

[2] Hill, Amelia (2 March 2003). "The day the earth died". The Observer. The Guardian.

[3] Redd, Wyatt (26 October 2017). "The True Story Behind Japan's WWII Human Experiment Division". History Collection.

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