Customer Reviews

Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II

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This is a very powerful account of the atrocities committed by Unit 731. It was a very deeply emotional experience to read this book. I had an interesting discovery when I compared the original UK edition of the book and the US edition (the one shown here). The UK edition has a chapter on the alleged biological warfare by the US in the Korean War and its possible connection to Ishii and some former Unit 731 members. That chapter was removed in the US edition.

One of the earlier works on Unit 731. Written by investigative journalists after they worked on a television series for BBC.

The first part of the book covers the beginning of Japans BW efforts by focusing on LTG Shiro Ishii. It describes the man, his achievements, and how he progressed into managing a BW empire.

Following this third of the book is how the US investigated Japan's BW efforts, and then followed by the data swap for immunity from war crimes.

The story is fast past, interesting, and well researched. It is not a true historical study, but a well written investigative report. Along with BW, the book also covers Balloon attacks, and the possibility that US POW's were used in experiments.

A serious read to anyone interested in hidden aspects of WWII.

If you think that there were atrocities in Nanking or by the hands of Josef Mengele, then you have to read Unit 731. Wallace and Williams do a good job of writing and documenting the start, operation and aftermath of Unit 731. The book reads like a history story and is an easy read.

What starts out as a medical officer's (Siro Ishii) quest to gain status as researcher turns into a chamber of horrors. The medical research unit 731 was opened in Pingfan, China prior to WWII to develop vaccines for various diseases. Later, the unit began to mass-produce diseases such as plague, cholera and anthrax. For instance, infected fleas were bred by the kilograms to be dropped in Allied countries. Some of which were dropped on the North American west coast which were often just thought of as fire-bomb balloons.

Hundreds of innocent people, including white-Russians, Chinese, Koreans, Americans, Australians and British were subject to inhumane experiments of being repeatedly exposed to diseases, forced to work to exhaustion, starvation and live dissection.

The most brutal part of this whole story is that the head of Unit 731 was granted immunity in trade for his information, rather than have it turned over to the Russians.

This is a gruesome story of evil. Fortunately, writers like Williams and Wallace had the determination to record these atrocities and expose the cover up.

Doug Setter, author of One Less Victim: A Prevention Guide and Stomach Flattening

Excellent research & story telling, interesting subject matter, frightening & informative.