Unit 731

In the beginning of the quarter, Christine briefly mentioned 'Unit 731' which was a "unit" or group of Japanese "doctors" mostly located in China, who did chemical and surgical experimentation on non-Japanese Asians without anesthesia. The Japanese Imperialist Army funded such experimentation. I was somewhat weirdly intrigued by this grotesque part of history because we've been focusing a lot on the injustices on the Japanese people in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and on the Lucky Dragon fishing boat in 1954. Many of the people that were experimented on were Russian soldiers and other prisoners of war.

I came across this article titled: "Human bones could reveal truth of Japan's 'Unit 731' experiment" that was published in 2010 saying that constructions workers had come across a mass grave in 1989 that may contain victims from such experiments. Some really disturbing experiments that the author described were "hanging people upside down until they choked, burying them alive, injecting air into their veins and placing them in high-pressure chambers." The torture that these "doctors" put regular people through is disgusting and very difficult to read. My question for ya'll is, do you think this is just a part in history that is disgraceful but does not define the Japanese people, or do you think it does define the Japanese people in World War Two? Does this evidence make you feel like Japan deserved to be bombed? Do you think we should have talked more about this as a class? I know it really doesn't have much to do with the Nuclear Pacific. With that being said, do you think that it was appropriate that I brought this up on our forum? Thanks :)