"The Japanese right in the past decades has contested the veracity of individual confessional accounts by former soldiers and other types of documentation by researchers in their effort to deny that alleged heinous acts were ever committed in the name of Japan or of the Japanese emperor. However, it is an indisputable fact that the Japanese army leadership at the highest level sanctioned the establishment off Unit 731 for the purpose of researching and developing biological weapons. Furthermore, given the duration of Unit 731’s operations, given the well-established lines of communication between unit 731 and the army authorities at Tokyo, and given the transmission of human specimens taken from individuals used for medical experimentation from the former to the latter, one could reasonably infer that the Japanese army leadership at the highest levels knew and condoned the use of human guinea pigs, if not that they expressly authorized it. The share of responsibility for Unit 731’s activities on the part of Emperor Hirohito, in this regard, is worthy of further investigation. After all, Emperor Hirohito occupied the highest position in the Japanese army establishment for the entire duration of World War II in Asia and the Pacific, in his capacity as “the head of the Empire, combining in Himself the rights of sovereignty, and exercises them,” and concurrently assuming the “supreme command of the Army and Navy” (The Constitution of the empire of Japan, 1889-1947)."
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Unit 731
1937 – 1945
Unit 731 was a Japanese biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and later World War II. The unit is estimated to have killed 200,000 and 300,000 people. It was based in Harbin, Northeast China and had active branch offices throughout China and Southeast Asia.
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