This is a pretty common myth that I feel needs to be addressed here. The cruel torture of unit 731 and the many medical "experiments" they performed on unwilling Prisoners of war did not in themselves produce any breakthroughs in medicine. After the war Doctors combing through their records were able to salvage SOME of the information in practical ways when combined with other information from ACTUAL research and experimentation. To attribute these medical breakthroughs to Unit 731 is to rob credit from the hundreds of dedicated doctors and researchers who ACTUALLY developed the treatments.
EDIT**
Clarifying the uselessness of Unit 731 and the hard work of the medical community for those who can't bother to do their own research. (Seriously a cursory Google search will tell you how useless the information produced by unit 731 was in isolation. Their experiments were bad and documentation was shit)
"We had the theory that if you stab a little girl she dies, we experimented this on 100 girls, they were stabbed at least 20 times in different parts of their bodies with different objects, and then another group of 100 just to be sure, there was a control group that wasn't stabbed tho, instead they were raped"
I'm pretty sure very little if not nothing was taking from the data because they didn't want to ethically condone using it. The data and "experiments" were also incredibly sloppy that no one could realistically use it even if they wanted to. They were experiments in name only and was just torture.
This. Everyone subscribes to the idea that these experiments were scientifically rigorous and every scientist that has read the data has concluded it did not contribute to any actual medical breakthrough. The US military thought there was some value in biological warfare research but medically? Nah.
It makes sense though. A bunch of sadistic "scientists" and soldiers/guards were torturing people are hardly the right people to perform and record scientifically rigorous experiments. A surgeon from the unit even said the experiments were more for practice than for research.
That's not true. They also strapped people to boards at various distances from a bomb and attempted various experimental emergency treatments. This helped them develop new treatments.
There was a point to it, and that's a big reason project paperclip wanted the data.
The soldiers stabbing and raping was a different type of crime against humanity.
I doubt any good came out of the ceramic flea bombs though.
The allies wanted the data but they got almost nothing usable from it
Unit 731 didn't follow any sort of scientific rigor and basically did not have controlled conditions at all for anything.
As for "developing treatments from experiments with various distances from bombs" I greatly struggle to envision what actual medical data they would have gotten from that...
"The guy at 30 feet at 3rd degree burns while at 50 feet he had 2nd"
Then what do they do with that lol, they already know how to treat these people and certainly did not find anything novel out.
Fuck bomb victims at various distances are going to be a dime a dozen in WW2.
What new treatment did they develop? Or did you just read some reddit comments and decide you knew about one of the most complicated situations in history?
Well yeah, they successfully floated helium firebombs to america but couldn't target them very well so they just started small forest fires in remote locations... But they did hit mainland us with those.
Also I have no idea how the ceramic plague flea bombs worked, I think also by balloon... And they experimented on Chinese villagers
I think the firebombs did kill one person, but yeah it would be totally different today.
Perhaps you haven't heard of the kamikaze torpedoes? Those were rather nuts...
I still think the buzz bombs the Nazis had were amazing...
Pulse jet engines, radio controlled by two radio beams that intersected...
Other buzz bombs used the Wankel rotary engine...
If only they weren't psychopathic murderers the technology was pretty interesting
Operation Paperclip had absolutely nothing to do with the Japanese. If anything, Operation Paperclip shows just how sloppy the Japanese "research" was. They were actually able to use German data because it was actually performed with some scientific rigor. The Japanese "data" was so sloppy, it was near completely unreliable. Let alone useful to the US bioweapons program.
Historian Till Winfried Bärnighausen criticized the overall lack of scientific rigor in many of Unit 731's experiments, but he noted some exceptions. He pointed to the mustard gas, freezing, and tuberculosis experiments as having a reliable and valid data collection process, suggesting they were conducted with greater rigor.
What part was incorrect about? If anything your quote supports me.
the overall lack of scientific rigor in many of Unit 731's experiments, but he noted some exceptions.
I made sure to make room for exceptions by saying "near completely unreliable" and "very little if not nothing". My point still stands that it probably didn't provide very much useful information the US probably didn't already have.
data" was so sloppy, it was near completely unreliable.
you were partially correct, just ignoring that a lot of really good useful data did come out of it.
of particular note would be the freezing experiments which this meme is about.
and fucking analogous to operation paperclip, you know what i meant and are being needlessly pedantic. operation staple? does it matter in this context?
oh well, enjoy your day, im done with japanese war crimes for a while.
