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was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) of World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japan. Unit 731 was based at the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (now Northeast China). It was officially known as the . Originally set up under the ''Kempeitai'' military police of the Empire of Japan, Unit 731 was taken over and commanded until the end of the war by General Shiro Ishii, an officer in the Kwantung Army. The facility itself was built between 1934 and 1939 and officially adopted the name "Unit 731" in 1941. Between 3,000 and 250,000〔Japan unearths site linked to human experiments. ''Some historians estimate up to 250,000 people were subjected to experiments.'', http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/21/japan-excavates-site-human-experiments〕 men, women, and children〔〔Khabarovsk War Crime Trials. ''Materials on the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army Charged with Manufacturing and Employing Biological Weapons'', Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950. p. 117〕—from which around 600 every year were provided by the ''Kempeitai''〔Yuki Tanaka, ''Hidden Horrors'', Westviewpress, 1996, p.138〕—died during the human experimentation conducted by Unit 731 at the camp based in Pingfang alone, which does not include victims from other medical experimentation sites, such as Unit 100.〔(The Imperial Japanese Medical Atrocities and Its Enduring Legacy in Japanese Research Ethics )〕 Unit 731 veterans of Japan attest that most of the victims they experimented on were Chinese, Koreans and Mongolians. Almost 70% of the victims who died in the Pingfang camp were Chinese, including both civilian and military.〔(AII The War Crime "Unit 731" and Chinese, Korean Civilian. ci )〕 Close to 30% of the victims were Russian.〔(Seiichi Morimura, ''The Devil's Gluttony'', 1981 )〕 Some others were South East Asians and Pacific Islanders, at the time colonies of the Empire of Japan, and a small number of Allied prisoners of war.〔(The devil unit, Unit 731. ７３１部隊について )〕 The unit received generous support from the Japanese government up to the end of the war in 1945. Instead of being tried for war crimes, the researchers involved in Unit 731 were given immunity by the U.S. in exchange for their data on human experimentation.〔Hal Gold, ''Unit 731 Testimony'', 2003, p. 109〕 Some were arrested by Soviet forces and tried at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials in 1949. Americans did not try the researchers so that the information and experience gained in bio-weapons could be co-opted into the U.S. biological warfare program.〔Harris, S.H. (2002) ''Factories of Death. Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932—1945, and the American Cover-up'', revised edn. Routledge, New York, USA.〕 On 6 May 1947, Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, wrote to Washington that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'War Crimes' evidence."〔 Victim accounts were then largely ignored or dismissed in the West as Communist propaganda.〔(The World: Revisiting World War II Atrocities; Comparing the Unspeakable to the Unthinkable ). New York Times〕 == Formation == In 1932, General Shirō Ishii (石井四郎 ''Ishii Shirō''), chief medical officer of the Japanese Army and protégé of Army Minister Sadao Araki was placed in a command of the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory. Ishii organized a secret research group, the "Tōgō Unit", for various chemical and biological experimentation in Manchuria. Ishii had proposed the creation of a Japanese biological and chemical research unit in 1930, after a two-year study trip abroad, on the grounds that Western powers were developing their own programs. One of Ishii's main supporters inside the army was Colonel Chikahiko Koizumi, who later became Japan's Health Minister from 1941 to 1945. Koizumi had joined a secret poison gas research committee in 1915, during World War I, when he and other Japanese army officers were impressed by the successful German use of chlorine gas at the second battle of Ypres, where the Allies suffered 15,000 casualties as a result of the chemical attack.〔Williams, Peter, and Wallace, David (1989). ''Unit 731''. Grafton Books, p. 44. ISBN 0-586-20822-4〕 Unit Tōgō was implemented in the Zhongma Fortress, a prison/experimentation camp in Beiyinhe, a village south of Harbin on the South Manchurian Railway. A jailbreak in autumn 1934 and later explosion (believed to be an attack) in 1935 led Ishii to shut down Zhongma Fortress. He received the authorization to move to Pingfang, approximately south of Harbin, to set up a new and much larger facility. In 1936, Hirohito authorized, by imperial decree, the expansion of this unit and its integration into the Kwantung Army as the Epidemic Prevention Department.〔Daniel Barenblat, ''A plague upon humanity'', 2004, p.37.〕 It was divided at the same time into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit" with a base in Hsinking. From August 1940, all these units were known collectively as the "Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (関東軍防疫給水部本部)"〔Yuki Tanaka, ''Hidden Horrors'', 1996, p.136〕 or "Unit 731" (満州第731部隊) for short. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Unit 731」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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