Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 191 - Unit 731 Part 3: Happily Ever After?

Episode Date: February 12, 2023

The FINALE is here! 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 Talkspace: http://www.talkspace.com/chill 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

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comfort and quality of our blankets. Happy Father's Day! Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Juleminati Podcast, Episode 191. As always, I am one of your hosts, Mike Martin, joined by the Morcamb and Wise of LA, Alex and Jesse. I don't know. I don't know. Eric Morcamb and Ernie Wise, Ernest Wiseman, it was his actual name, and Eric Morcamb was

John Eric Bartholomew. Is this another British thing? It is. It is another British one. Dude, Ernest Wiseman was born in 1925, and he died 30 years ago. I don't know that there's a person who is listening to this show. My choice. Who knows who these people are?

I guarantee that we're going to get a message absolutely like, the reruns were on for 25 years after his death. I will reveal this particular duo did come from a listener. I am now getting suggestions for what to use, and this was a fascinating one. So I was like, you know what? I'll do it. Is the listener an old grandpa who? I couldn't tell you.

I don't know. I couldn't tell you. I'm probably, I would imagine. How many teeth does this listener have? For those who don't know, they were an English comedy double act with variety, radio, film, and mostly successful television. They partnered up in 1941 until Morecam's death in 1984. 1941, bro.

Yeah. Yeah. Look at the pictures of them, though. Come on now. You like, you get. That's like pre-war. Well, like mid-war for that, yeah, mid-war for them. But that's even more confusing.

That's actually more confusing for me. Look, they had to get through it somehow. Yeah. I guess. I guess I watched all of catfish during COVID, didn't I? So that's basically the same as this, right? What's crazy? The thing is that they weren't even active when he died in 1999.

They hadn't been active for 15 years. Yeah, because they stopped being active in 1984 when Morecam died. I like, just like, oh, you know, yeah, okay. Somebody you guys didn't know. Most of these we don't know. This is like that question. This is a question of like, how can England and America be so different when they speak the same language?

And it's like, I've never heard of Morecam and Wise. Sorry to interrupt this, Morecam. That's what? Morecam? Yeah, it's Morecam. Oh, yeah. We have somebody who's from England, producer Dean here. Well, hold on.

So you know this? Yeah. Yeah, Dean, do you know who these people are? Yeah, yeah. Everyone knows Morecam and Wise. And he's young! He's like 26! He's like, oh, yeah, these guys are on my Mount Rushmore of comedy.

Oh, he's short, fat, hairy legs? Wait, no, I know him. I know him. I know short, fat, hairy legs. Sorry. I do know these guys. You do? Yeah.

I do. I don't know. I'm sorry. That's a good bit. Sorry. That's the one that everybody knows, right? I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know if you're being sarcastic.

You're short, fat, hairy legs! Yeah, that's it. I know him. We got it. I do not know what the fuck you're talking about. Sorry. Sorry. Didn't know them by name, but I know them by their legs.

You know who I do know by name? I thought maybe you'd forget. And then we'd accidentally just do an episode about why- No, I was going to say all of our Patreon subscribers. Oh, thank God. Patreon.com, Patreon.com, the finest place. It's going to be a heavy one today, folks. I thought he was ready.

He's ready for us to dive into the last part of today's episode. Yeah, I'm going to walk away from this one feeling down. But you know what brings me- You guys are going to bring your A-game comedy, all right? But you know what brings me up, up, up? Give us gallows, humor, anything. We need some laughter. Gallows, humor?

Yeah. What do you call- What do you call- Not yet. What? Wait until human atrocities have begun happening. All right, guys, if you love this show for some reason and you want more Americans being clueless about British comedy acts,

please head over to Patreon.com, where we will keep making this show as long as people keep supporting the show. And there's lots of great stuff that you can get for free 99 on top of your nice kind offering to us that is not a payment or purchase, all in the name of good, clean, good, old, non-corporate, beautiful, funny entertainment.

And you get all kinds of nice stuff. Actually, accidentally, we've gone corporate, Alex. We've officially gone corporate. Technically, we are now a business. We are now a business. Chaluminati is now a business. That's no joke. We've gone legit.

We're part of the big- Yeah, we're part of the big government now. That's right. That's the thing. That's the message I want to send out. And at patreon.com slash chaluminati pod, you too can get an insight. You can control the government from the inside

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But yeah, please. Add free episodes, 15-minute to 45-minute minisodes for every episode, art from the illustrious Mel, the greatest, the goat, the visual identity of this goddamn show, all kinds of great stuff out there for you guys to pick up. And most recently, our brand new show that we have only been doing for just a little while now,

Rotten Popcorn, where we watch movies that Mathis finds somewhere even more obscure than Morkham and Wise. Thank you. I appreciate that. I think that is a compliment. It's a lot of hard work finding these movies. I know.

I know. You look so tired after looking for them when we find them. Patreon.com slash Chaluminati Pod. Patreon.com slash Chaluminati Pod. Patreon.com slash Chaluminati Pod. Thank you. Hey, guys.

Hey, what's up, Jesse? Just real quick. Why did the bicycle fall down? Why? Because it was too tired. We in there, son! We in there, son! Let's go!

So, let's talk about the horrible crimes of the Japanese goers. It's true. It's time for the final part of our series that I titled Unit 731, but is really more a look at the man behind Unit 731, Shiro Ishii. And before we dive in,

I want to, at the very top of this episode, do a couple of things. One, hey, it's not going to be pleasant. It's probably going to be as bad as the last episode, maybe a little less bad as we're going to be wrapping toward the end, but bad in a different way when you realize how few of them got put in jail.

Realize? Yeah, when you realize just what we did. Also, shout out to one of our listeners, Just Steve on Twitter. He sent me an article from the New England Journal of Medicine talking about how much value was actually gained from both Nazi concentration camps in Unit 731. And the answer, unsurprisingly, is very goddamn little.

The reasons are, you know, a long laundry list, and I would encourage you to go seek out this article there and read it yourself. But what it boils down to is these guys, as much as they were claiming they were trying to do something scientific and following the scientific method, they weren't. They were like children playing with toys

that had very little care for actual steps within science. Never mind the human torture and human crimes against humanity they performed. But also, they didn't record times. They didn't record temperatures. They didn't wear gloves. They had people mingling with other sick people. Everything they did would nullify any of the,

I guess conclusions is what I'm looking for, that they would have reached, that they claimed to have reached in a lot of their research. Now, it didn't stop the U.S. from starting in other countries, of course, from starting to think that maybe there's value there and doing everything they can to get their hands on that information. But when it's all looked at after decades and decades of research, there's just no value in what they were doing

and the way they were doing it was just cruelly laissez-faire, even in Unit 731. The one thing that Unit 731 for certain kind of got us, but it would have been figured out in other ways, was how to treat frostbite, which is to place the frostbitten appendage in a certain slightly warmer than temperature of water, somewhere between 2 and 12 degrees Celsius.

But of course, the way they came down to that, they also tested flamethrowers and all kinds of other nonsense that was completely unnecessary to try and figure out a fixed frostbite and we would have figured it out on our own in more humane and scientific ways. So whatever it is we believe we've learned, it comes at the expense of not actually having the foundational evidence that they would need to have come to that conclusion

and therefore a lot of it is trash and that's just like, I just want to put that out there. And it's a great, again, a great article. Again, that's New England Journal of Medicine.org, GrannyJM.org, and you can go find this as easy article to find. I'll try to remember to link it. Actually, Dean, I'm going to send this in the DM so you can just have a hang on to it for me for now.

But I just want to put that up at the top. As always, a shout out to all of our resources today. We'll be using, once again, the article from the DC Education Center, Education Center, the book called Shiri Esho and the book titled Unit 731. All of these have kind of filtered in to make these episodes possible. And last we left off Shiri Esho, the man was about to head into the battlefield really for the very first time in World War II.

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That's all you have to do to match with the licensed therapist today. Just go to Talkspace.com slash Jill to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for our show. That's Talkspace.com slash Jill. He, for the most part, kept himself locked away in the Unit 731 villages and fortresses and would oftentimes head back home to Tokyo and end up doing lectures for students, as we discussed last week, with literal parts of body parts of the victims that he had across the country

and he was torturing. Sometimes he'd bring heads of these victims. There was just genuinely no concern that what he was doing was wrong, which is objectively, obviously not true. But despite the fact that Ishii's organization was technically officially a water purification and disease... They did say, like, don't tell anyone about this until you die. You know what I mean?

Like, even if they're like, they don't care personally, they must have at least known they were transgressing. Well, that's the giveaway, right? Is that they say all these things, but then they're like, take these to your grave, meaning there is the knowledge that the rest of the world, at the very least, would see these crimes as literal atrocities. This is one of those things where, like, you know, the villain is like, they'll never understand the work we did here.

That is why you cannot tell them. But we are just like those guys. You know that's how they thought. They're like, no one will understand what we've achieved here today. Yeah, but... We did it. I still can't believe we got this project done so fast and so well. When I'm in New York.