It’s about the brutality of 731. They deserve no credit for it. Bottom line. They did nothing good. They had no intentions. Humanity is lucky better humans came behind them and cleaned up.
Except that part is also proven false. All the medical breakthroughs that happened exclusively after 731 was through sources without clearence to the materials. The scientists in the US put on going through the work were exclusively assigned to bio/chemical weapons.
There isn't a single medical breakthrough that can in anyway credit 731 even as inspiration or proof of concept. 731 was generally not tasked with medical research in aiding soldiers, but weapons. 731 DID come to the conclusion warm water should be used, but that was a standard untill napoleon. And even then it was only modern medical practice to use snow and ice for a slow thaw, civilians (including in japan) were still somewhat commonly using warm water and heat sources.
The point is that the data itself was bad and barely useful compared to other records. It was used, but it was never considered essential and giving any credit to these torture by calling them experiments and valuing their result is wrong. Also it was not really used for medical research but mostly to evaluate weapon's effect or soldier's endurance to cold, because that's what the data records were made for.
Sounds like you're totally wrong according to google.
Lack of Rigorous Methodology: By modern scientific standards, legitimate research requires strict controls, standardized variables, large sample sizes, and peer review. Unit 731’s experiments—often driven by cruelty or arbitrary objectives—completely lacked these frameworks.
Distorted Variables: The subjects (referred to as maruta, or "logs") were subjected to extreme starvation, torture, severe trauma, and intentional infection under brutal prison conditions. Because their bodies were already failing and deeply traumatized, the physiological responses they exhibited could not be accurately generalized to healthy humans or standard medical baselines.
Crude and Anecdotal Results: American experts who reviewed the research reports noted that the findings were fragmentary, poorly documented, and lacking statistical validity. Vivisections and human trials yielded data no more advanced—and often much less reliable—than what could have been (or already had been) achieved through ethical animal testing.
It begs the question, could we have come to that conclusion without the horrific levels of human experimentation? And if so, could we have found those answers as quickly?
The only useful information produced from Unit 731 experiments was about treating frostbite and biological warfare. A lot of their “research methods” didn’t follow the scientific method and were just a cover to torture prisoners. Saying that the experiments greatly increased the amount of information available for other scientific breakthroughs is also false. Some information was used for the before said biological warfare research and the effects of frostbite but that’s about it.
As someone who has been to the Unit 731 museum in Harbin, it’s staggering just how evil the group was. They were testing balloon bombs to bring every possible pathogen to the US mainland (via fleas and rats) with the sole intention of exterminating the civilian population. No plans to occupy the territory. But they figured if the could fill the US with cholera, typhus, anthrax, bubonic plague etc etc, and kill 100 million civilians, the US would no longer be a functioning combatant and they could resume their focus on China and Russia.
The Chinese prisoners were “logs” to be cut up. But they fully intended to kill 100 million civilians as nothing more than a distraction.
And many of the doctors involved in Unit 731 were still administrators of major hospitals in Japan in the early 2000s.
The very unsatisfying reality is that we don’t even know what exactly the plans of unit 731 were…
Almost everything we know is speculation or the report of veterans decades after the war on what they did or the result of a few low level criminals of the unit being tortured and sentenced by the Soviets. 100% certain is the fact they existed, killed a couple of thousand people directly in the facility and an unknown number by releasing plagues (but estimated to be really high toppings out at 300.000 estimated deaths) and that the U.S. took the results after the war.
It wasn’t until the 2020s that scholars found even an org chart of it and there is only an estimate how many Japanese were even involvedY
Such said data is close to impossible in obtaining
That's not true, at all, as far as I can tell. I am not very versed on research on this perspective for the Japanese crimes, but the data obtained from the Nazis is considered pretty much entirely useless by researchers in terms of advancing our knowledge base, despite being more rigorous. Even just natural disasters happen all the time and we have mountains upon mountains of data from it. At best, those experiments validated what we knew already, but for the most part is was entirely pointless, with the exception of a very small amount of edge cases. Contrasting that with the advancements we make during peaceful times, through ethical means, makes it a incredible waste of human potential.
