Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 189 - Unit 731 Part 1: Shirō Ishii - The Japanese Josef Mengele

Episode Date: January 28, 2023

Humanity is just a broken record, and we just keep on dancin'! Patreon - http://www.patreon.com/chilluminatipod BUY OUR MERCH - http://www.theyetee.com/collections/chilluminati Special thanks to our sponsors this episode - EVERYONE AT PATREON Daily Harvest - http://www.dailyharvest.com/chill FOR $40 OFF! Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - http://www.youtube.com/user/superbeardbros Editor - DeanCutty http://www.twitter.com/deancutty Art Commissioned by - http://www.mollyheadycarroll.com Theme - Matt Proft End song - POWER FAILURE - https://soundcloud.com/powerfailure Video - http://www.twitter.com/digitalmuppet

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Chuluminati podcast episode 189. It was either 189 or 190. I wasn't sure which one. We're not there yet, but we will get there boys. We will get there. It'll happen faster than you think. As always, I'm one of your hosts, mike martin joined by none other than you know the jennifer anderson and gerard butler of la what movie were they in together the bounty hunter i

was about to say it probably had a terrible name like the assassin's bride yeah yeah it's uh it's a comedy and uh of course it's it's from the director of hitch which i did see i saw him you saw hitch is one of the movies you've seen wait is hitch the one where will smith's a superhero no no that's oh never mind but will smith's movie hitch is the one that's why i'm getting confused kevin james where he where he like is like a relationship caddy oh yeah i did not see that movie are you a big will smith guy no i'm i've seen a few of his movies i've seen the big ones independence day men in black okay all the alien related movies that he's done surprisingly all the alien related movies even as a child uh no so who okay but who's who who's who's jenny aniston

and who's g butler oh please butler who would go on to star in such movies as game over was it the video game real life one and i can't remember and falcon is down whatever whatever they're called angel has fallen white house has fallen or whatever it is yeah oh my god yeah did you know that there's a fourth of those coming out too many i didn't know there were three of them yeah there's four you didn't you probably didn't see this has fallen olympus has fallen or whatever yeah london has fallen also and also angel has fallen what is what is angel like from from buffy the vampire slayer yeah uh no i don't i don't know what angel is london checks out olympus is the the white house yeah angel the hero becomes the fugitive the hero becomes what is the angel and the title uh i don't know that the president tries it almost gets assassinated or he does

get assassinated that's the plot of all those movies he gets blamed for trying to kill the president probably i can't really i don't want to read this why would they try to blame him after he saved the president actually i feel like the president and the second one's different from the president the first one morgan freeman is in all of them wow right but morgan freeman's the vice president in the first one how do i know this 3 a.m one night on a weekend i was like sitting on my couch and it came on the sci-fi channel and i watched through it commercials and all that's how oh it's not a good movie you were enraptured yeah man would you say it was it's better than some of the movies we watched on rotten popcorn oh for sure yeah here's a sentence

from the review of angel has fallen not the review the wikipedia page trumbull awakens from his coma and kirby is revealed to be jennings secret co-conspirator planning to retaliate for Trumbull's attempted assassination by declaring, by declaring cold war to cold war to, I love that you can declare the cold war. First of all, making it no longer cold. If you just want to know how ridiculous the first movie is, the plot is North Koreans managed to infiltrate the white house by one

pretending they're on tour and two very very easy they they get a truck and the truck has a machine gun in the truck and they gun down the all the secret service agents because the secret service agents rush out to fight the guys in the truck and they kill all the secret service agents but one and that's the plot of the first movie it sounds like somebody was like i I love Mission Impossible. My turn. I just can't figure out. Like, they address it. They're like, it takes three minutes for all of the army to show up and save the president.

By then, we'll control the White House. Like, three minutes, bro. Wow. I thought the movie was with Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx. No. What the hell is that? Channing Tatum and who?x? No. What the hell is that? Channing Tatum and who? I don't know.

No, Olympus has fallen is a different thing entirely. Olympus has fallen has Aaron Eckhart. Yeah, Aaron Eckhart's the president. I mean, I can see why you got it confused. They're in the movie White House Down. Stop it, dude. Well, of course they are. In 2013 this film a divorced u.s capital police officer attempts to rescue both his daughter and the president of the united states when a destructive

terrorist assault occurs in the white house they're both starring channing tatum jamie foxx maggie gyllenhaal joey king jason clark the same this is like when they released they're from the same year dude three months apart this is like a armageddon and deep impact yes oh my literally i never yeah i only ever saw deep impact capote and infamous yeah i remember that one that's wild that's hilarious i'm jennifer aniston yeah no i was gonna say alex is 100 percent jennifer oh yeah okay just so you guys know yeah all right me fantastic i am a shirtless spartan warrior yeah yeah all this good it's our thing of you we're gonna have to watch bounty hunters one day on rotten popcorn where can they get that alex oh man if you want to watch something that good i know it seems like it's impossible i know it seems like you'd never

that that you'd never be able to, but if you head over to patrion.com slash Chumani pod, let me tell you something right now. You'll see. You'll see. And not only will you be able to get access to rotten popcorn and I mean all the rotten popcorn we put out about one a month, but there's a lot more than that.

Let me tell you, there's some weird ones that we, uh, which ones are out Tom Hanks. Uh, like what else? The, did the, did pay the ghost come out

yet yeah pay the ghost was the most recent one to go public good lord hey don't look up what that movie is what did people think of pay the ghost what was the what's the vibe on that what do people think on the discord a lot of people were like we need a nick cage marathon yeah that's what i was getting into discord so yeah i'm down for that i could do a nick cage marathon where he's trying to pay off his taxes i would watch that i would watch all he's good nick cage i'm not saying he's that good but he also you know he did what he had to do to pay his bills i respect that i respect that just watched two nick cage movies over the weekend with crendor both truly terrible not like funny cage like genuinely poorly made films so was it knowing you know i got a whole catalog i know what's the

other one next did you see that one yeah the ones that we watched were humanity bureau which would be very good for this podcast uh humanity bureau i like the sound of that and then there was one called two on one that was one of the worst films i've ever seen in my entire life yeah all right good times like one yeah one of uh peter falk's last movies was next check it out get your ad free episodes get your freaking mini sodes that we're gonna do like we're gonna do one right after this get anything you want patreon.com slash chameleon pod the greatest website of all time ever made finally completely definitively here we are cool also shout out to producer editor dean who's sick as hell right now

hang in there, bud. Bless you, Gene. He auto-tuned Jesse, apparently, in the last episode to the Men in Black. And I've gotten so many comments and so many tweets that is like, please do that regularly. Please always auto-tune Jesse. I don't know where in the video you do the Men in Black thing. I want to go find it. But people have just been loving it.

