CL wrote:
> Japanese Whaling Science Unit 731 wrote:
>
> 8>< die kopie ist verschnitten

http://powmia.webshare.ca/unit-731.html

JAPAN ADMITS DISSECTING WW-II POWs
The following article was written by Thomas Easton of the Baltimore Sun

UKUOKA, Japan "I could never again wear a white smock," says Dr. Toshio
Tono, dressed in a white running jacket at his hospital and recalling
events of 50 years ago. "It's because the prisoners thought that we
were doctors, since they could see the white smocks, that they didn't
struggle. They never dreamed they would be dissected.

The prisoners were eight American airmen, knocked out of the ksy over
southern Japan during the waning months of World War II, and then torn
apart organ by organ while they were still alive.

What occurred here 50 years ago this month, at the anatomy department
of Kyushu University, has been largely forgotten in Japan and is
virtually unknown in the United States. American prisoners-of-war were
subjected to horrific medical experiments. All of the prisoners died.
Most of the physicians and assistants then did their best to hide the
evidence of what they had done.

Fukuoka is midway between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cities that are
planning elaborate ceremonies to mark the devestation caused by the
United States dropping the first atomic bombs. But neither Fukuoka nor
the university plans to mark its own moment of infamy.

The gruesome experiments performed at the university were variagions on
research programs Japan conducted in territories it occupied during the
war. In the most notorious of these efforts, the Japanese Imperial
Army's Unit 731 killed thousands of Chinese and Russians held prisoner
in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, in experiments to develop chemical and
biological weapons.

Ken Yuasa, now a frail, 70-year-old physician in Tokyo, belonged to a
military company stationed just south of Unit 731's base at Harbin,
Manchuria. He recalls joining other doctors to watch as a prisoner was
shot in the stomach, to give Japanese surgeons practice at extracting
bullets.

While the victim was still alive, the doctors also practiced
amputations.

"It wasn't just my experience," Yuasa says. "It was done everywhere.".

Kyushu University stands out as the only site where Americans were
incontrovertibly used in dissections and the only known site where
experiments were done in Japan.

On May 5, 1945, an American B-29 bomber was flying with a dozen other
aircraft after bombing Tachiaral Air Base in southwestern Japan and
beginning the return flight to the island fortress of Guam.

Kinzou Kasuya, a 19-year-old Japanese pilot flying one of the Japanese
fighters in pursuit of the Americans, rammed his aircraft into the
fuselage of the B-29, destroying both planes.

One of the Americans died when the cords of his parachute were severed
by another Japanese plane. A second was alive when he reached the
ground. He shot all but his last bullet at the villagers coming toward
him, then used the last bullet on himself.

Two others were quickly stabbed or shot to death.

At least nine were taken into custody.

B-29 crews were despised for the grim results of their bombing raids,
so some of the captives were beaten.

The local authorities assumed that the most knowledgeable was the
captain, Marvin Watkins. He was sent to Tokyo for interrogation, where
he was tortured but nonetheless survived the war.

Every available account asserts that a military physician and a Colonel
in a local regiment were the two key figures in what happened next.
What happened cannot be easily explained. Perhaps caring for the
Americans was an impossible burden, especially because some were
injured. Perhaps food was scarce.

Whatever the reason, the colonel and doctor decided to make the
prisoners available for medical experiments, and Kyushu University
became a willing participant.

Teddy Ponczka was the first to be handed over to the doctors and their
assistants. He had already been stabbed, in either his right shoulder
or his chest. According to Tono, the American assumed he was about to
be treated for the wound when he was taken to an operating room.

But the incision went far deeper. A doctor wanted to test surgery's
effects on the respiratory system, so one lung was removed. the wound
was stitched closed.

How Teddy Ponczka died is in dispute. According to US Military records,
he was anesthetized during the operation, and then the gas mask was
removed from his face. A surgeon, Taro Torisu, reopened the incision
and reached into Ponczka's chest. In the bland words of the military
report, "Torisu stopped the heart action".

Tono remembers events differently. The first experiment was followed by
a second, he says. Ponczka was given intravenous injections of sea
water, to determine if sea water could be used as a substitute for
sterile saline solution, used to increase blood volume in the wounded
or those in the state of shock. Tono held the bottle of sea water. He
says Ponczka bled to death.

Then it was the turn of the others.

The Japanese wanted to learn whether a patient could survive the
partial loss of his liver. They wanted to learn if epilepsy could be
controlled by removing part of the brain.

According to US Military records, physicians also operated on the
prisoners' stomachs and necks.

All of the Americans died.

"There was no debate among the doctors about whether to do the
operations ... that is what made it so strange," Tono says.

Word of the experiments eventually leaked out.

Thirty people were brought to trial by an Allied War Crimes Tribunal in
Yokohama, Japan, on March 11, 1948. Charges included vivisection,
wrongful removal of body parts and cannibalism ... based on reports
that the experimenters had eaten the livers of the Americans.

Of the 30 defendants, 23 were found guilty of various charges. (For
lack of proof, the charges of cannabilism had been dismissed.) Five of
the guilty were sentenced to death, four to life imprisonment. The
other 14 were sentenced to shorter terms.

But the attitude of the American occupation forces began to change
largely because of the start of the Korean War in June 1950.

The United States had less interest in punishing Japan, an
enemy-turned-ally.

In September 1950, US General Douglas MacArthur, as supreme commander
for Allied Forces, reduced most of the sentences.

By 1958, all those convicted were free.

None of the death sentences was carried out.