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Or brainstorming next steps here. It all just happens on the Miro board. Exactly. And it's nice not having to wait an entire day to get sign off from this guy. Hey! Well, it is true. See how Miro users save up to 80 hours every year by meeting less and doing more. Get on board at Miro.com.

The first three boards are free forever. That's M-I-R-O dot com. Yeah, I did. Do you truly think then, Jesse, that these, you know, criminals essentially are. If the war went their way or the things they were expecting. Yes. If the war went their way, they'd be labeled as heroes and we wouldn't know any of this. They'd be like, they discover.

Okay. So you think they would have hit it regardless. They wouldn't have been like, look at these breakthroughs we quote unquote found. Oh no. They would have said, look at the breakthroughs we found. And then they would have just like not mentioned how they found it. Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. That's reasonable. Yeah. I can definitely see that happening. If you can view a person as a thing to be dismantled and destroyed and like studied and ripped apart and opened up and look at the pieces while it's still beating. If you can view a person like you would view, I don't know, like a frog in like your eighth grade science class.

If that's how you can view a person, then even, you know, I don't think it matters to them. Like all these things. And then though, I wasn't feeling like great. No, I hated it. I was so sad. I never wanted to dissect anything. I was always just miserable.

Even then, you know, like this is fucked up what I'm doing. This is a life. This was a life. I'm not about to cook this or anything. I'm just going to look inside. That's fucked up. And that's, but Jesse's comparison is like so dead on that I don't recommend going to look these up, but this just comes with like reading the papers I've been reading.

Like there are pictures of these Japanese quote unquote scientists over a table with a vivisection infant and you can see these images like they're out there. Don't look them up. But like the evidence is there and they were it's being treated. It looks like how you would dissect a frog in high school. Like it's the same setup, the same thing. And it is treating it the same way. It's awful.

And that's again, it goes back to the idea of dehumanizing your enemy. And once you do that, they're no longer worth considering. So to be honest, I don't know that I would love to know when they sort of like determined we should hide this from everyone. You know what I mean? Like before the war. Right, right, right. Well, is that a because we are doing it for the sake of national security or are we doing

it because it's wrong? Right. Those are two different things. And I don't know that I can say it's cause it's wrong. Right. I don't know. I can say that about it. I would say Ishii was hiding it at the very least I can say with confidence that Ishii

himself was hiding it because he was in his mind. He was, as Alex said, the evil genius that nobody would understand. And he knew that the world would see what he was doing as evil. But he was a, I think Ishii for a long time at least was a true believer that he was doing something scientific and he believed he was doing the world a favor, removing the populations and the people that they saw as lesser than, lesser than the Japanese. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like exactly like the Jews, the Jews with Germany and the Polish.

Yeah. I don't think that in his mind what he was doing was evil. I think what he thought was if the world finds out what I'm doing at this moment, they'll look at it as wrong. But in the future, they will see me for the genius. It's like I was saying, like it's proper evil villain lives in volcanoes. We're just like, they'll never understand. I have to destroy the moon.

That is the one thing. Hold it. Like it's like Bond villain shit. 100% like people do this all the time when they just like decide that it's there. The right ones. You know, it's like that fucking what's his name? Principal Skinner. No, it is the children that are wrong or, you know, whatever it is.

Yeah. I learned. I learned an incredible fact the other day. This is, I did not know this because I, my assumption was that if you were like a good person of religious faith that you didn't do shit like this, but apparently this is absolutely true. I guess. Um, and I'll use Christianity as an example because it's, you know, where I come from.

But we know it's what we grew up in. But like, if you're like a Christian, it's okay to lie for Christ. Yeah. Like if the end result is you either get more Christians or something good happens for the like it's chill to do that. I will say not for Catholicism, not for Catholicism. I learned that. I learned I was like, no way.

No way. American ass shit right there. Listen, I grew up Catholic. Me too. What I was always taught was basically the death of a martyr. Don't lie for Jesus. Embrace him and die and in that you will become a martyr and a symbol of hope for all of those. Like that was Catholicism's look and I just, that was drilled into me.

I would, I would wager that recently that has probably changed mostly because of various allegations. When you're moving priests from church to church to church, that's more of a look. We need this priest because like we are trying to help bring people back into the church. Like it's not the doc. The Pope doesn't agree. Sure. Of course.

Of course. But I think like there's, there's this over like arcing like, bro, it might be fine if we're doing it for a good reason. That's, you know, and I feel like kids with what we're talking about. I mean, yeah. I mean, they clearly believe that at least in the 1300s, the Crusades. Yeah. You know what I mean?

That's part of their history. I mean, that's, yeah, the extent to killing, right? Like killing for Jesus is not the same as lying for Jesus. Of course, but they definitely 100% there was a time period where they thought that. Yeah. You know, I'm starting to think that God is actually Alex. Look at him. No one can see him right now.

He's got the beer going, light shining directly on him. And it's like flair. Look at that. His coffee cup literally has JJ Abrams lens flair. It's got the truth in it. Yeah. It's the deck of the Starship Enterprise right now. It is so blinding.

That's all made possible by the donations to patreon.com. What does God need with a webcam? Before we get to issue exactly, I also want to, I want to highlight like just a quick list of some of these useless experiments that, that they went through to give you an idea of like how childish and like almost serial killer ish it is when they like play with corpses and so on. So the things they did included burning victims with flamethrowers, exploding bombs to study the effects of shrapnel, bombarding people with lethal doses of X-rays.

They were spun to death in centrifuges. You remember the eight ball kind of, you know, kind of that. Can you being magic in a spun to death? Hell no. Bond villain level evil. Where it isn't just like, we're going to test some things. This is, let us spin a man. Until his blood separates.

Like that is bond shit. Wouldn't that be cool? Wouldn't that be sick? Wouldn't it be fucking cool? Now we'll know. All right, let's do it. Now we'll know. Okay.

Now we did it to 10 people. What happens if we do it to 20 people? We might, might be different. What if we stack the people together? What if we tie them together and spin the whole family together? That is, it's bond. It's straight up just like, I'm going to slowly point this laser at you. And we'll see what it does, Mr. Bond.

Like that. It's crazy. The evil doctors just like, look it. They're begging for it. Hard cut to dying people begging for death. Oh God. This is, it's insane. They were also injected with animal blood, air bubbles and exposed to syphilis.

Then in terms of surgical experiments, they had, through surgical removal, they had their stomachs with the esophagus removed, then they attached it to the intestines of the victim. They had limbs amputated and then reattached to the opposite side. And of course there was the vast majority who were just simply gassed to death. All of these, all of these weird experiments and many more, including the live, the vivisections were done in the name of advancing scientific knowledge and were performed without considering, of course, the people that were fucking.

They were butchering. Quote, Japanese scholars say that the research was not contrived by mad scientists and that it was intelligently designed and carried out. The medical findings saved many Japanese lives. And quote, that ended up turning out to be false. And that comes from a book called Unlocking the Secret. It's. I guarantee none of them are very good.

Go back to that statement though. That's what we're talking about at the beginning. The idea that if they had one or if this like hadn't come out, what they did saved so many lives, ignore what it was. They really were quite helpful. That is the vibe of this kind of stuff. And it's always that way, no matter where it is, no matter who does it until the truth comes out.

And they're like, they did what? Every time, every time. Dude, even more so, they would continue with things like they just buried victims alive to see what would happen. Like, what do you think is going to happen? They're going to suffocate slowly and horribly if the weight of the dirt doesn't crush on them because they didn't put them in coffins, they just hooked them in a hole and put dirt on them.

They're like, what do you want us to do? Learn how to make fake bodies before we find out what happens when we bury a living person in a hole? This has some solid YouTube vibes. It has the idea of like, except they weren't filming it, although maybe they were. But the idea of just, all right, this week we're going to do something totally crazy and find out what happens. It's the exact same vibe.

It's wild. And then they keep having to like outdo themselves every time. Do you agree? And the other things is like they just want to remove random internal organs just to see what would happen. And then they claim to remove other organs in terms of the need of medical practice as well as simply, you know, I've said flamethrower before, they also just simply set people on fire.

Like, just like with a lighter, like a match and like douse them in like gasoline. It doesn't make this is not scientific. It doesn't make any sense. They became so routine and Japanese occupied areas of China. And according to a reporter by the name of Brackman, who was at the Tokyo war trials afterward, he said, quote, the manner in which these people met their death was extremely cruel and diverse, so ghastly, in fact, that it made Auschwitz's gas chambers appear humane. Like imagine that sentence being fucking like coming out of your mouth to be like the people

who got gassed at Auschwitz, you know, the shit where fingernails were digging into the concrete as they were suffocating on Zycon B was humane compared to what the fucking Japanese were doing to the Chinese. It's fucked. Medical researchers locked up diseased prisoners with healthy ones to see how quickly things would spread. Now to study the effects of pressure on the human body, researchers put prisoners inside a pressure chamber.

The victims suffered horrible agony before their eyes popped out of their sockets and they would die. They to determine how long the average human could last without nutrition, prisoners were just simply starved or they were mummified alive in dehydration experiments. So just like I don't even know how you just I don't even I'm literally at a loss of words. Like that's a fucking crazy thing to even think like let's forcibly dehydrate someone and see if we can mummify these people are treated with the exact same respect as your Sims characters.