So Dean, you can thank dean for the auto tuning here come the man in black here's here's what i'm going to tell you here's what i'm going to tell you don't listen to the fans every single time okay galaxy defender no not every single trust me on that yeah trust sometimes what the fans want and what they say they want are two different things let's put it that way but what the fans want you know what is a jesse cox oh wow wow wow west jim west desperado rough product no you don't like it oh i'm excited to hear that any damsel that's in distress be out of that dress when she meets jim west uh all right boys are you ready to dive into something fun something exciting something mystical give it to me yeah because none of that is actually happening today it has been All right, boys, are you ready to dive into something fun, something exciting, something mystical?

Give it to me. Yeah. Because none of that is actually happening today. It has been almost three months since our last true crime episode. Dahmer was where we lasted the last true crime. And that was at the beginning of November, November 11. I love how you always bring up how long it's been so that the people who are going to be mad at you. I already got them covered.

They won't say anything now, obviously. But more, most importantly, it's been even longer since we've done a true crime that wasn't serial killer focused. So today we're not going to be looking at a serial killer. We're not going to be looking at an individual who may have been like a

black widow or any of that stuff today. We're going to do something we haven't done in a while and look at history and its horrible horrible influence on us now even today back when we did mk ultra yeah i talked about the preclude to mk ultra the things that led up to us having mk ultra and part of that very briefly is the uh quick mention of Unit 731. And I said back then that we would cover that someday. And that is today. Today, we are going to be covering Unit 731. It's very much a kind of buckle-in story. It's not a pleasant one. In fact, the man who ran Unit 731, a man by the name of shiro ishi is basically considered the japanese joseph mengala which uh we'll see why that's the case

um as we as we go through this this will be a multi-part if you don't know who that is you can google it but let me tell you not a not a good guy not a good no no not a good guy maybe one day we'll also cover mengala, but not for a long while. Shiro Ishii, the difference between, say, Mengele and Shiro Ishii is that Ishii didn't really get held responsible for all of the things that he did. And that's because he cut a deal with the United States. And that's because he cut a deal with the United States. And we'll talk about that as we come to the end of the series and why he escaped. But we'll also learn that karma still kind of got him anyway. And he got a ending that I think is relatively fit for a man who was about to live a very peaceful, calm life in the United States.

But I want to shout out before we begin any of this, the multitude of sources that I am using for this. First and foremost, a shout out to a paper written at the School of Graduate Studies of East Tennessee State University by Gregory Dean Byrd, all about General Ishii Shiro, his life and what led him to Unit 731, as well as two separate books, Ishishiro, Yosef Mengele of the East, which is going to be the primary source of today's episode. But the other book that we're going to be dabbling in as well, but is not going to be the primary source, is simply called Unit 731.

And it has a bunch of survival stories, the people who lived through it and had firsthand accounts of what they did, as well as firsthand accounts from some of the basically call them the Japanese equivalent of SS officers. They're special police who would go in and grab people and take them off the streets. Jesse, I'm curious. Do you know much about yet? I just like to ask, do you know much about unit 731 prior to us diving i seem to recall

i mean yes absolutely yes now but if you were to ask me whenever we first talked about this yeah that was mk ultra i seem to recall being kind of like i know something but not i mean i know a lot now um i would say to everyone out there if you're interested in learning more and you want to google it just be careful because while a lot of the things that are out there are kind of like diagrams of things every once in a while you'll stumble upon an actual real ass photo and it is some pretty disturbing stuff so if you're not ready to handle that yeah yeah don't don't look it up yeah it's uh just for this whole series and i'll make sure I regurgitated every episode, just a trigger warning of just like be cautious warning.

Uh, this episode, while there's some definite terrible shit we're going to be talking about, this episode is much more about, uh, uh, Ishii Shiro himself and his life leading up to unit seven 31. It'll be the next couple of episodes that get,

you know, kind of rough to listen to. But it's important because what the U.S. did with that information, you know, again, we talked a little bit about it in MKUltra. We're going to go into much more depth in the final part of this series.

I'm excited to finally cover it. I think this is a fascinating topic generally. And not a lot of people know about Unit 731 as a whole. Alex, did you know anything about Unit 731 as a whole uh alex did you know anything about unit 731 prior to this the show or anything i am going to choose to use the you know metaphor of the iceberg that people love to use on the internet and i will tell you that i'm aware of its place on the atrocities committed by states against its people uh you know secret government project iceberg but it's i i you this may surprise you i typically don't dig deep into these types of

things because the details are what just absolutely horrify me yeah agreed and just so i will enlighten you of those horrifying details, whether you like it or not. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. But in order to understand even Isshishiro's path to success, we have to briefly and quickly look at the Japanese history with biological weapons as a whole and the core of their ultra nationalism that drove them kind of in the direction that they ended up going in the 20s and 30s and 40s. Obviously, the use of biological weapons have predated World War II. The World War II is kind of the war that made them very more common knowledge, I think. History shows that diseases had been well used, with examples including Anatolian War from 1320 to 1318 BC, where the Romans and the Persians were regularly poisoning their enemy wells

and the Mongols disposing of disease, corpus corpses in towns that need to conquer. There are stories out there of them literally catapulting diseased bodies over walls so that when they would hit the ground, they would fucking just explode gore everywhere because they knew that that spread disease. they didn't maybe they can you imagine having that idea signing off on that i yeah that's like a heinous idea but like the reason why you would do that is when you think about it like tactically a battle is happening or

your own soldiers have died or you've killed their soldiers what are you gonna do take the time to bury them no you're gonna if you keep them around they're gonna get your people sick so screw it let's launch them back at them yeah like it makes sound sense it's just disgusting and awful yeah it's gross as hell like i can't imagine living there during an attack of just in bodies just fucking blowing up in the street and there's a lot of there's especially in you know the middle ages there's a lot of ways that if you were not like hyper religious at the time you could use that against people like a great example is if you're if you're like 11th century christian you're gonna be like we have to bury these bodies so that when judgment day comes they can be resurrected but

it's like bro if we leave these bodies around we're all gonna be resurrected yeah so so you'd have to convince people to burn bodies but they'd be like no if we do that and so you know invading hordes would just use that against them like okay we'll just throw bodies at them it's crazy uh i think the more recent or at least the more common example that a lot of people are still taught in schools at At least they were taught when I was still in high school. Is obviously the British and American soldiers that gave Native Americans blankets contaminated with smallpox. Sure. Like that's just straight up biological warfare.

Like the most core version of it. And as the U.S. began to continue its expansion over the years. It began to try to show off its power on a more international stage. And the reason we know what we're about to talk about of Japan is because of in 1851, a man by the name of Matthew Perry went into Japanese waters with a squadron of Navy ships. Oh, Perry. Authorized by President Miller to Fillmore and forced Japan to open up trade with the West. So they just forced Japan to trade with them. And Japan at that time was a feudalistic country

with not really advanced technology. But from trading with us, they found a way to industrialize even with the small amount of resources that they had. So very quickly, Japan was- And then The Last Samurai. And that's- Starring Tom Cruise.

