Home » Opinion » Chinese Views
Documentary on atrocities of Japanese Unit 731 triggers outrage and calls for reflection
Print Edition
A documentary recently released by Japan’s public broadcaster NHK has triggered heated discussions and calls for reflection upon war history in Japanese society.
The documentary, “The Truth of Harbin Unit 731,” reveals some of the outrageous crimes committed by Unit 731, a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development division of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.
Unit 731, notorious for cold-blooded lethal human experimentation, among other crimes, is a subject seldom touched on in Japan, with the authorities eager to cover up and even deny that part of history.
The documentary, released on August 13 by NHK, however, through testimonies of Unit 731 participants and authentic records of the Khabarovsk War Crimes Trials in 1949, vividly presents the cruel yet irrefutable historical truth to the unwitting public.
Unit 731 was based in the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city then in northeast China. The regiment, set up around 1936, conducted experiments on live human beings to test germ-releasing bombs and chemical explosives among other atrocities.
The majority of the victims were Chinese, while a small percentage of Soviet, Mongolian, Korean, and soldiers of the Allied Forces taken captive were also used as guinea pigs, and some of them were children.
The documentary, while irritating the ultra-rightwing forces, exposed many Japanese people to the truth of the war, and many started to reflect upon history.
An alarm for the present
While calling for the war crimes of Unit 731 to be remembered, scholars in Japan are alarmed the current situation has some similarities to those before the end of the war, especially as the government is attempting to revise the pacifist Constitution, and is allocating more funds for military research programs in universities.
During World War II, Japanese military and universities had rather close bonds, with the military providing research funds for the universities, while universities supplied the military with so-called “research talents.”
For instance, according to NHK, Kyoto University sent 37 medical researchers to help the invading Japanese army in China in 1936, and the yearly number rose to 75 in 1942. Other universities such as the University of Tokyo and Keio University were also sending an increasing number of researchers to the army.
“As the documentary showed, the best universities at that time in Japan all provided research personnel for the invading army and became accomplices to the war crimes,” said Hiroshi Onishi, a professor of economics at Keio University in Tokyo.
He added that the documentary sounded an alarm bell for the present, as Japan’s Defense Ministry started a research funding program called National Security Technology Research Promotion in the fiscal 2015, which assists and supports the research of technologies that could be used for military equipment.
“Budget for the program was 300 million yen (US$2.71 million) in fiscal 2015, 600 million yen in fiscal 2016, and surged to 11 billion yen in fiscal 2017,” said Onishi.
“While the government is cutting funds for fundamental research, the surge in budget for the funding program for military research could lead astray the research in universities and research institutions, especially public universities which rely on government support.”
Satoru Ikeuchi, professor emeritus at Nagoya University, said the researchers, once in the government funding program, have to report their findings to the Defense Ministry, and even after the sponsorship ends, follow-up surveys on the researcher could still be conducted, and researchers involved could hardly get rid of the influence of the Defense Ministry.
Japanese academic circles have been stepping up their protests against this research funding program. Science Council of Japan (SCJ), an organization set up in 1949 to represent Japan’s scientists both domestically and internationally, issued a statement in March, reiterating the commitment not to conduct analysis for military purposes, and calling for scientists not to join that program.
Takashi Okada, commentator from Japan’s Kyodo News, said that stepping up support for military research was consistent with the Abe administration’s previous policies including the attempts to revise pacifist Constitution, lifting the ban on collective self-defense rights, and allowing exports of military equipment by changing the “Three Principles on Arms Exports.”
If this trend goes on unchecked, academic freedom and independence would be infringed upon and the past mistakes of scholars becoming accomplices of war crimes could be repeated in Japan, a number of Japanese scholars told Xinhua.
“In this sense, records about the atrocities committed by Unit 731 should also be listed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, just like the documents about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, so that that historical lesson could never be forgotten,” Okada said.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