Yeah. When you like trap them in a pool or lock them in just to see what happens. It's that it is that level of like I don't view their computer people. They're not real. I just want to see what's going to happen. It's that except it's real people. You have to disconnect what would swing by like in the Sims and play rock, paper, scissors for your life.

You have to understand the disconnect associated with seeing a person as like that's my test subject and I can't wait to see what weird shit we're going to do with them today. Like that's crazy. One of the last things I have here that I listed is they also did like the frog and a pot of water thing where they would put people in warm water and then very slowly increase the level of the water, cooking them alive. Okay. Cool.

Awesome. What the fuck? They claimed it was to study like degree of burns. I mean, I'm sure it actually was to do that. But like. Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. You could shoot.

You could like do a test on gravity by like chopping someone's head off and throwing it off the Empire State Building. I mean, you're not wrong. And honestly, thank God these guys are all gone now because they might be taking notes. Genius. How long can a head or how fast does a head fall from the Empire State Building the ground? We should somebody know, you know, nobody should figure that out. Probably as fast.

During the testimony, you know, just. Oh, you drop. You know, I'm just saying there's eventually everything falls in the same way. I'm just saying. I mean, you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Terminal velocity.

I got you. Don't make it morbid. Hold on. Let me save this really quick. What are you making this morbid? Yeah. No, I got you. I got you.

I got you. Why did the kids stock up on yeast? Oh, why? You wanted to make some dough. That's what I did, too. It took a half a second to click for me. But because that's actually what I would do if I needed to make some dough, like some actual dough, like I would just get yeast.

Yeah, you would. You are that kind of guy. Well, continuing into the Tokyo war crime tribe, you know, just to get a few more facts. They were to give you an idea of how the Japanese and can treated their POWs compared to the Germans. There were 132, around 132,000 Allied POWs held by the Japanese in World War Two of these 35,756 of them died, producing a death rate of about 27%. And by contrast, the German and Italian forces held 235,000 Allied POWs and 9,300 of them died

at a death rate of 4%. So they just just looking at just like how they were treated. The Japanese were in a lot of ways, way, way worse than the Germans ever were. It was all just fucking buried. All of this shit was buried during World War Two. The handling of other Asians by the occupying forces of the Japanese military at times seemed obviously barbaric and quote, the Japanese were responsible for 20 to 30 million Chinese casualties during their 14 year occupation.

You're looking at some that's like to close to 2 million people a year, maybe a little more. That's not to crazy. That's not including 9 million Koreans, 4 million Indonesians, 2 million Vietnamese, 1.5 million Indians, 1 million Philippines folk, people from the Philippines, and then the other Asian countries like Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore all had victims as well. Though the numbers aren't as well known.

Think of that is in 14 years, they killed over 50 million people. That is 50 million in 14 years. Like that's, that's inconceit. Like you can't, the human brain can't wrap your head around that. They would use the Chinese live Chinese prisoners as bayonet targets for testing chemical weapons and they treated the treatment of prisoners was obviously abusive, harsh. They weren't cared for. They were allowed to in the prisoners.

They allowed to surrender were often just worked to death instead. So everybody who got captured was likely going to die. It was just the kind of the way of how it all boiled down. There was no euphemism for it inside the camp. Yep. Yep. And, you know, it all ends kind of in on April 11th in during the war when the emperor approved what is known as directive number 11.

Jesse, I'm curious that something you know, I would imagine you probably know of, which is basically the final authorizing a further use of poison gas just like gas everything and kill everyone. It allowed the Japanese to use chemical weapons whenever they felt it was needed to turn the tide of battle. He basically was like handcuffs off directive number 11, kill as you will. Is this the what year was this? Is this the same directive that that was basically like, yo, every last one of us is going to

fight. We dare you to attack us. Is that that one? It's not that one. No, this is specifically for the use of poison gas and biological warfare at the discretion of the army, essentially, whatever they felt like using it. So kind of putting that to the side, just recovering kind of that to give you an idea of just how laws I fair they treated this stuff and how not scientific it was.

We go back to the battlefield where Ishii for the first time in a long while was going to be jumping into the battlefield himself. And the reason simply was an invention of his, a portable water filtering system that allowed the company troops to drink without fear of disease. The machine was a cylindrical mechanism about a meter in length and 45 centimeters in diameter. Water was fed in at one end and a hand crank forced the water under pressure through a filtering system of unglazed diatomite. And diatomite is basically just a mineral that's really good at soaking up toxic chemicals

through that. And it's still used in some things today for my very brief research for it. But this was also the same material they used in his bombs. And Ishii's device had yet to be proven effective against cholera germs and tests to date. And the sense of urgency brought about by the combination of increasing numbers of incapacitated Japanese soldiers and Ishii's typical heavy handed insistence convinced the army to just put his system into operation. But he had to be there to operate them.

Five trucks carrying water filtration units and a team of about 200 men started supplying drinking water to the Japanese fighting men. And for reasons that remain unclear, cholera cases dropped sharply, though the reason is just the purification of water and their consistent use of masks and gloves and things that were not super common back then. Ishii was then decorated and received a monetary award for his contribution to the fighting forces that were praisey received caught the attention of who else, America intelligence personnel who were now interested in why the work of an army doctor was being so highly

regarded. And that's like the first sniff that the US knows gets of something that they might want for themselves instead. This was the first time Ishii's name even came to the attention of the American military. Shortly thereafter, Ishii would be unleashed to pursue his real calling, which is the offensive biological warfare. And so he went back to unit 731. And there was also an article from the Asahi, the Asahi, Asahi, I apologize, it's Japanese

newspaper in 1989 that talks a little bit about what they kind of how the Japanese saw what went down in unit 731. According to the article, quote, the upper reaches of the river were not far from the Japanese army camp. Yamamoto's plan was to throw the pathogens into the river so that they would travel downstream to the Russo-Mongol army and infect the soldiers. We loaded the pathogens into two trucks and headed for the dumping area. There were 14 or 15 of us, including the leader.

Over the next few days, we made attempts to reach the river, but couldn't make it because of heavy Russian artillery fire and the trucks getting bogged down in soft ground. It's like that video game, mud spinning mud tire game. It's been tires. You know what I'm talking about? It's on steam. I was like, drive. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. They're muddy waters, basically, and like, pull trees. Yeah, exactly. Then on the third try, we made it to the river. It was around early September. The location was one or two hours by truck from our camp and we traveled at night without lights to a point near the dumping site.

The pathogens were stored in 22 or 23 18 liter oil drums. The cans were tied with a straw rope and we carried one in each hand. We crossed over swampy ground of the river bank watching the Soviet Mongolian army sick shooting up overhead from the opposite side. The pathogens were cultured in vegetable gelatin. We opened the lids and poured the jelly-like contents of the can into the river and carried the cans back with us so we wouldn't leave any evidence.

It was just like a freaking night, night drive to go check it out and get this shit dumped in the river and then off they go just to poison the river because this is how they decided to fight. Their numbers were way lower. They couldn't stand up against the army so they just resorted to their biological warfare which is kind of where we end up

with the Japanese unit 731 doing what it does. From there, the war quickly, rapidly, kind of reaches its end. At this point, we're in the year like 1942, 1943 and Ishii was still hard at work. In fact, everybody fully believed they were still going to win the war because the emperor had said,

as long as you keep trying, the Japanese will win definitely. There was that belief that still he was God at this time or a God, if I remember correctly, and what he said carried very, very instrumental, almost supernatural power. It's the crusades all over again. In a way, yeah.

Manifest destiny all over again. Yeah, so when the end of the war did rapidly roll to their doorstep after Hitler basically blew his fucking brains out, followed by dropped of two nukes, they came to a surprise to Ishii's network. Unlike the United States, which took its time occupying Japan, the Soviet Union had instead rushed into Manchuria.

On August 9th, General Yamada, the commander in chief of the Kwantung army signed an order to destroy unit 731 completely. The buildings were dynamited and all prisoners were cremated and their ashes were cast into the Songhuangjing River outside of Harbin. No prisoners were allowed to escape.

Jesus fucking Christ. Again, it's because, as I said in episode one and episode two, it's because they got word. It's because we've gotten to Germany's pants first and then they got word so they had time to burn all this shit. According to one of the nurses, Akama Masako, in the final days of unit 731,

she was, quote, with syphilitic mothers, the doctor in charge of our team delivered the Maruta babies. Remember, Maruta means log, so she's even in this interview, she's referring to these kids as logs. Our team delivered the Maruta babies himself instead of having the nurses do it as would normally be the case.

