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)
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.
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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