And I'd never even seen that movie, but I do know Tom Cruise was in it. I unabashedly love Last Samurai. I don't give i never even seen that movie but i do know tom cruise i unabashedly love last samurai i don't give a shit it's great it's it's look it's a really well-made movie i can't speak to the cultural sensitivity of the movie i'm not japanese i don't know i'm gonna doubt that it's made with a lot of reverence and truth for history but it's a pretty damn like but culturally from what i've heard is that it's like beloved in japan as a oh really wow that's what i heard but i i have honestly that's just what i heard it could be well you know

people in japan let us know yeah let us know um but this is all very important as the industrialization of industrialization of japan began happening they needed more resources and they started to have territorial disputes with Manchuria and Korea. The negotiations ended up breaking down and then Japan ended up attacking Russia in Port Arthur, which then led to the Russo-Japanese War of that time. And it's here that we learned that the Japanese quickly adapted to biological warfare very specifically. adapted to biological warfare very specifically. That's when Japan realized that diseases could be as deadly as firepower.

And Japanese soldiers were suffering from cholera, beriberi, typhoid fever, diarrheal diseases. And anywhere between 25,000 and 80,000 men in the Third Army were sent during the siege of Port Arthur. So they were just losing people left and right to just all kinds of sicknesses were you about to say something jesse i just to clarify for anyone listening the way to understand this is um you know how like as americans especially like white americans the push west conquering america was manifest destiny and the reasoning why is because literal god wanted us to take over this land from these savages so that it might be brought into the fold

of our glorious beautiful like white ass nation right yep now take that that is roughly japan except not white guys the japanese mindset was very similar to america's and like all of like korea the main nationalists we are better than them we are bringing them our culture to make them on our like it's it was a thing at the time right it's that it's that time period of the world even now there's parties in japan that are very isolationist and very anti-foreign yeah yeah we're seeing a rise of that kind of idea all around the all around the world these past but i mean that's what led up that's what led up to world war one where is like yeah all these people got in their head that their country was the best country and taking other countries and then all the problems and then like it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and more of a mess. And then, you know, a dude shoots another dude world,

like all that. Yeah. And that's it. And so, yeah, in this case, just think America and how we treated, uh, like all the native people here,

just import that into China. I'm sorry. Import that into Japan. And then that is how they saw all of their neighbors. Very similar. And they probably got hyped up by us. Let's not lie when americans went there and started training with them and we're like oh yeah they definitely got fast forwarded their tech like getting trade relations with us fast forwarded their technology so so so rapidly and the end that bring and the english as well

and because they didn't have to put money, especially post-World War II, because they didn't have to put money into a military because we were their military for a while. It all went to tech and they became even more tech popular. And then in the 80s happened and America was like, oh, no, everything's made in Japan. It's like, yeah, well, that's what happens. They really shot ahead of us. I read something about they have like divergent evolution and technology in japan which is kind of interesting about how their cell phones are again when they don't have to spend an entire fortune for decades on a military like you have

cool shit yeah yeah i vibe with that yeah well at this particular, they were dying by like like huge numbers just to diseases. And in that, Japan responded by establishing their first epidemic prevention lab. And because of that, by the beginning of the 20th century, Japanese scientists were well known for their work in preventative medicine. Similar to their efforts toward industrialization, the Japanese scientists worked hard and discovered the cause of beriberi and dysentery. Like, they figured out what was the reason. The Shiga bacillus, a strain of bacteria which causes dysentery, was named after

the scientists who freaking discovered the thing. In response to the Russians poisoning wells in Manchuria with typhoid, dysentery, and cholera, the Japanese ended up developing a portable water testing kit. Like, think about the time period they're in and the kind of cool shit they're coming up with

even in the 1850s, like, late 1850s. Like, a portable water testing kit is crazy to think about. It ended up being there in order to treat the ingestion problem during wartime, and each soldier was given a creosote pill after a meal in a short period of time japan made a great deal of progress in the field of preventative medicine comparable to the west like they blitz past us in terms of that understanding of just

uh bacteria and and it's not after about 10 years after the russo-japanese war the german army's use of chemical weapons inflicted heavy civilian casualties in World War I. And consequently, on June 17th. Muster gas. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly. Muster gas was created and used en masse, dude. Yo, if you ever.

I'm not saying go get exposed to that because that sucks. But if you ever want to know what it was really like, there are videos. I think you probably found them on YouTube of soldiers. I believe there's like part of your training now in the army is they stick your ass in a room and like you get exposed to gas and you can watch them get violently sick. And then they put on a gas mask and they're fine. But like for a good minute, they're they're coughing and their eyes are watering. Look, you're going to die. And it does not look pleasant. not i don't want fucking killing

people in world war one it was so bad that on june 17th of 1925 44 countries passed an agreement at the 1925 conference on disarmament in geneva and signed an international protocol named, quote, the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Affixiating Poisonous or Other Gases and of Bacteriological International Protocol Methods of Warfare, quote, unquote, the Geneva Protocol. And here's the thing. Geneva protocols, conventions, all that's great as long as you practice like honest warfare and you like engage in civility rather than tit-for-tat escalation where it's like eff it i'm gonna just go quick and that it goes against human nature that's why still to this day you have people who are like oh i think it was qaddafi or someone like used chemical they still be doing it we just say please don't it's bad but it's very bad turns out some

people are just awful and so you know yeah uh and all this again like this this unique path that japan took at this time of being like the number one in research in terms of all these diseases you see why what's about to happen kind of happens uh so during this agreement uh that the 44 nations signed japan was also there their representatives were at the conference they were involved in the drafting and of the signing of the protocol um although it was not ratified in japan at the time and after world war one ended although japan did join the league of nations as we all know the league of nations was a wonderful group absolutely Woodrow Wilson's baby. The League of Nations. Yeah, yeah.

And they worked super well. Woo! They were the only great power in Asia to join the League of Nations. And Japanese officials still felt as if the West was not treating them equally. And due to the lack of industrial needs after the war, Japan was experiencing the worst economic crisis in its history. Some describe this time period in the 1920s as a chronic depression. No, to give more context, Japan during this time period, that late 1800s into the 1900s, the reason why it wasn't just about like, we're better than everyone else.

The reason that they really stuck with this idea is because they watched China, a much bigger, like much like, like you know it's a huge country with a lot of power they watched it collapse under the influence of western countries like when we all we sphere of influenced our way into that shit and they watched it be taken over by western interests and they were like all right we need to modernize so that they can't mess with us we need to be aggressive so none of our neighbors which are controlled by the enemy can mess with us and now we need resources because we're running out of stuff on the islands so we got to go take it from those other countries and screw those guys they aren't they don't even like control themselves so like why should we care like it was that level of

and honestly on that i can easily segue to the next point which is like so they start sliding into their ninth in their depression to the 1920s obviously by the 1930s the world was now experiencing a depression and what did america do to make it better for them nothing instead we imposed tariffs on japanese goods through the smooth holly tariff oh this is straight up history i'm here for this yeah i told you and this this just reinforced that nationalism in japan because the west is fucking them over even more even if they did try to avoid it um they're they now are experiencing even more economic turmoil political groups that promised to fix things became more prominent does this sound familiar and two of those groups were the black dragon society and

the cherry blossom society which is like the two opposite and i loved it i love that sounds like a yakuza game the cherry blossom society specifically their membership ended up growing very quickly with the focus on ultra nationalism members were military education and military and media fields. A notable figure was General Araki Saddow, appointed army minister in 1931, who was a strong advocate for the Kadoha policy, which is, quote, the imperial way. So an imperialist at heart. It advocated expansionism, totalitarianism, and a huge military. The Board of Information censored the media information, which conflicted with the army at this time. And in the same time period, education became radicalized.