At that time, he would order me to stop the blood flow from the mother to the baby. The doctor would take a sample of the blood, then I would let small quantities of blood flow intermittently as he took successive samples. The test tubes were all lined up on the shelf. He was checking to determine the intensity of the syphilis transmitted from mother to child

and the progression of the disease from the time of birth. A researcher came running in, screaming that some Maruta had escaped. They were caught by the special forces, the team under Ishishiro's brother, Ishitakeo, some, only someone who could be trusted was admitted to that team and they shot the escapees. We're gonna continue with this quote here in a second,

but even in its final days, just to show you that the doctors really were just in their own delusional mind doing something useful, they were still running emergency experiments, pulling emergency blood from baby to mother, like fucked up things when they were informed that shit was already done, they'd lost.

When it came time to evacuate, this is continuing her what she was saying, when it came time to evacuate, we got into a train and left the unit headquarters. It was a long train, maybe 20 or 30 cars. A soldier came running to me and said that a baby was gonna be born in a freight car at the end of the train. We ran back through the cars,

the wife of one of the unit members was there in labor and they were soldiers with lots of medals, surrounded by those high-ranking officers, I delivered the baby. That was August 15th, 1945. We were passing through Zhejiang. The train engineer ran away and we could not move. Planes were flying overhead, keeping lookout,

soldiers were around us, I was trembling in fear. This, I felt, was really war. Then we heard the emperor's words, ending the war. We were always told to quote, "'Work hard and Japan will definitely win.' When I heard that we had lost, I was sad. It grew dark. Ishii came over to us carrying a big candle and said,

quote, I'm sending you all back home. When you get there, if any of you gives away the secret of unit 731, I will personally find you, even if I have to part the roots of the grass to do it." So, tell me that's not a man of- Jesus, what a Christ. Tell me that's, first of all, more comic book evil villain threats-

It really is, dude. I will part the roots of the grass if I find you should you say a word of unit 731. And also, this is not also, Rick of a man who knows what he did was bad. Like, there's still, it's nuts, but the fact that he even threatened these people like that. I don't know that this is, I'm a bad person vibes.

It's just, others will not understand. Like, that's what it's, it really feels that way. Like this, you can't do this and think, oh, well, what I'm doing is bad. Because you wouldn't, you would stop, one would assume. Yeah, you would think, you would assume. She goes on to say that he, that Ishii Shiro

had a fearful, diabolical look on his face. My legs were shaking and not just at me at everyone. He, one last time said lowly, even if I have to part the grasses before walking off. So like, he even muttered it one more evil time. So to give you an idea of what happened, if it wasn't clear, like the train was rolling, it came to a stop.

The train conductor ran off and this train was surrounded by Russian soldiers, like, very quickly. During the occupation of Japan, General MacArthur became the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, SCAP. And according to his order, the functions of the legal section of the GHQ were to advise him on the legal issues and policies

related to war crimes and to pursue war criminals. Ishii was one of the most wanted by the United States at this point. And since the United States took its time to occupy Japan, Ishii had plenty of time to escape, fake his death, and hide some of his documents in his backyard. So he was just like, gone, baby, I'm out. A newspaper had reported that Ishii was shot to death

and the villagers even staged a funeral for him. So people were still insanely loyal. However, one cannot get away from the CIA should they want to find you. And the CIA found him at Como Village. The Japanese Communist Party had sent letters informing the GHQ of Ishii's activities in Manchuria. On December 14th, 1945,

the GHQ ended up filing a letter that actually just talks about what he was doing, what he established in like the crimes of humanity that he was accused of. So yeah, he couldn't get away. Same thing happened to Mengele, which we'll talk about Mengele one day in the far future, where he also was able to get away for a long time,

eventually making it to Argentina, a very bizarre life after the war of like a pathetic one. An issue of Pacific Stars and Stripes from February 27th, 1946, stated the following, quote, Lieutenant General Ishii, head of the Japanese Medical Research Institute, which conducted experiments in certain phases of biological warfare, as well as preventative medicine

at Pingfen near Harbin, Manchuria, has been located and brought to, has been located, shit, I lost my play, has been located and brought to Tokyo for interrogation after an intensive search by army intelligence agencies. It was revealed by G2SCAP, the search for General Ishii, who has been an important intelligence target,

was redoubled early last month when a UP dispatch in the communist sources with having conducted bubonic plague experiments on American and Chinese prisoners of war, which is true, they leave a lot of other stuff out, and they frame him in a very doctor-like way, which is completely like the US trying to immediately soften it

because they know they want things out of him. And what they failed to also kind of put out is at the very end of the war, there was an emergency plan from Ishii where he had plague fleas that he planned on dropping onto US soil and just letting the plague rip through the US as best it could.

Plague fleas. Pleas, yes. Like old school, how the first time the plague transferred. It's insane, yeah. And he had plague fleas, and we talked about it last week how we gave animals their plague. He let them breed in the fricking tubs of disease,

and then after like three or four weeks, they would all go in vials, and they were all gonna be sent off to poison or disease issues. It's literally village shit. We just keep saying it, but it just doesn't quite sink in, it just keeps being more, you know?

I know. Over the years watching James Bond film, I'd be like, that's so stupid. Yeah. There's no way that a guy would do something like, and then it just used, keep it in your mind that like, I mean, the writer did work for British intelligence. Like, you know, you're like, oh yeah, I guess maybe.

He isn't like, it isn't too far fetched that people are this awful around the world. Well, the US was thoroughly interested in Unit 731 at this point, and as the end of the war brought Allied forces and civilian personnel to Japan by air and sea, a new chapter was about to begin for Unit 731. The post-war story of the outfit begins

in September of 1945, technically, a little earlier than we just were, with the docking of the American ship Sturgis in Yokohama. Among those on board was Lieutenant Colonel Murray Sanders. He's gonna be very important, but more importantly, in the part that I like, it makes me, it's crazy. A highly regarded microbiologist

who had been lecturer at Columbia University, Sanders had entered the military and been attached to Camp Dietrich in Maryland, which is the heart, the root, the very start of MKUltra, if you remember MKUltra. Dietrich is like, where it begins, and they're already operating out of there, doing some sketchy fucking shit.

The American military center, at the time was the American Military Center for Biological Weapons Research and Development. The work done there would have been at the heart of retaliation, which President Franklin Roosevelt had threatened for what he termed Japanese, quote, inhumane forms of warfare in China through biological weaponry, which is completely correct.

As the Sturgis worked its way toward the western part of Tokyo Bay and the port of Yokohama, Naito Ryōji waited on the pier. Naito, one of the men closest to Ichi, and the number two man in Ishii's research laboratory in Tokyo, already had a history of duplicitous dealings with foreigners.

Before the war, he studied in Germany and in the US at the University of Pennsylvania to be specific, and during his stay in America, he had walked into the Rockefeller Institute in New York with a letter of introduction from the Japanese embassy in Washington and a request for samples of yellow fever virus. He was asking the US for yellow fever virus.

That's something I think, and I think something that people don't probably know about the US, the CIA are at the time, the OSU or OSCS or whatever it is, they were trying to convince the president to allow them to reach out and try and talk to Hitler or talk to Hitler's high ranking officials, to make peace with all of them,

to give Hitler as like the sacrificial goat, and then they'll all be pro-pro US rah-rah, and they did have dinners multiple times, it just never went through. Jesse's about to drop some history bomb on us, I can see it in his fucking face. Just a reminder to everyone listening, the largest, I'm not gonna say the largest,

I'll say one of the largest. Prostetic, that's of all times in the movie Valkyrie. Oh, no. Are you gonna say General Motors? One of the largest gatherings of Nazis in the world was Madison Square Garden. So like, before you think, man, America, we sure are pretty good, nah, bro.

Most of the reason why we didn't get into World War II is for a long time, until we were attacked, there was a sizable portion of the country that was like, bro, those Nazis, they're not so bad. That's like, it's real. That's why it took us forever to get involved. Yeah, and it's just like I said, the CIA was already talking to him,

was trying to see if they could figure out a way to, all right, you can kind of get your loss, but we can get you out with like, a little bit of elegance, you give up Hitler, we can pin it all on him kind of thing, and let everybody else get away with it. As far as the request for the Yellow Fever, the reason that he gave the United States

as to why he was requesting it, was that he explained that at the time, he was at an institute that was working on a vaccine, where upon returning back to Japan, he'd be heading out into Manchuria to work on a development of a vaccine for this disease. So we just needed a sample of it, just to make that work. Luckily, America refused,

because obviously there was mounting US-Japanese tensions over the latter. All the people that were doing this shit in America were off that day. They're taking a little break. Yeah, well, this was happening after, this was happening post-World War II, keep that in mind. Like the war is over and this guy shows up.

Yeah, there was obviously a lot of problems with the tension, with what happened with the country's aggression in China. He attempted to resort to bribery, but in the end, he came back to Japan without any Yellow Fever viruses. He did try to, like how he tried to attempt the US. We said no, but we also didn't arrest him.

We were like, you know what? All right, get out of here, you little rascal. Don't be so silly, go. Back in Japan, Naito wrote up secret reports on ways of increasing the virulence of the pathogens, methods of bacteriological warfare in other subjects that were being handled in the Ishii organization during World War II.

It's crazy that he just like was so bold enough to just walk into the US and ask for disease and that, I don't know what's crazier if he did that or that the US was just like, nah, get out of here. And this was like, go, get out of here. No questions, no like, he tried to bribe the US and the US was just like. It's not like an American came in and did it though.

