Unit 731- Poisoned Wells in Manchukuo

Unit 731, or officially known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (1935-1945), was a Japanese undercover unit in charge of biological warfare research for the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War of World War II. Led by Lieutenant-General Ishii Shiro, Unit 731 conducted some of the most notorious

war crimes and lethal human experiments in its headquarters in Harbin, which was at that time a city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, in spite of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 which banned both biological and chemical warfare. The unit received great support from the Japanese government up to the end of the war in 1945.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Unit 731 performed both inter-facility and field experiments which caused a death toll of 3000 and tens of thousands respectively. The field experiments targeting both military and civilians were carried out in ways such as but not limited to the poisoning of the wells and reservoir with typhoid and other pathogens. It is verified by the veterans of Japan that approximately 70% of the victims who died in the numerous experiments were Chinese, whereas close to 30% were Russian. A part of the victims were South-East Asian which was during the time living in colonies of the Empire of Japan, and a small number of Allied prisoners of

war.

The researchers in the Unit 731 were secretly given immunity by the U.S. after war in exchange of the various data gathered in the inhuman experiments. No prisoners survived the experiments after the war ended.