Again, does this sound familiar to certain things that are trying to be taken care of today? What are you trying to say? I'm sorry, I gotta keep going. Where? What where? Scholarships no longer went to students solely for good grades or hard work

but to students who personified the imperial japanese army's ideals of a discipline tradition strength and above all else loyalty to the emperor oh are you talking about guillermo del toro's pinocchio i am yeah i am that's uh it's not april yet but i thought early april fools could be a fun time uh april fools this is about pinocchio you got me good gotcha yeah i'm here you know i'm glad uh that's the end of the show everybody he guessed it to patreon.com slash shimani pod we'll see you guys later bye uh history books were then retroactively revised and thoughts from quote unquote dangerous thoughts from the west which contradicted the army's ways were considered a crime, a war on wokeness.

Anybody? Sorry. What? What? Where? Sorry. What? Where?

What? With the newfound ultra nationalism, the Imperial Japan Army stage an incident in Manchuria to simultaneously take territory and then at that moment quit the league of nations and that's like the the quick crunch down history of their kind of path to resist uh joining the league of nations and saying none and then immediately when it no longer suited them less than 10 years later they just jumped out and we be they begin their they restart their interest in uh biological warfare sorry jesse and this is one of those just just like for historical sake for everyone listening in their, they restart their interest in biological warfare. Sorry, Jesse.

And this is one of those, just like for historical sake, for everyone listening, what's fascinating is I think, you know, when we're younger and we're learning about World War II, for example, it always, I always found it interesting that students would be like, okay, Germany and Italy, I get as Axis powers. They're like kind of neighbors, but why Japan? And the thing that's interesting is i think is the thing you see today um and you know i'm not sure where in the world but you know you see it today where strong men love strong men dudes who are like totalitarian mindset

authoritarian love other people who are the exact same way and they like feed off each other and they give each other ideas and so despite japan being on the other side of the world from germany it doesn't matter if you're like in that mindset oh this guy gets me this dude this guy run the country we're basically the same and it doesn't matter if your plan is 20 years from now to take them over too you don't care but at the moment they're an ally because they they treat their citizens the same way and you're on the same page when it comes to like how to handle stuff and so that's why they can be allies during this time period rather than just like one group is doing

a thing and one group is doing a thing it makes more sense that way it's like oh we're trying to expand oh you're trying to expand and you hate them too hey buddy if you want more detail on the uh relationship with japan and uh their development of uh the epidemic responses and bacterial responses in that time uh the book unit 731 has a much broader coverage of that kind of thing. So much so that a lot of the reason we became so clean in the military is because we sent somebody over there in the 1850s and they saw all of the sanitization things that they were doing

and the amount of lives they were no longer losing prior. And there's a whole, like the general they sent over, he wrote a whole thing about what he saw and how impressed he was. And it really did dent how we did things here in the West, in the US. It's really, really fascinating. But beyond that, the focus of today's episode is a man by the name of Ishii Shiro. This would be the man who would run Unit 731 and have such a dominant presence within the medical world of Japan that anybody who was sent to a hospital or worked as a doctor in a hospital was usually considered to be within the

Ishii network. We'll talk about that as we go into it. At the very beginning, though, please. When you say Ishii network, just for my own clarity, is that, is Ishii his first, boy, it's hard to do. This is such a Western way to look at it. They go back and forth. It depends on what you're reading. Some people I see Ishii Shiro, and then other ones I see Shiro Ishii. I wonder if because it's the Ishii Network, maybe Shiro's the last name? Yeah, I believe because Ishii.

I'm sorry, Ishii's the last name. If it's the Ishii Network, maybe Ishii's the last name? Ishii, I think, is his first name because his father named him Ishii for being the fourth boy. I think Shiro is the last name. I mean, look, it's a different culture. Yeah. If I'm getting it wrong, please let me know. I did my best.

I did a lot of reading as best I could. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And much like as people compare this man to Mengele, Ishii Shiro was also born, much like Mengele, into a very wealthy family. Ishishiro was also born, much like Mangala, into a very wealthy family. On June 25th, 1892, he would be born in the village of Chiyoda Mura, a farming village in the Kamo district, Chibe Prefecture, and southeast of Tokyo. His family was very wealthy and was the community's largest landowner. And his relatives exercised feudal dominance over all of the local people. I looked this up had to look this up it's gonna drive me crazy thank you his daughter's name was harumi ishi so ishi is 100 okay so ishi must be it must be carry over his last name then which so technically we're

gonna do the english way it'd be shiro ichi but like unlike mangala though for ishi we do not know Like Mengele, though, for Ishii, we do not know much about his childhood or early teens. Like, it's all kind of just vague and a mystery and it's not like a lot of record of what he did. What we do know is he then ended up, he did grow up. People saw him kind of as like this tall, thin guy with glasses who was kind of weird in school. And he had a, what they considered a scholarly look that contradicted his rather powerful and apparently annoying as fuck personality. He was the fourth son of an established family, and it's assumed that he attended primary and secondary school. But again, we do not know. Ishii was gifted with a photographic memory as well.

This would serve him through his entire life. But is that real? Is that actually real it is real my mom actually is uh has a decently photographic memory though it's gotten worse as she's aged yeah she would say like back in school uh she wouldn't study because if she needed an answer to a question she could close her eyes and open up the page and read what was on the page she went to college at she went to college at 16 like it was like like rocketed making me feel like i wish i had jesse over here yeah right i just like that sounds like magic to me man i'm like that doesn't that's that's not fair i wish i could do that uh but

ishi yeah he was he had a photographic memory it allowed him to excel in his schoolwork to the point where he would be labeled a potential genius uh His love for Japan and emperor also was endless. He was an ultra nationalist. His appearance would command respect to the people around him. He stood at six feet tall and was well above the height of the average Japanese male. And he took pride in his appearance, well-groomed with a commanding voice, though there are stories that in private, he looked entirely different and was an absolute slob behind the scenes.

He joined the military at a very early age, and it was during his service that he began to realize that he had a passion not for being in the military, but for medicine specifically. And in that moment, in the military, as his passion was realized, he had a new main goal for life. And that was to develop a career as a doctor in the Imperial Japanese Army.