You know what I mean? It's always weird when it's somebody from another country coming in to do something on your terms. You're kind of like, let's use this. True, right? Yeah, true. Well, as the crew of the Sturgis threw the ship's birthing lines onto the dock,

Naito, who was waiting, purposefully awaited it, was ready to play his role in launching the unit 731 into what they call the post-war Odyssey. Japan's information network had found out that Sanders would be on board of the ship and that he would be in charge of investigating Japan's biological warfare activities. Years later, Sanders himself described the scene

this way in an interview, quote, my mission was biological warfare. I was to find what the Japanese had done and when the Sturgis docked in Yokohama, there was Dr. Naito. He came straight toward me. He seemed to have had a photograph of me and said that he was my interpreter.

So he's weaseling his way in like, hey, how's it going? I'm your interpreter. Don't frickin' worry about it. And then Sanders goes, Sanders was asked if he knew that if he was a member of unit 731 when he had approached at the time and he said, no, I had no idea that he was part of unit 731.

You take that with a grain of salt. I don't know if that's true, but that's all we have on it and there's no way to know otherwise. Sanders himself installed himself in his office and started his job of meeting with Japanese, believed to be concerned with research into and or actual employment of biological warfare.

And from there, with the dust of World War II still hanging over Tokyo, a new contest immediately began. Rather than making offensive war against its enemies, unit 731 decided to go on the defensive against the occupation forces. The data gained from human experimentation once again became ammunition,

this time in the bargaining room, rather than on the battlefield. The Japanese hoped to use their knowledge as a tool for gaining freedom from prosecution as war criminals. They knew America wanted this stuff and they sniffed it out very quickly and started maneuvering themselves into a position

where they could leverage that. Sanders offered other memories of Naito too in this interview saying, quote, he was a very humble, shy person, very careful. He went home every night and came back the next morning. If you're interested, I found out later that he didn't go home, but went to the various Japanese headquarters.

At those offices, Naito conferred with others on what information should be given to Sanders and what should be withheld. So yeah, he would always say he was going home and then he's like going back to his little spy circle and being like, okay, I've told him this, what should we dangle in front of him? What is he, he kind of wants this,

but you know, just doing political stuff in the back end. Naito also kept the Japanese officials apprised of the content and progress of his discussion with Sanders. Naito's purpose was to get between Sanders and anyone connected with unit 731. He's just a run defense with whom Sanders would come into contact.

And for this reason, the American failed to make any considerable amount of progress. Naito, the interpreter, become informer kind of filter was sometimes evasive, sometimes contradictory in this game of cat and mouse. The dude got played. Sanders was not good at any interrogation. He wasn't able to figure out that Naito was playing him

and he had no idea, and he was just making fucking no progress. He was just like a dumb American being like, all right, well, I don't know why you'd lie to me. So I don't know, nothing's happening. That is Jesse's just shaking his head back and forth, quietly. No.

I don't, I mean, what do you even say to this? Give me a joke, joke about him. Come on now. I got you. Why can't the nose be 12 inches long? Why? Cause that'd be a foot. I'm not high enough for that.

Yeah. Well, back to Sanders being outplayed. Sanders was up against a wall and told Naito that if things continued the way they were going, that the communists would be coming into the picture. Quote, I said that because the Japanese exhibited a deadly fear of the communists and they didn't want to mess,

to be want them messing around with them, he appeared the next morning with a manuscript which contained startling material. And that's true. They did not, the Japanese had no, did not want to come into contact with the Russians, primarily because they knew that the Russians interrogation tactics

were basically torture. And they knew the Americans would be way more open to peaceful negotiations. And besides, America had just shown it is the most powerful country in the world, twice over, unnecessarily. So, they're trying to hedge their bets. Finally, Sanders up against,

finally after saying all of that, and he brought back the material, he says, quote, it was fundamentally dynamite. The manuscript said in essence that the Japanese were involved in biological warfare. The document Sanders stated gave the line of command of the Japanese military with all of the departments implicated plus or minus.

Obviously, as much as America wanted the information, the Japanese had an equal interest in avoiding what they considered the justice of the Soviet legal system at whose hands their fate would be easy enough to predict. His gambit appeared to be succeeding. Sanders took this document to General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers,

and from there, the balance of options began being weighed. There was information that America wanted on an exclusive basis. At this point, keep in mind, the OCS, which will eventually become the CIA, was kind of created in World War II, like in the fever of World War II to keep people safe, but now they don't have an enemy.

Now they are no longer- Now it's getting rogue. Now they have nothing to do, and they wanna maintain their power, maintain the things that they're doing, they wanted to expand, not be gone rid of. Yeah, well, that was what I was gonna say, is so the Russia was like,

they just jumped on immediately wanting to jump into a war or some sort of head-to-head with Russia on some ground, because it gave them a reason to continue to exist, as well as give them a reason to keep increasing their funding and grow themselves to do MK Ultra in the 50s and so on. There was information that America wanted and on an exclusive basis,

and that would mean America's turning its back on the forthcoming war crime trials and striking a deal independently of the judiciary proceedings with the men who had the data. Sanders recalls MacArthur as having said, well, if you feel that you cannot draw out the information, we are not given to torture.

So deprived of the stick of physical duress, the American microbiologist went back to NATO with a carrot instead. MacArthur would assure NATO that in exchange for the information, the informants would not be brought to trial, which is step one of these guys getting away scot-free. Quote, this made a deep impression

and the data came in waves after that. We could hardly keep up. Like as soon as they gave them a safety, everybody's like, here, okay, here's everything. In December of 1994, a written record of several meetings that took place between Sanders and top echelon Japanese officers surfaced in the home of an 84-year-old Japanese former staff officer.

That's so fucking nuts. I know it was published in the spring 1995 issue of the Japanese Quarterly Magazine, Senso Senkinen Kenkyu, or in translation, the report on Japan's war responsibility with the agreement that the owner's identity remained confidential. The record was written in Japanese

by the Japanese interpreter at the meetings and excerpts appeared in the article. The meetings took place at MacArthur's headquarters in Daiichi Sogobilding on October 9th, 11th, and 16th of 1946. The interpreter for the first two meetings is listed as Kamei Kanichiro, quote, "'A member of the House of Representatives

"'with very strong ties to unit leader Ishii. "'This person's continuing involvement "'with post-war Unit 731 members "'in their bargaining efforts, "'belies claim over the years "'that the government was in the dark "'about Ishii's activities.' "'Yeah, we knew, no shit.'

"'Questioning proceeded along the lines "'of how and why the unit was formed, "'development of different types "'of biological warfare bombs and outdoor tests of these, "'what happened at the time of the Soviet invasion "'in Manchuria, the system of culturing bacteria "'using incubators, production of vaccine "'and other germane issues.'

"'All of this was discussed over those three meetings.'" The article in the journal simply lists the names of the participants in the exchange as S, M, and N. The first two letters are explained explicitly as referring to Sanders and Colonel Masuda Tomosada, who had served with Unit 731 in Manchuria from 1945. N is left unexplained, but could only be Nito since he, with his English ability,

would have been maneuvering, questioning all throughout the post-war investigations and had attended many of the sessions with Sanders whether he wanted them there or not. The term BK in the Japanese notes that's also in here is deduced by the author of the article to mean development of biological weapons. Oh, I thought I meant Bonky Kong.

Yeah, yeah, that's well, yeah, they were developing biological war weapons. None of us went with Burger King. Nobody should ever go with Burger King. Buzz! Oh! Yay! I'll give you boys a small little excerpt here

of a piece of the journal that we can read. It's very, very quick. I'll be Nito since it's just the first line of the thing. I'm not gonna send it in Zoom because that crashes Zoom for me every single time. Yeah, it's a small little excerpt, but just to give you an example

so like how these meetings went and how kind of business like they were, Nito begins, I brought Colonel Masuda with me, the man we spoke of the other day. Jesse, you can be Sanders, you're the American and Alex, you're Masuda. Well, I say, I say, did you not engage in BK research? Well, so, I must say that, oh yes, I did.

I would, I went with it because his last name was Sanders, but like, it's all. Yeah, yeah. I'm just matching you, man. This is how it was back in the day. Yeah, I know, I get it. It's like Deadwood, yeah. I'd like you to tell me

about them's biological warfare researches. Well, I will testify that I know about Burger King and we'll gladly talk about it. But first, I want to mention that what I am about to say is my own opinion. I believe that you will not use it for political reasons. No way that this was a, no, no way this is a real, like there's no way anyone said this.

Yeah. This is, that's what Masuda said, yes. I know that you, Colonel Sanders, spoke yesterday with Lieutenant Colonel N, AKA a Nintendo, and I feel secure in speaking freely about this now. That is, this is verbatim? Yes, verbatim from the notes

that's directly translated from his notes. That last bit seems so fake. This is like when you know the lawyers are listening. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's how you know you're being listened to. This is like the like YouTuber scratches her arm in a weird way and she's being kidnapped or whatever. Oh my God.

