Japanese Atrocities in World War II

We may not like to admit it, but governments have a tendency to rewrite history. Whether it’s to hide atrocities, hide secret policies or because politicians get caught up in the corruption of money and power, it happens and the United States of America in no exception. In fact, over the last six decades the American and other government have kept hidden much of the atrocities committed by the Japanese during World War Two.

Such was the case when World War Two ended in 1945. American prisoners of war were ordered by US intelligence agents to sign a nondisclosure agreements stating that they would not reveal the atrocities committed against them by the Japanese Imperial Army (JIA): slave labor, be-headings, beatings, starvation and random killings, to mention a few. The American government was even more secretive about the Japan’s chemical and biological research conducted on human subjects, especially the research conducted on allied prisoners.

Although my book, Operation King Cobra, was written as historical fiction, it incorporates many startling facts that most military and history books don’t reveal about Japan’s infamous Unit 731, which conducted secret biological and chemical research using human subjects throughout Asia. Civilians, as well as allied POWs were subjected to experiment using horrific biological agents: diphtheria, glanders, encephalitis and small pox. Chemical weapons developed by Unit 731 were tested on civilian populations in northern China, eradicating entire villages. It is estimated that over 600,000 Chinese were exterminated by the Japanese.

In May 1945, an American B-29 bomber was shot down over southern Japan. The eight American airmen that survived were taken prisoner and made available for medical experiments at Kyushu Imperial University. After being infected, all eight American airmen were dissected organ by organ while they were still alive and without anesthesia being administered. One Japanese scientist’s statement on the biological experiments reads, “After infecting him, the researchers decided to cut him open to see what the disease does to a man’s inside. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. This was all in a day’s work for the surgeons…”

Why do history books focus mostly on the holocaust and German atrocities and not the atrocities committed by Japan? Could it be a government cover-up? Has anyone asked? Or could it be because the US government wanted to bring the leading Japanese biological and chemical research scientists to this country to create its own biological and chemical warfare program? And why hasn’t Japan acknowledged that they committed these atrocities and apologized for their missteps? You would think that it would be the politically correct thing to do, especially in today’s political environment. That will be the next topic of my blog.