And on April, rather in April of 1916, Ishishiro would be admitted to the medical department of Kyoto Imperial University. So he's going to medical school in 1916. And he was very ambitious. And because of his ambition and the method of betrayal that he ends up using to impress his superiors, which we'll get to, his fellow students fucking hated him. Ishii would work in the lab. So, like, what I mean by betrayal is, like, in the lab after he would go work in the lab well after other students had left and cleaned up all of their equipment and he would use their equipment for his experiments and leave everything out. And so when he finished, he would neglect any and all cleanup after himself, which meant the following morning as the classmates came in, they saw all their shit out and it just prolonged their work. longed their work uh ishi shiro then at the age of 35 would receive his phd in microbiology from kyoto imperial university one of the top schools in the world at the time the equal of any ivy

league school out here so the vibe i'm getting is spoiled yeah kind of but on the level of remember that there was like a kid that was being roasted online a while ago because uh there was a video of him throwing trash on the ground in a school and he was like well it's the janitor's job to pick it up like that's the same vibe that i get from this dude yeah where he's like yeah these others lesser students they can clean it i'm experimenting that kid i think that kid was Stephen Miller, by the way. Just so you know. You might be right. You might be right. It's funny, too, because also similarly to Mengele, his family, particularly his child, has such like fond things to say of her father that the things that he was being accused of just couldn't be proper, that he was unjustly condemned, that her father was a warm hearted person, so bright that sometimes people couldn't catch up with the speed of his own thinking, which she admitted made him irritated and it caused

him to shout every so often. But it's it's it's fascinating the different personalities he has. And it's that serial killer, almost mentality of you present yourself as a you know normal loving father but when you have the freedom to be who you want to be to do the things that you truly want to do uh you become the monster that you are uh in school prior to his graduation in another weird like red flag of this man in his studies ishi often would grow bacteria as pets in multiple petri dishes yeah and his odd practice of raising bacteria as companions rather than as research made him notable to the staff in the university they like he was just like that one's kind of

weird actually maybe just keep your eye on on that guy. Yeah, I don't like making friends with Petri dishes screams sociopath. Like, what are you doing? You can't make friends with actual other people. And so you and I imagine in print this thing that you have total control over and it becomes, you know, your best friend. He is just a very, very bizarre dude. And like I said, I think you're right in that he um ended up just kind of being that kind of guy would throw trash on the ground i messed up now because alex said steven miller and all i could think about is like if that guy had the power and ability oh no i guarantee

he'd be doing some of this shit i'm never more convinced by 100 yeah his medical career began began very quickly after graduation in 1921 is, Ishii was commissioned into the Imperial Japanese Army as a military surgeon with the rank of Army Surgeon Second Class, which is Surgeon Lieutenant. Tokyo, where his work impressed his superiors enough to enable him to return to Kyoto Imperial University to pursue a postgraduate medical schooling in 1924. So he went, you know, for even further medication education at that point. It's during that second trip where he started growing Petri pets and calling them his friends. It's very weird. One of his mentors, Professor Ren Kimura, recalled that Ishii

had an odd habit of doing his laboratory work in the middle of the night, which is when he would use all of his, you know, friend's gear. So it wasn't that people weren't noting what he was doing,

but nobody, for whatever reason, fucking stopped him. In Kyoto during 1927, Ishii Shiro had a decisive revelation. He was following his regular routine of looking through stacks of research journals in order to keep up with the latest discoveries in his field.

While browsing through a medical journal, he found an article on the Geneva Convention of 1925, which Japan had signed, but the diet had not ratified, which I don't know what that means in legal terms. I never looked it up, but it just didn't ratify in Japan. Does that mean it just never became law in Japan? I imagine the books that I read never explained it. Ratified means it was never legitimized. So it just never became legitimate in Japan then, which I guess it doesn't because they leave the League of Nations anyway.

So I don't know why it mattered either way. Regardless, that was the treaty that banned use of biological warfare, as we mentioned previously. And the reason Japan did not ratify the treaty is it recognized the potential for this field in modern warfare. It was during his time at Kyoto University that both the Japanese Army and Navy both became impressed with the theoretical concepts of biological warfare that were now being drawn up by Ishhi shiro like when i mean revelation the man immediately started leaping into developing and devising plans of bio weapons like that's not a normal thing to be doing when you're in your like late 20s it's like i have an idea instead of bettering the world i can't wait to kill what that was here was this what time period was this

1927 ish right i mean it is kind of post chemical warfare. And if you're obsessed with experimentation and you now know that you can kill people with like weird diseases and things, I guess this is, I guess you can get down this path. It's a dark path to be down, but I get it. I don't know. I guess like I could see the, I i can i guess i could see how it got there but it's just like i if you're a man that genius it sucks that you're also evil because imagine what we have to have a moriarty let's just not you know that's what it is it's just

this moriarty was a monster they all are Ishii at this point had designed this new division so thoroughly, every detail was accounted for, including availability of test subjects in Manchuria. He was already looking at human testing this fucking early in his life. Ishii saw prisoners as completely subhuman and expandable. prisoners as completely subhuman and expandable. I mean, if you're looking at your fellow classmates as less than, you're going to look at prisoners as even worse. The problem is with this particular thought is that not only was he the one that thought that, but so did the Japanese military after World War I. They no longer like prisoners were nothing to them.

One reason Japan refused to ratify the Geneva Convention was that it felt no Japanese soldier would allow himself to be captured. Therefore, the code of death before dishonor was placed deep in Japanese soldiers' minds. Japan was not willing to take the burden of caring for prisoners of war upon themselves, especially if its own men would not be in the same situation. Again, that ultra-naturalist, we're better than fucking everybody. never be captured we cannot be stopped our emperor is a god how could we ever tradition there also of like shame and you know your your family's lineage and all that being marked by the shame of your surrender and giving up and that kind of thing it's better just to kill yourself rather than like let everyone so like there is tradition there but that's that's a no good yeah is it no good is right uh and so the japanese decided to invade manchuria but in the invasion japan decided to call it not an invasion it was incident. And since they weren't waging war.

They didn't need to abide. By any international law. Regarding the treatment of any Chinese prisoners of war. They may have taken from that. Manchurian incident. See it's all legal. It's fine. The Japanese army claiming Chinese forces.

Had destroyed the railway at Lake Liu. Which is a lie by the way. That didn't happen. Near Mukden. Inv invaded the northeast of China. And Japanese soldiers poured across the border from Korea. The Chinese army had superior numbers of men, but due to the speed and tenacity of the Japanese forces, they were very quickly defeated. This started the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931.

This area of China would remain under the control of Japan for the next 14 years. The Japanese themselves, to provide a pretext for the invasion, had actually staged the attack. Ishii used this situation, of course, to his advantage, pleading with top commanders to create a germ warfare research division. In 1928, Ishishiro left Japan for two years, traveled throughout Europe and the United States to see what other countries were doing in the field of biological warfare. And he used his discoveries from his travels to convince anyone who opposed his ideas of the need for Japan's national security. Like, it's the same argument used today.