Oh my God, flashback. Holy shit. This is in the notes. Now, whether of course they spoke like this because they knew notes were being taken, obviously. It's up to your interpretation. But the transcript of this meeting notes that, quote, the statement made to Lieutenant Colonel Nito

in this investigation is data for a secret report to the American president. It is not to be revealed. Rather, if a problem concerning the biological weapons arises among the various countries, America's knowing our situation can dispose of the problem to Japan's advantage. This is not concerned with the question

of searching out for war criminals. So that was just like, they were basically like, the president is about to get all of this on his table and the Japan's like, you can get us out of the problem. If shit comes out, you can fix this. This show is obviously that the proposal made with the involvement of the American president

to grant immunity from war crimes was already on the table less than two months after World War II ended. Less than two months and we're already like, all right. They're probably chill, they're probably cool now. Let's just, tens of millions. They're probably like figured out. They're probably on board.

It's, oh God. And this is all, this is, while Nito was capable of using and disposing of human beings with no more compassion than scientists extend to lab rats, superficially, he appeared to have much in common with Sanders because he was a fucking master politician. He was playing the game.

What are we gonna say at the time? This is like, earlier, like you made the darkest, I know it was unintentional. But you were like, as the dust settles over post-war Japan, I'm like, holy shit. Like that's dark, Mathis. That's like admittedly, we dropped two new, we didn't know what those nukes would do.

We dropped two on them people. Like, you know, I imagine at the time, they were like, all right, buddy. If you don't hate us, we'll take you. Like, I mean. Yeah, and I didn't, I mean, I, I know you didn't. I was just like, oh, you didn't.

I meant to imply it, but not as like a joke, but like as a like. Absolutely, it just was like, giving contextually. You're very simple. I'm gonna be your time in Japanese history. Let's put it that way. It is, they're in a bad spot.

And so, but it's crazy that they're in this position, but as America is willing to bargain with them when we have the power, but at the same time, they're gonna go to their graves with these secrets unless, but. I mean, again, America was doing the, we will do anything to stop the communists.

Yeah, and that's bingo, correct? The whole fucking reason they do this. Because the fear. The things they do, we do some bad shit. To be clear, we did vaporize 250,000 Japanese people in two seconds. Yes. And then, you know, countless pain for decades after.

It's, I don't know. It's such a weird, upsetting position to even think about. And I don't know if, I mean, I disagree with America. I mean, less than two months moving in to give these fucking. It was like either they go with them. So they go with them.

Like the communists are gonna come and take them. And it was about doing anything and everything to stop communism because it was gonna destroy our way of life. I mean, that's, that was the belief. And yeah, they were, yeah. They knew that if they, or at least they believed if they didn't take them in, Russia would

and they would gain a huge advantage. The reality is they wouldn't have gained an advantage. They just would have gained useless information like we did. And a friend. And a friend, and a new friend. So Sanders and Naito really did kind of find this common ground. A lot of it was simply because both of them

were researchers, not military men. And yet had both ended up as soldiers and even attained some sort of rank as lieutenant colonel. They kind of had this like weird connection. And the main players in the crucial first encounter between American authorities and unit 731 seemed to have interacted not on the basis of Victor and vanquished,

but more like peers. Sanders, the scholar looking through his colleague Naito's microscope. Naito, a mild mannered man described as friendly even by Singaporean, by Singaporean who had worked for him cultivating rats was also crafty enough to play ping pong with the information Sanders wanted

so that Sanders first reports on his investigations advised his superiors that biological warfare in the Japanese army had been and quote, unimportant minor activity. That's how he just played the fuck out of Sanders. He covered himself though by expressing doubt that all had been revealed. So Sanders was like, yeah, you know, okay.

He might be hiding some stuff, but you know, he's not a big, I don't think it's a big, big deal. Shortly after the initial doors of information had been blown open by the report Sanders got, and by Sanders' threat of the communist participation in the investigations and knowing that MacArthur had promised immunity to former members of unit 731, Ishii finally felt sufficiently protected

to come out from hiding. Then while the allies were tied up with the burden of preparing for the upcoming war crimes tribunal, Ishii was placed under house arrest. There, he was made available for questioning by the successor to Murray Sanders, Lieutenant Colonel Arvo Thompson.

I love that name, Arvo. I've never heard that name as a fucking... Such a name like from that time. You know, that's like an old 1900s American Arvo. Arvo Thompson. Lieutenant Colonel Carl's Jr. Yeah, he was sent by Camp Dietrich to continue the investigation

into the biological warfare activities because Sanders was, while he was able to get this first breakthrough, prior and then after, he didn't make much more progress. The man was being molded like putty and used by, and kind of at their whims, and it was becoming obvious that this was happening. So Thompson was kind of the opposite of Sanders,

and he was not nearly as soft, not so easy to brush off with evasive maneuvers. And Thompson reached closer to the scope of the experiments, but the magnificence of Ishii's organizational skills and the scale of the unit's operation eluded him as well. He could not, the people were just dancing around it, and he couldn't figure it out.

He concluded that civilian scientists and research facilities were not involved. And as we learned last episode, nearly every part of Japan's medical system was involved in Unit 731's experiments, including a ton of civilian hospitals back at Tokyo. One thing the Japanese did have demonstrated throughout history is their ability to form a complex,

at times frustratingly Byzantine organizations to coordinate complicated activities. That's a quote, by the way, and that's why I'm not from me, that particular is a quote that I'm reading. Continuing that, feudal Japan in the 17th through 19th centuries was made up of some 250 feudal domains, the number fluctuating as new ones were created

and others abolished, with a complex and clearly defined also bureaucracy at the center. No European country had such a precision cut hierarchy of internet functions and responsibilities. The Shogunate also organized what is considered the world's first secret police as an arm of government, as well as an espionage network.

The fact that Japan had had fully developed money economy by the early 17th century, even to the point of using a variety of paper credits and major business transactions is another indication of an advanced sense of organization. End quote, that all comes from the book, Unit 731. And I guess if I didn't actually know,

in terms of just history, I had no idea that they were using currency well before a lot of other people were using paper currency and such. Because back in that time, America was still just a freaking bunch of colonies at that point. Ishi's empire was, in a sense,

a mirror image of that feudal web work. Remember how I called it in the first episode, Ishi's network and how it operated is like this huge living organism in many ways. It extended even down to the police network. Lingering Confucian relationships between established researchers and their disciples meant that medical students were under the control

of their instructors. Data from the prison and research cells circulating back through Tokyo and out to the nation's medical research facilities tied the military and civilian medical worlds together in a very complicated logical framework. The development of biological weapons was, in fact, sometimes just a cover for ordinary medical research

using extraordinary methods available to the Japanese only in the Ishi organization. This was one aspect of the machinery which completely eluded the Americans as we were trying to get information out them. The net was broad and deep, yet the Americans were still invisible. Thompson dejected, left Japan without getting

too much closer to reality. And back at Camp Dietrich, his findings were evaluated but led to no firm conclusions. There would be one more person sent to go and interview these people and it would actually be a civilian which we'll get to very, very shortly. However, on the way back,

the Ishi was starting to get emboldened and more and more he was willing to start trying to speak with the Americans on the promise that he would be spared, being arrested, being handed over to the Soviets. But the Soviets were still interested in Ishi and his organization for three big reasons. It's so shitty that he's like in a good bargaining position. Yep, he's in the next place he could possibly be

after having, after doing what he did. One of the reasons was the proximity of the unit's operations to Soviet territory. Next, of course, was the desire for revenge for Japan's use of biological warfare against Soviet soldiers. Again, he dumped shit in the river. The third motivation was the prospect

of obtaining grist for the propaganda mill. Whereas America wanted to forgo trying some highly educated medical researchers as war criminals as part of a quiet quid pro quo, the Soviets wanted to do the opposite and make a whole lot of noise. So there's just like totally different angles on what they wanted to do with it,

though both kind of meet in the same area of obtaining the information for themselves. The request went to MacArthur's headquarters and on February 7th, 1947, MacArthur sent a dispatch to Washington saying, quote, prosecutor for USSR at IMTFE, which stands for International Military Tribunal Far East, request permission to interrogate

former Japanese general Ishi, Colonel Kukuchi and Colonel Ota, all formerly connected with bacteriological warfare research, requests based on information that experiments authorized and conducted by above resulted in the deaths of 2,000 Chinese and Manchurians. So the US Soviets know we have them, they want to interview them

and are asking us for permission. And MacArthur in that also gives us opinion saying, quote, that Russian's not likely to obtain information from Japanese, not already known to United States and that United States might get some additional information from Russian line of questioning and monitored interrogations. So MacArthur was just like, go for it, we could learn more here.