But I am happy to test your hypothesis. I bet you'll be very hard pressed to find even a handful of advancements we wouldn't have made, without those "experiments".
731 was the most horrifying stuff that I have ever read about. At least the Nazi experiments, while awful, had a methodology about them. This was just psychopaths playing god with no supervision.
The 731 stuff is something that I wish that I had never learnt about, it has done so much damage to my perception of humanity and the concept that we are somehow innately good.
You're perception of reality wasn't damaged. Your perception before learning about that was simply wrong.
People are apes. Animals. Capable of beauty and cruelty. There is no "innately good".
You lived in a bubble, and now you don't. This is reality. Naively assuming the world is a good place is not good for the world. It does not mean we assume evil either. But operating on the assumption that humans are one extreme or the other, good or evil, is not a good way to love life.
These Japanese people were systematically made what they are through heavy, virtually absolute indoctrination. The actions of those individuals tell you nothing about a "natural state" of the human race.
And you are contradicting yourself. Apes are social and very much have a concept of good and bad. Maybe not a human concept of it, but they do punish other apes for cruel behavior, think unequal treatment is unfair and try to establish fairness by sharing what they have and so on, even as small children. They are capable of cruelty, yes, but that doesn't mean they are born as a "blank sheets of paper" or naturally gravitate towards greed, cruelty or away from social behavior.
You seem to think your perspective is scientific, because it refuses concepts you call assumptions, when they are observations we make virtually every day, across the world, for as long as we know, in every society. Good and bad are useful concepts and tell you about what humans are, specifically because humans came up with them and champion them. If we didn't gravitate towards that, chances are you wouldn't exist. And we also came up with math, physics and science, so that doesn't invalidate the concept either.
So, we have plenty evidence of humans being innately social, something we tend to think of as good. The notion that altruism isn't natural or beneficial stems from a individualist perspective, when we have been genetically shaped by living in groups for millions of years. Your POV isn't enlightened or based in fact, it's a cynical worldview that stems from a rather specific western school of thought shaped through centuries of economical exploitation, subjugation and war. Which, yes, are bad, but only seem natural when you have been shaped by that kind of environment or accepted the ideologies produced by said environment. Which, for the most part, should just tell you that we are pretty good at adaptation.
The same goes for Mengeles experiments in Auschwitz and other extermination camps, the reason for the experiments wasnt to further science in any way but pure sadism
If memory serves most of the data from a lot of experiments like this preformed by groups like 731 or the axis in general were actually only barely useful, at best.
Most of it was too niche to be applicable to real life or didn’t account for factors they were ignoring. For example, if memory serves there were similar frostbite experiments performed by the Nazis. This experiment and the data gathered are often considered to have been done in as close an approximation to proper science as the Nazi’s ever did, not morally speaking, but in term of actual data gathered, procedures recorded, and general practicality (in terms of experiments involving testing things on humans I mean). Even then the data wasn’t really all that useful since all the test were on concentration camp prisoners kept in inhumane conditions, including barely being fed, meaning barely any insulating fat. So it’s great for knowing what if to do/what to expect when dealing with frostbite victims, if and only if said victims have spent the past several weeks/months being beaten, starved, caged, worked to the bone, and denied even basic medical treatment.
The way I’ve heard it was that the US became aware of the human test experiments and vivisections that were taking place in Japan but let it keep happening if they could have access to the data that it produced. So it directly led to many medical breakthroughs but not directly the research of the surgeons.
Yea but without that data they couldnt of done anything, you could also argue if unit 731 had the time and not during a war they could of produced the same outcome as the doctors.
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u/ThatFatGuyMJL 2d ago
OLLIE HERE.
JAPAN HAD A TERRIBLE MEDICAL UNIT IN WW2 CALLED UNIT 731.
THEY MADE THE NAZIS LOOK TAME.
THEY FROZE PRISONERS OF WAR INTO HUMAN POPSICALS AND TREATED THEN FROM FROSTBITE.
IT WAS PURE EVIL AND HAS SAVED MANY LIVES.
OLLIE OUT