They're doing it, so we have to do it now, because if they do it and we don't, they can beat us. It's like the whole idea of with nukes, you know, like that this is the nukes of, you know, back in 1920s and whatnot. This is the easiest and quickest way to kill entire towns, entire swaths of people. The Japanese program was conducted with the approval of highly placed military and civilian members of the Japanese wartime government. It is apparent that Hirohito, obviously the emperor, knew of the work that Unit 731 was going to be doing in Manchuria. The author then writes, quote, detailed directives of the imperial headquarters that the army chief of staff issued to the Kwantung army command in charge of biological warfare,

or as a rule shown to the emperor and army orders of the army division of the imperial headquarters on which such directives were based were always read by him. There was no way that basically there was no way the emperor did not know what was about to happen. He could not claim ignorance from this. Uh, Ishii Shiro had virtually no restrictions, and he had no need or desire to work with others in the Japanese Army Medical Department. He's going full-on like mad serial killer mode with all the

power and backing of his government. He acted as if he had no fear of offending his superiors by his actions, and due to his egocentricities, he wanted to earn all the glory and advancement for himself, and he was not willing to share it with fucking anyone, only him. One of his main supporters, one of the main supporters of Ishii in his work was a man by the name of Colonel Chikahiko Koizumi. And in 1930, a scientist at the Tokyo Army Medical College during World War I, Koizumi had distinguished himself as a military officer, physician,

and biochemist. Quote, during World War I, Japan did not use chemical weapons, but it did conduct research into chemical warfare and the design of gas masks beginning in 1915, he says.

So, they were looking at that shit even well before this. Like, well, well before this. Koizumi had led this chemical warfare research beginning in May of

1918. Unfortunately, he was involved in a laboratory accident that almost killed him when he was caught without a gas mask in a chlorine gas cloud. He was just like, chlorine himself. So like what an idiot. After his full recovery, he continued his work with new enthusiasm. He headed up the chemical warfare program from 1918 to 1922, and the Japanese were trying to build a first class Navy and money was in short supply at this point. The problem he faced was the low priority that his superiors were placing on his chemical weapons at the time. So he was receiving very little, if any, funding and things he wanted to do. We just didn't have the money to do it. But that's kind of where he should where Ishii Shiro comes in.

While at Tokyo Army Medical College, Koizumi met Ishii and found him to be an extremely intelligent young man. Quote, his talents for biomedical research has proved through his published scientific papers and his drive to make Japan the foremost nation in biological warfare was the same vision shared by Koizumi. Koizumi had influential friends that proved to be very important in the rise of Ishii in the coming years, especially within the military, such as Hideki Tojo,

a future prime minister of Japan. And Ishii and Koizumi used these contacts to gather support for their biological warfare project from within the scientific circles of academia and hospital research groups. Basically, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Like, they all, because they were born, he was born rich, got all of the things that no one else was getting a chance to see, going to great colleges and mingling with people that were, you know, in another world would never talk to him.

Because he has the access to that. He can just push his idea of where money should go. And people were again, you have to understand this man is in Japan at 19 in the 1930s, a six foot tall, very imposing, well-dressed individual who was extremely egocentric. And that held a lot to people like people were very intimidated simply by him being there uh his presence was just a very commanding that is so wild that there was like a time when that was like what you could do so so recently i know oh yeah yeah yeah that's the other thing too right like this isn't that long ago like some people might have some like great-grandparents that were

alive during this like my great-grandmother was alive during this and she only passed away like a year ago. It's crazy. It's not far from what we're doing like today. It's just back the other the other way. By the mid 1930s, Japan was manufacturing enormous quantities of poison gas bombs, including shells of chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas. Everybody's favorite. Koizumi was made the dean of the Tokyo Army Medical College. And in 1934, he became the army surgeon general.

And in 1936, he was appointed as Japan's minister of health. And remember, this man is buddy-buddy with Ishii. As Koizumi moved up the ranks, he made sure that Ishii was promoted along with him. And after Ishii achieved the rank of major at the age of 37, Ishii was appointed chair of the newly developed

Department of Immunology at Tokyo Army Medical College, which is... It's like the origin story of a genuine... Super villain? He's gonna pair up with fucking air hypnosis, dude.

Like, it's like, good God. to pair up with fucking air hypnosis, dude. Like, good God. It's just pure evil. For obviously immunology was the field that dealt with microbiology, pathology, vaccine research. And for this reason, it was the perfect field

for a man like Ishii to freaking study because everything he always fucking wanted. And Koizumi quickly granted Ishii the resources that he needed to initiate building a biological warfare program for the

Japanese army. So they schmoozed their way to the top and just money flowed. They just diverted the money flow. The new appointment as chair of this department gave Ishii the power needed to become the head of the biological warfare unit that he had been requesting the army to develop. Major Ishii

had a full schedule that began with early morning lectures to students. In the afternoon, he dealt with administrative matters, quote, while covertly researching biological warfare in the evening hours in the lab space of the immunology department that had been allotted to him. Daniel Berenblatt, author of A Plague Upon Humanity, also noted that, quote, here Ishii and a small team of scientists and laboratory assistants worked to culture to culture lethal bacteria and to develop chemical poisons. Ishii was also studying, and I think we've talked about this in a previous episode, that he was studying flea transmitted bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid, as well as anthrax. And those early experiments were for defense against diseases and did not involve human beings.

It wasn't until Ishii's unit developed vaccines to protect the Japanese soldiers from research that from disease outbreaks that humans started coming into play. I think there was a plot in World War Two, maybe that would involve releasing fleas with diseases on the West. It sounds like exactly the typei maybe that would involve releasing fleas with diseases on the west it sounds like exactly the type of thing that would happen in world war ii like i know there was all kinds like like a cat with a bomb or you know like stuff like that the the author of the book uh the book that we're using how gold lays out the development of the chemical and biological weapons by japan and in the world war one and parallels to other great western powers

the main difference during world war ii between the Japanese program and our program, the Allies program, was just the willingness of the Japanese to use the weapons and conduct experiments on live human beings. The Allies refused to use human subjects on the grounds that it was not ethical. We only started doing that after World War II. And Gold's book is filled with facts given by former Japanese military personnel and victims' testimonies, which we'll, as I said earlier, be talking about in the next episode. But just as a taste to what we're going to be broaching, there's that.

Again, it's just one of those things where, like, the dude just glided into place. Nothing stopped him. Everything about his mentality, Japan first, was just the perfect. He was like the perfect evil dude at the perfect time to be evil and he got everything he could ever wander without really trying all it takes is one person to say a thing a lot of other people are thinking and if that person's willing to do it then all those other people are like yeah okay and that's a like that's how you get up in those like bad people get up into

positions of power is they they say and do things that other people don't have the will to do because it's wrong right like they deep down know it's wrong but they want it yeah but they know it's wrong so there's always some person that's like i'll do it i'll go i'll give a shit and that's what that's kind of the vibe here like this guy is just a bad dude and i mean just in general like across the board yeah like just not a good person like even in personal life stuff yeah exactly and it's just it's people like ishi isho uh shiro ishi just they infuriate because they lid that it's almost like they get off on that double life they very much like love living their true monster self and then being like, see, I'm a family man and I just blend in.