The contest of width and information maneuvering between America and Russia was on. Should the US, MacArthur asked the, should the US, MacArthur asked the War Department, acquiesced to the Russian request and about six weeks later toward the end of March, permission came from the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington for an SCAP controlled Soviet interrogation

of Ishi, Kukuchi and Ota. Before the US let the Soviets get to them, however, Kukuchi and Ota were to be interviewed by competent American personnel first. The War Department expressed its readiness to pass such personnel to Tokyo for preliminary interrogation secret from the Soviets, not letting them know they're doing another interrogation

and then for monitoring the subsequent Soviet interrogations when they are handed over. If the preliminary interrogations brought out any important facts, the Japanese ex-officers were to be instructed not to reveal them to the Soviets and also not to tell the Soviets that the preliminary interrogations had taken place. So at this point,

Japan is already, we're working with them. We're gonna pull the wool over Russia's eyes. They're gonna lie for us. We're gonna back up their lies, but we're still gonna let them interrogate them so they have the look as though or the objective, like the view that they got their chance to interrogate them. It's just America immediately jumps into being like,

let's be kind of bad guys here. And I get it, it's because they were like, communism bad, can't let communism have anything. But they really just kind of embroiled themselves very, very deeply, kind of instantaneously. The American's line of reasoning and denying the Soviets unfettered access to the prisoners was that war crimes allegedly committed against Chinese

did not represent a legitimate war crime interest for the Soviets and that US permission for the Soviets to conduct investigations should be considered to have been granted purely as a friendly gesture. It's just all about phrasing in these like, really, really bizarre, like friendly ways to just kind of swallow and play these war games with Russia. It's ridiculous.

MacArthur's office agreed to all this to the dispatch of the qualified personnel and Washington then informed them that a Dr. Norbert H. Fell, the third and final person to interview Ishii had been selected by the chemical warfare service and he would leave for Japan in the first week of April. And upon Fell's arrival in Japan,

the same Kamei Kanichiru who had translated for Sanders pushed his way onto the scene to assist. And immunity for war crimes had not yet been fully granted at this point, though its possibility was hanging. It shouldn't have been hanging anyway. It should have been in the trash, bro. Agreed.

Should have been a dollar bill on a Fisher line and yanked away at any given opportunity. Kamei was hinting that there were people who had information which would prove of interest to the Americans, but they were not very willing to talk about it for fear of being brought into the trials. And this time, in a reversal of Sanders' tactic against Naito, Kamei made use

of the communist threat against Americans. So the threat, this is crazy. He's like Sanders used it against us, genius. Twist it, flip it, now it's on you. Hey, are you scared of the communists? Well, we can help you. Insane. Kamei, according to Fell's report,

claimed that he knew people formally with unit 731 who were afraid of giving information to the US because the Russians would get hold of it. Holding out the incentive of Japanese silence before red interrogators, Kamei said that those Japanese felt the best thing for them now would be to tell Moscow, Moscow, nothing. These pragmatics aside, Kamei also resorted

to a pious quote, we were victims' defense, that the Soviets had been engaging in a biological warfare against the Japanese and quote, we had to think about defensive measures. That's why we had to kill 15 million people in 10 years. It was to research for our own defense, man. We were throwing germs out there only because we had no other choice, bro.

Back off, man, you don't know what it was like. We had to kill those 15 million. Japan, he claimed, knew about Soviet biological warfare work from captured Soviet spies in Manchuria and there had been no other recourse for Japan but to work on defensive biological warfare. Then in the course of this research, they had discovered all the offensive aspects.

They only discovered the offensive aspects as a matter of a consequence of their defensive research. Meanwhile, anonymous and signed reports had been coming into the American authorities in Tokyo from people who had been victims of the system and listed in one unsuspecting way or other into Ishii's research network. A limited few identified themselves,

accusing Ishii and Wakamatsu, the veterinarian who ran unit 100, if you remember, who did all that animal testing. As information started coming into the hands of the American investigators, it came with attempts to conceal the organizational reach of the machinery of human experimentation, even as they confessed,

the informants tried to save their own skins and I don't blame them. If they're worried, they're gonna get killed because they escaped and they might find them to kill them because they gave away the secrets. Man, you just went through something no one our day and age could even remotely imagine living in one of these camps.

Of course, you're not gonna give everything if you're feared that you're gonna get killed. You wanna fucking see the sun the next day and as much as it might suck for us, that fear is real. And Ishii made that threat of like, I will fucking tear the roots of the grass to find you if you leak anything.

That's scary shit. They continued saying Ishii, it was claimed, was a renegade having nothing to do with the legitimate line of command or military authority. The Japanese medical profession was not involved. The emperor knew nothing. People's consciousness may have been smarting and moving them to come clean,

but not to the point of suppressing the instinct for self-preservation and their continuing loyalty to emperor Hirohito. I mean, we talked about that in the last two episodes. Self-preservation is to, ain't it a bitch? People do terrible things to save their own ass. Yeah, while Fella was there, he met with about 20 or so people

that were connected to with the biological warfare and then back at Camp Dietrich, he compiled the results and conclusions of his missions and stated that human experimentation conducted by the Japanese would provide valuable data. The Soviets, ever the ping-pong ball and the vying between Washington and Union 731, appeared again, this time in Fella's report

when he quoted Ishii saying, quote, my experience would be a useful advantage to the United States in the event of a war with the Soviet Union. So yeah, just throwing all their chips in at this point. Three days after his Fella's last report went off to Major General Alden White, Chief of the US Army's Chemical Corps,

MacArthur's office messaged the war department that quote, Ishii states that if guaranteed immunity from war crimes in documentary form for himself, superiors and subordinates, he can describe the program in detail. Ishii claims to have extensive theoretical, high-level knowledge including strategic and tactical use of bio weapons on defense and offense,

backed by some research on the best biological warfare agents to employ by geographical areas of far East and the use of biological weapons in cold climates. Cause again, we didn't cover everything, but other experiments you were doing were in different climates and just seeing what viruses in germs worked and what didn't. And just like killing people with germs

and that maybe worked out there. The viability of bacteria, their ability to survive and thrive is dependent upon their environment and differences in the natural environmental conditions of various regions, obviously mean that bacteria developed in the United States, for example, may not do well in conditions in Asian areas, which would degrade their effectiveness as weapons.

Ishii's statement shows that he had a considered bacterial viability in relation to the various areas, whereas units were functioning. If Asia were to be a continuing area of military operation for the US, biological weapons developed for Asian environments would be of great interest. So you can see it's all lining up.

Everything they want is all lining up. The Japanese knew by now that they had little to fear from the Americans in terms of raw hate retribution. During the war, Japanese civilians had been bombed, burned or radiated. American conduct from the beginning of the occupation, though, had consistently demonstrated that the Japanese now would be treated

in an orderly and compassionate manner. Yeah, because you fucking annihilated everybody and so they're terrified of you. And so yeah, they're like, okay, well, America hopefully won't do anything anymore. But this feeling of security contrasted directly to what Japanese military leaders feared would happen to them at the hands of victorious Russians and Chinese,

whose civilians populations had suffered way worse atrocities. A message from MacArthur to Washington on May 6th of 1947 mentions clearly that, quote, statement so far had been obtained by persuasion, exploitation of Japanese fear of USSR and desire to cooperate with the US. America was showing interest in matters more practical

than turning up defendants for war criminals and trials at this point. At this point in time, the question of whom to prosecute in the war trials had not been completely settled. Testimony reported by the Soviets was convincing enough for IPS to inform the war department of its opinion that, quote, it warrants conclusion

that Japanese biological weapon group headed by Ishii did violate rules of land warfare, but this expression of opinion is not a recommendation that group be charged and tried for such. Adding that corroboration and valuation of the suspects and their testimony for trustworthiness would be necessary first. In favor of prosecution, MacArthur recognized

that high ranking Japanese liable for prosecution for war crimes were not necessarily the best sources of information. He was right, quote, a large part of data including most of the valuable technical biological warfare information as the results of human experimentation and research in biological weapon for crop destruction

probably can be obtained in this manner from low echelon Japanese personnel not believed liable to war crime trials. Yeah, MacArthur is dead right. If we wanted this information, we could get it from low life nobody's if we wanted that fucking bad. Yeah, these guys are just in trouble

and they don't want to be. And it makes me happy that MacArthur at least did that. It makes me happy that there was at least somebody that was like, no, we should maybe put these guys on trial you idiots. But he didn't have the final say. On the other hand, MacArthur also clearly did perceive the benefits to be had from pardoning

the high ranking researchers, but his feelings on this matter are particularly evident in his advice to the war department with another quote saying, quote, additional data possibly including some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing Japanese involvement that information will be retained in intelligence channels

and will not be employed as war crimes evidence. In particular immunity from prosecution, quote, will result in exploiting the 20 years experience of the director, former general Ishii. Furthermore, acquiring information in this way would prevent it from coming out in courtroom testimony which would enable the Soviets among others to gain access to it.

This United States would become the sole recipient of this information. The same message also contains a brief item advising the adoption of this method was, quote, recommended by CINCFE which is Commander-in-Chief Far East or MacArthur. He also advised Washington that information including plans and theories of Ishii and his superiors

could probably be obtained by granting written guarantees of immunity to Ishii and his associates. Moreover, Ishii could assist in securing the complete cooperation of his former subordinates and all of these ideas suggest that MacArthur, though despite his initial feeling on trying them, still strongly supported the idea of determining war crime liability

in light of what potential defendants could offer in exchange for amnesty. So he wasn't fully on board with it but he also was like, yeah, but maybe it's not the worst idea. It's also interesting to note that in almost all communications between the SCAP and Washington concerning all this, the term war crimes with or without capital letters

is always enclosed with quotation marks. What the hell does that mean? War crimes. You know, war crimes. Yeah, war crimes. We don't care about them. We don't care about war crimes. You know, they perform war crimes.

