Unit 731 (LOTM: Sword of Kings)

Unit 731 was a secret military medical unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that researched biological warfare and other topics through human experiments leading up to and during World War II. These experiments included vivisections without anesthesia, testing frostbite tolerance levels on infants and exposing war prisoners to diseases such as the plague. For 40 years, the horrific activities of "Unit 731" remained one the most closely guarded secrets of World War II. It was not until 1984 that Japan acknowledged what it had long denied - vile experiments on humans conducted by the unit in preparation for germ warfare.

Deliberately infected with plague, anthrax, cholera and other pathogens, an estimated 3,000 of enemy soldiers and civilians were used as guinea pigs. Some of the more horrific experiments included vivisection without anesthesia and pressure chambers to see how much a human could take before his eyes popped out. Unit 731 was set up in 1938 in Japanese-occupied China with the aim of developing biological weapons. It also operated a secret research and experimental school in Shinjuku, central Tokyo. Its head was Lieutenant Shiro Ishii.

The unit was supported by Japanese universities and medical schools which supplied doctors and research staff. The picture now emerging about its activities is horrifying. Some caught in China at the end of the war were arrested and detained, but only a handful of them were prosecuted for war crimes.

In Japan, not one was brought to justice. In a secret deal, the post-war American administration gave them immunity for prosecution in return for details of their experiments. Some of the worst criminals, including Hisato Yoshimura, who was in charge of the frostbite experiments, went on to occupy key medical and other posts in public and private sectors.

In 2036, the Manufacturing Progressive Sciences secretely took possession of the laboratory and bribed the Japanese government to keep the existence of the base in secret. Despite 1 hundreds years had passed since WWII, the MPS did not hesitate to continue Unit 731's legacy in a larger sccale. Thousands of men, women and children interred at prisoner of war camps were subjected to vivisection, often without anesthesia and usually ending with the death of the victim. Vivisections were performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases. Researchers performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body. These were conducted while the patients were alive because it was feared that the decomposition process would affect the results.The infected and vivisected prisoners included men, women, children, and infants, including pregnant women (impregnated by MPS surgeons) and their infants.

Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss. Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body. Some prisoners’ limbs were frozen and amputated, while others had limbs frozen, then thawed to study the effects of the resultant untreated gangrene and rotting.

Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus reattached to the intestines. Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners. Prisoners would be buried alive to see how long it would take before they died and what the effects were. Prisoners were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects. To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied. Prisoners were also repeatedly subject to rape by guards.

Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around and possibly more than 840,000 Americans, Japaneses, Koreans, Russians, Greeks and Chinese. At the final days of Order of Terror, Unit 731 was destroyed by the Apocalypse started by Diabla the Qliphoth Tyrant, putting a definitive final to the scientific base.