They like get off on that shit. I don't think I don't want to like get into psychology, but I feel like they may not even think that. I think they are. My job is my job and I'm not doing anything that I'm being paid to. And then I go home to my family and I live my life. I think they're just sociopaths, man. doing anything that i'm being paid to and then i go home to my family and i live my life i think they're just sociopaths man i think there's just a group of people that just i mean yeah they can do this without feeling empathy or emotions for others yeah i agree um even at this point in time

in history too uh unit 731 is now up and running it finished its construction in 1931, though Ishii isn't there yet. And it is where they are occupying Manchuria. He's not even there yet. And they already have, that's what I'm saying, like they have a thing. You know they want it.

They just need a guy who's willing to be like, screw them rules. And they found him. Yeah. And their, Unit 731, while it may have been the central building in operation,

we will also learn of the many satellite camps that they had that they were just simply referred to as death camps. Japan had their own concentration camps. They were doing literally exactly what the Nazis were doing. But yeah, the big the big museum for all this, though, is in China. If you want to see like the actual where they're putting all the artifacts it's in china i don't know where it is but i know it's in china yeah uh there's also you know theories and they're pretty solid theories that uh the u.s also knew what was going on and knew exactly how things were were going down for years but because of how we made a deal with him at the end it's one of those

like oh we don't what are you talking about i don't know what you're i don't know what you're talking about are you trying oh no whoa buddy are you trying to say that this country uh turns an eye when it comes to like other countries and they're weird like messed up shit they do to each other no and it's no how do we get to the moon by the way i'm forgetting it's almost like you're also trying to say that like because their skin color wasn't white that we cared even less it's almost like ah come on it's almost like you're trying to say all sorts of things about this country what where are you talking america bro yeah this. Yeah. This sounds like a

fake, like a book written about alternate history United States. That's not us. We would never do anything like that. Yeah. You know what? Call me when everything's Taco Bell. Okay. We're definitely not going to read a quote next time

from the head of the OSS at the time lamenting that they wouldn't do human testing in the u.s and how much of a pain it was that didn't let them you know that wouldn't we're not going to read a quote about that don't worry what's crazy is from that like messed up standpoint where ends justify the means all the messed up things germany did and japan did and like all these torturous messed up things at the end most people and that sort of ends justify the means they're like they achieved a lot and we know a lot about the human body because of that and space flight because of that like but so many people do again ignore what it was but that's what after the war that's kind of the

vibe we had which is like that's get me those scientists because they know what's up it's like bro what we did it so much so much so much that's the thing that's the thing right we have like we literally did like and the funny thing is this this guy wasn't part of operation paperclip and totally tired and separate deal from the deals that they were making with the Nazis. The deals they made with Shiro were not part of that. This was a different program. That's what's messed up.

That's how they sold them on it. The idea of certainly I did bad things, but those bad things taught me all of this. Most of the medical knowledge we had in the sixties, seventies, eighties came from the terrible terrible things that happened in world war ii and like verner yeah verner von braum yeah he is the reason we like we would have gotten to the moon regardless but we were now jumping directly into a cold war

with russia and they america was like shortcuts at any cost. But that's because in their mind, it was like, this is for the fate of the planet. So any means are justified, which I think is, again, this goes back to when you were talking about. I wish there was some thinking about that right now in terms of the literal planet. But that goes back again to when you were talking about Geneva and just the idea, like if someone believes something enough that they're willing to do anything making all the rules in the world don't matter because they're going to justify it by saying i can lie cheat and steal because it's for the good of the world

or i can kill all these people because it's for the good of my like that's peacemaker yeah that's crazy time that's crazy talk yeah it's it's it's god it's infuriating well we gotta it is just because we can that's history man like if you want to get into history that's what it is it's people justifying terrible things literally over and over and over again just because it's like we're doing it for us like it you know if you really want to get like messed up you can talk about japan you can talk about america everybody any country in the world any country has a history of built on bodies like that's like let's just that's what it is yeah all it takes is a man like this to have the

reverse thought of a good person like seriously because we look at uh you know kind of rewinding just slightly uh ishii obviously while he was researching in Kyoto, he was at some point dispatched to go help cure an epidemic that had broken out in a region of Japan. And it was during that work that he kind of had the thought of like, why not call this silent enemy a silent ally instead? He saw the havoc it was wreaking across this thing that he was sent to cure. And he was just to cure and he was just like i'm gonna kill people with this this is what i'm gonna kill thousands of people with

and when he came back to kyoto and he brought it up to uh a guy by the name of iraqi sadao who would eventually be tried for all of this shit um he was he was just like no i like your ambition i'll see he signed a paper and bam he immediately was just like allowed no, I like your ambition. He signed a paper and bam, he immediately was just like allowed to, he had free reign. What's important about Manchuria, which we're going to talk about a little bit too, is that Manchuria had a railway system that the Japanese operated nerve center of the growing Manchurian economy, within which Japan had been developing a commercial and industrial base since 1904. So they already had a kind of infrastructure there that they were using, and it made it way easier for them to transport people back and forth. You can read a lot about that in a book called Terry's Guide to the Japanese Empire. I only used the clips that I needed and did not bother reading the book.

So I don't know if it's any good or not. But as time went on and Japan continued expanding the breadth and depth of its power in the Asian mainland, Shiro's career continued to advance. In 1932, the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory was set up within the Army Hospital of Tokyo with Ishii in charge, which would mean Unit 731 has now been operational for approximately a year without ishi the title of the laboratory was a as a euphemistic as manzugo's independence and the great east asian co-prosperity sphere under which japan conquered neighboring countries that is some hard 1984 shit yeah great east asian co-prosperity co-prosperity, co-prosperity sphere. If there was like the internet at this time, everybody would have been like, what?

Like, you know what I mean? Just be given a terribly mundane or like lightweight sounding name to conquering neighboring countries. Like, we're the co-prosperity sphere. We're going to kill you. Get out of the way. I mean, admittedly, that's a tactic used even today in like congress yeah when they name a bill and it's something long and boring and so people don't ask nobody looks right you're like i don't want to deal with that yeah yeah uh at this time prevention of disease in the japanese

military was still an objective of research but the center of gravity had now shifted to the development of bacteriological and chemical methods of warfare. This laboratory was Ishii's first major step in that direction. Meanwhile, Japanese ascendancy in Manchuria was bringing the Japanese medical community closer to unprecedented opportunities for research because of the human victims that they were using. Ishii's goal of turning bacteria and gas into weapons of the Imperial Japanese Army would require comprehensive research, and animal research had serious limits in producing usable data. Growing control by Japan over Manchuria would provide research materials in the form of human beings who would just be plucked from the streets like lab rats.

