Japanese Medical Atrocities and the Collaboration of the Scientific Elites: Postwar Perspectives

Abstract

This chapter discusses the postwar implications of Japanese medical atrocities and biological warfare, also known today as Unit 731. The crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial Army stopped after the empire collapsed in 1945, but none of the physicians, scientists, or army personnel who took part in these deeds were indicted or tried by the Americans. The most prominent of these men were given immunity in exchange for the data derived from their experiments, while others managed to disappear from public view. The aim of this chapter is to examine the reasons behind the absence of trials in Japan, as well as the circumstances that allowed these former war criminals to reintegrate into the Japanese scientific establishment. This will permit an analysis of the emergence of the memories of these crimes in postwar Japanese society. In turn, it will lead to the identification of the main actors who gradually led the population of Japan to discover after 1945 exactly what types of experiments Unit 731 conducted.