Some Chinese prisoners were dissected live and without anesthetic

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/06/AR2006040602022.html

War Lives On at Museum of the Macabre

As Relations Sour, China Plans to Expand Display of Imperial Japan's Atrocities

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 7, 2006; Page A14

HARBIN, China -- More than 200,000 Chinese filed through the remains of Japan's notorious Unit 731 here last year, visiting the ghosts of World War II. In exhibits mounted throughout the bleak headquarters building, they saw wrenching descriptions of biological warfare experiments carried out on thousands of Chinese prisoners from 1939 to 1945.

The phrase "Do not forget us" has been inscribed on the wall of one room, where visitors can see the names and photos of some of those who received botulism injections, were made to suffer frostbite or had their internal organs removed by Japanese military doctors. snip

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/06/AR2006040602022_2.html

In the case of Unit 731, moreover, much of the picture was blurred until the 1980s and 1990s, when documents uncovered in Japan, China and the United States gave scholars a better idea of what went on. Some Chinese prisoners were dissected live and without anesthetic, for instance, while others were cremated before they were dead. The long secrecy about such atrocities further fueled resentment among Chinese who have taken an interest in Unit 731.

Most of the Japanese soldiers stationed here escaped as imperial Japan surrendered in 1945, although a dozen were captured and tried by Chinese authorities, and another dozen by Soviet authorities. The unit commander, Shiro Ishii, was protected by U.S. occupation forces in Japan and, Chinese historians said, occasionally lectured U.S. officers on his germ warfare findings. He died of cancer at home in Japan in 1959.