Toward the end of 1932, Ishii applied to the army to be sent to Manchuria to expand his research facilities. Then the following year, Ishii's aggressive push for biological warfare research resulted in a grant of land and a building in Tokyo expressly for him to research. Coincidentally, this was also the year in which Japan withdrew from the league of nations, which had judged it in the wrong for its aggression against China.

So, you know, they just said bad, bad. And Japan just was like, OK, we're out. Not like they were following the goddamn law. It's not a good look to leave the League of Nations. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when there's a body called the League of Nations, there's no way that's a good. Good thing to do to leave the League of Nations.

There's no way that's a good, good thing to do to leave the League of Nations. But this severance of what little ties they were maintaining to the League of Nations at this point was instrumental in freeing up Japan's hands from any remaining constraints or guilt they may be feeling as the way they began behaving in Asia. The Japanese maintained control in Manchuria in a variety of ways. maintained control in Manchuria in a variety of ways. Emperor Puyi's police force, obedient to the commands of his Japanese puppeteers, was one law enforcement arm. In addition, there was a special police force which engaged in intelligence work, but was also skilled in gaining confessions

from suspected spies. You think that's code speak for torture, torture. Very good at getting people to confess because they just beat the fuck out of them but that wasn't the scariest kind of cop you could bump into in the japanese empire those belong to an elite group of military police known as kempai tai substantial though japanese capacity to maintain public order was there was no lack of work for it opportunities to detain people constantly manifested themselves. The powers that were in Manchuria decreed anti-Japanese activity, a cause for arrest

and the oppressive nature of the Japanese occupation created patriots who formed underground groups to oppose it. Just always remember that much like in Nazi Germany, too. We always look at Japan and Nazi Germany as in that time as evil evil evil but there were good people that were under like working underground who knew what was going on was wrong and knew they had an uphill battle and were revolting and rebelling anyway they were bad asses and stories of heroes will probably never ever get to know of those attempting to slow down the horrors that they saw happening it wasn't you know it's not like this great swath you can paint the entire country

with uh i just think that's very important because i don't think we never i never got i never got taught that kind of thing in high school it was always just like you know the basic shit and never really about most who would be taught is is the resistance in france for example yeah but yeah not a lot of people like it wasn't until but maybe it's just because information wise we didn't know but it wasn't until much later that we learned that there was more like people were trying to kill hitler like that kind of thing yeah all the officers were like this guy so you know you have to just assume there's a lot of stories out there of like decent people that were not going to tolerate this shit.

But then again, you have to think like a lot of the population was like, well, I'm not going to get killed. So what do I care? Like, you know, it's a dark,

like, where would you be on that timeline? Right. When you think about that, would you risk your life? That's a good, yeah. I mean,

like you, you could be like, yeah, of course I am. But in the moment, would you? Yeah. That's a tough question to ask of anybody it's hard because yeah there's no preparation you don't get to say goodbye to people you know you get taken and that's it like what do you do uh it's it's it's you know even after there any official resistance stopped groups and individuals continued the the struggle long after all of that had ceased, giving the Japanese an excuse to use them as research materials as well through all of the years of experiments that ended up happening.

Some members of the resistance were captured and interrogated by these elite police forces, the Ken Pai Tai, then sent to the experimental labs afterward. Members of that police force were under orders of the army and were specially selected for their rigid, oppressive, and unyielding personalities. Basically, much like the SS, in order to be one of these guys, you had to be a complete monster at heart with no qualms about kidnapping people in the middle of the night, taking them off the streets, shooting them there if you have to. They were given jobs such as catching spies and interrogating suspects and were authorized to use torture if they were so inclined.

So, you know, only the best people were part of that police force. Right. Jesus Christ. These people like were trained in how to just stare people down, how to use the voice to intimidate a suspect. use the voice to intimidate a suspect. People from an earlier era sometimes mentioned the fearsome way that these quote unquote protectors of Japanese aims

could shake a person with words, but even their descriptions fail to do justice to the reality of them. There is nothing romanticizing. Like this is not romanticizing or exaggeration. The testimonies recorded in the book

that we're going to use in the next episode from former Ken Pai Tai officers, one of which was an 80 year old that came out and told the people I am a war criminal. And for more than 30 minutes, he spoke about everything he did, why he did it for the country, for the emperor, and how they were all kind of commanded to go to death with the secrets of what they'd done. all kind of commanded to go to death with the secrets of what they'd done. But that one, at least one in his old age, just was able to just actually put out the truth. And that's why we know the Ken Patai served as human material procurement for Unit 731 and its associated outfits.

And a former officer from Dalian, Mio Yutaka, tells how the prisoners were handled, saying, quote, we were the special handling forces of the Kenpatai, in charge of taking prisoners for the experiments of 731. We knew the prisoners would be used in experiments and not come back. We tied them with ropes around their waists and their hands behind their backs. They couldn't move. We took them by train in a closed car. and the unit 731 truck would meet us at the station. It was a strange truck, black with no windows, a strange looking vehicle. So, you know, it's the exact same shit that the Nazis were doing in concentration camps is the literal same exact thing. The gloomy sealed freight cars to which Maru was referring ran over the tracks of the South Manchuria railway. They represented a much different side to the efficient railroad from the one

that had impressed officer Terry, the guy who went to go visit Japan way back in the day. But that is where we're going to stop. I think episode one, now we're moving into parallel nation. Yeah. Next episode. We see Ishii within this year 1930 uh 1933 step into his role

as the commander of unit 731 the experiments that would take place and the wide amount of influence he had on japanese medicine at the time a real true control over it in a way that i think not a lot of people understand and how they looked and treated everybody as non-humans that were their enemy. It's a fascinating story, but that is where we're going to leave it at the buildup of who Ishii is and where he's coming from and why this story, I think, is important in terms of a biological warfare. We'll be back next week, everybody, with part two of Unit 731.

Thank you guys so much for the support. We're off to go do Minisoad over at ChiluminatiPod, or patreon.com slash chiluminatipod. I don't know what the boys have this time, but I think the boys know what I'm bringing to the table. No clue. As I texted it to you. Nope, didn't read it. That's fine, that's fine. Thank you guys so much for

listening. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye. Patreon.com slash chiluminatipod. thank you guys so much for listening we'll see you next time bye bye hello everybody welcome back to the illuminati podcast as always i'm one of your hosts mike martin joined by the I don't know who they are. There's two. What? Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer. No.

Neo and Trinity. No. I don't understand, and I probably never will. Let me just tell you right now that there's two. Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield. I'm telling you, I think he literally just looked up famous duos.

Cheech and Chong. And he's been going through the list ever since. I'm trying to dig deep. Which one of you is Dick Powell? Me?

Your name's Jesse Cox. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I want to know you. I want my body. I want to. I want to illuminate. I want to illuminate. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Illuminati podcast.

As always, I'm one of your hosts, Mike Martin, joined by Alex and Jesse.