What is the worst war crime ever committed?
UNIT 731.
Second Sino-Japanese war.
Logs.
[The content in this answer may be disturbing for some people]
What logs meant in the rest of the world…
What logs meant in Unit 731…
Unit 731 was a covert research unit of the then Japanese army stationed in the Pingfang district of China. It was founded by Shiro Ishii, a combat medical officer and equipped with plenty other physicians. During the entire course of the war, more than 12,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners-of-war were captured and taken to Unit 731. None of them came back alive. What actually happened inside Unit 731?
- The medical personnels subjected the prisoners and civilians to vivisection. If you are unaware, vivisection is the act of cutting into a living body, that too, without anaesthesia. And they watched.
- They amputated limb after limb and allowed them to bleed to find out how long it took. Sometimes the severed limb was reattached elsewhere in the body. And they watched.
- They locked the victims inside high pressure chambers and turned up the pressure to the point where their eyes would pop out of their sockets. And they watched.
- They injected seawater, urine, air, animal blood and whatever fluid came handy into the victim's vein. And they watched.
- They even injected the victims with several types of microorganisms that lead to deadly diseases like typhoid, tuberculosis, anthrax, cholera and BUBONIC PLAGUE. And they watched.
- They took a man and a woman, one of whom was previously infected with syphilis and forced them to have sexual intercourse. This, they fathomed, was to study the course of venereal diseases. And they watched.
- They tied dozens of victims to wooden poles and dropped plague spreading bombs en masse. There were spots reserved for this typical weapon testing. And they watched.
- They did not spare the children either. They forcefully impregnated women and infected them with venereal diseases to learn about the transmission of the illness to the newborn babies. The babies were born for the sole purpose of getting killed. And they watched.
- They heard the silent sobs and the spine-chilling screams of thousands of people. They tortured. They killed. They saw humanity die in the most gruesome way possible. And they just watched.
This is only a gist of the innumerable atrocities that happened in there. The worst is yet to come. What happened afterwards? Soon after the war, Japan had to surrender and the American officials discovered the existence of this covert research unit. They would have punished and prosecuted the guilty personnels, right? No, that did not happen. Instead the US government made a deal. All the physicians of unit 731 were granted immunity from prosecution and were set free. In exchange, the US was provided with data regarding their research on biological warfare and human experimentation. You murder people. I murder justice. Deal sealed.
Here's a testimony from a medical student who used to work inside Unit 731:
The fellow knew it was over for him. So he did not struggle when they let him into the room and tied him down. But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly. His face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound and then he finally stopped.
Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.
Peace.