Some are saying they're war crimes. Considering the selectivity with which subjects were chosen for or excluded from trial, the US military's casual treatment of this term suggests that there is more truth to this accusation than many people are willing to acknowledge. Yeah, no shit. New information also whetted the American's appetite

for additional data and spurred them on to try to outmaneuver the Soviets. Actual copies of the Soviet interrogations of Japanese officers who were captured from Ishii's unit in Manchuria were handed over to American military. MacArthur's headquarters advised the War Department that preliminary investigations, quote,

confirm authenticity of USSR interrogations and indicate Japanese activity in A, human experimentation, field trials against Chinese, C, large-scale program, D, research on biological weapons by crop destruction, E, possible that Japanese general staff knew and authorized said program, F, thought and research devoted to strategic

and tactical use of biological weapons, and then above topics of great intelligence value to US, Dr. Fell, War Department representative states that this new device, that this new evidence was not known by US. Japanese researchers' experiments with crop destruction attracted a particular attention of the US

in a list of questions drawn up by the chemical core of the War Department for Dr. Fell to pursue included, quote, what were the main crops considered for destruction? What field trials were you carrying out? What kind of equipment had been developed for applying crop-destroying materials? What crop diseases do you know or can you recognize? And do you, do any of these known or recognized diseases

cause serious losses in the vicinity of the biological weapons installation? It's like, how close can we be to it if we're making it? That's fucking good. This is, I mean, look, it's so easy to, it's like hindsight's 2020. I know that they were just being dicks also and stuff, but goddamn, getting it all laid out like this,

it's just like being able to see it from all the angles at once. It's just so existentially disappointing. And while I had known about UNI 731 tangentially just from my other research and shit. Yeah, I heard of it always, never had any idea. Yeah, but I even, and not until I did this series that I really understand.

The scale, yeah. Like how heinous and how, yeah, the scale and huge the operation was. It's fucking insane that this is not, it's really not well known by anyone in the US at the very least. Like the US is very blind to this. Also, according to legal section,

there was not sufficient evidence on file against any of Ishii subordinates to charge or hold them as crime suspects. The message did list possible superiors of Ishii who were on, who were then on trial, including Tojo, Tojo rather, and two other former commanders of the Kwong Ton Army, but neither Ishii nor his associates

were listed as war criminals and no American ally had filed charges of war crimes against them. SCIP was ready to let Ishii and his associates off the hook. Before the War Department could reach a decision, however, it had to know what opinions IPS held regarding the Ishii Biological Warfare Group

and the War Department requested information. And so legal section conferred with IPS, the latter body provided a list of biological warfare activities then known to it in the statement that, quote, strong circumstantial evidence exists of use of bacteria warfare. By this time, full translations of the affidavits

made by Major Karazawa to his Soviet captors had come into the hands of the IPS. In these, it was stated that Karazawa was engaged in the manufacturing of germs at the Ishii unit. More specifically in 1940, Ishii and 100 of his subordinates had conducted an experimental test in Hangzhou, central China, for which Karazawa claimed

he had manufactured 70 kilograms of typhus bacilli. Five kilograms of cholera and five kilograms of plague-infested fleas. Jesus fucking Christ, dude. So he had to step up. I don't like you saying five kilograms of plague-infested fleas as if it's like some general known quantity of item that people use.

It's just walking into the room, and this is my plague room. I do like what I've done with it. It's got neon lights. Guess how many KGs of fleas that I have. And watch this, the lights can turn neon green to give it the right vibe. I would say five kilograms of fleas.

I like how we're giving the Japanese guys a German evil man voice. It's what we know. I'd say it's true. It's what we got. I grew up in America for 35 years, sorry. The way they would spread it, they learned, was bacteria being sprayed by,

being sprayed by plane over areas occupied by the Chinese army, following which a plague epidemic broke out in Ningbo. Karazawa also repeated information. He had heard from Ishii about how he had experimented with cholera and plague on the mountain bandits of Manchuria. And that in 1942, I know, it's another like fucking comic book thing.

I will not test my plague on the masses, but I need a smaller group. They hide in the mountains. The mountain bandits of Manchuria. They'll be perfect for us to use as test subjects. They think they can hide from me. You can't hide from plague, please. In 1942, yeah, in 1942, when the Japanese army

was retreating in central China, the Ishii group infected the vicinity of Chuxian and Yushan with typhoid and plague as they were on their way out. They were like, all right, fuck all of them. Just disease them and run. And that's what they just fucking just dropped every disease and ran. Further testimony claimed that on several occasions

in 1943 and 44, the Japanese special police Ken Patai had furnished as fodder for human experimentation with plague and anthrax, Manchurians, quote, who had been sentenced to death. So they just were exposed to anthrax and plague, just to see. Karazawa even implicated people at the very top of Japan's military organization

claiming that Ishii had advised his staff that they were under orders from the general staff in Tokyo to improve virus research. IPS had also obtained information on four locations in China where in October and November of 1940, Japanese planes scattered wheat grain and bubonic plague appeared shortly afterward. So they just dropped wheat grain

infected with fucking bubonic plague. Yet it still refrained from bringing Ishii and his subordinates to trial. Nor did it deem it worthwhile to call up members of the Ishii group to testify against their superiors who were listed as defendants in the trials. And in December of 1946, after considering using the material in its hands

as a basis for prosecution, IPS replied to SCAP and by extension the War Department that the evidence on hand was not sufficient to connect any of the accused with Ishii's detachment secret activities. In reply to SCAP and the War Department back in Washington, it was couched along these lines. Some copies of these reports were labeled

as being destined for quote, commander in chief. So there can be little doubt that the US president was also informed of all of these events in Tokyo, including the biological warfare intelligence coming into American's hands. In other words, to borrow the expression that the president himself made famous on the decision not to prosecute the former members

of unit 731, the buck stopped right at Harry S. Truman's desk. Like fuck him. He knew about all of this shit and he still did not give a fuck. America's decision not to prosecute Ishii and his men was not the final word on the matter though. In July of 1948, I'm assuming surprising nobody,

the Soviet army newspaper Red Star, carried an article by Colonel Galkin, special correspondent on the newspaper for Japanese biological warfare. And according to the article, the Japanese were preparing to use biological warfare on a large scale and they had a huge bacteriological center in Manchuria.

Galkin's piece did not state the Japanese, did not state that Japanese biological warfare was intended for use against his country and instead specifically pointed out that it was for use against China, the United States and Britain. The Red Star article also did not mention Soviet citizens as victims of human experimentation when they were.

Still more surprising, the Soviet article did not mention the imperial order which had allegedly led to the establishment of the labs in the first place. It was only mention of Prince Mikasa acting as the emperor's representative. So again, the Soviets were making it loud but also squirreling a lot of a way

that they could keep it for themselves and not necessarily make the Japanese that they keep for themselves, enemies in the eyes of other Russians. You know what I mean? Like, because they, oh, they didn't affect us. They were fucking other people, don't worry, we're fine. Sometime later, however, a different version of events

emerged from behind the Iron Curtain. In December of 1949 in the city of Kaba Vorsk on the railway line north of Vladivostok, 12 former members of Ishii's organization were placed on trial for war crimes finally. Soviet press reports told the US State Department of the first installment of the trial results and included confessions by several Japanese

that the Japanese general staff in war ministry had set up secret labs in Manchuria during the time UNICEF 731 was first getting set up for preparation and execution of biological, bacteriological warfare. During court testimony, these were said to have been established on direct order from Emperor Hirohito. This, the Soviet account goes on to state

that the Soviet Union was one of the intended targets of Japan's biological warfare contradicting their initial statement that Soviet citizens were among the victims of experimental research. That bacteria were mass produced for use in war and that outposts along the Soviet border were established for the purpose

of conducting biological warfare against the USSR. Soviet veracity was brought into question as the State Department compared these accounts of the trial with the Red Army's newspaper earlier recounting of biological warfare activities that didn't include Russian citizens. It is apparent that Moscow had hoped to use the Red Star article as a goad

assisted by the fact that the New York Times picked up on the story too and brought it wild publicity back here in the United States. How could the other allies, specifically the US, refuse to bring the former members of Unit 731 to trial when their own citizens had been victimized? Like putty in the hands.

Yep, the timing of the Russian trial and the accounts of it in which no special pains were taken to emphasize Japan's use of biological warfare against countries other than the Soviet Union supports this viewpoint. The Tokyo war crimes trials had been wrapped up four months after the appearance of the Red Star article without Ishii or his cohorts ever making an appearance.

And so the Soviets no longer had any incentive to dwell on any suffering other than their own. And America wanted Ishii, Ishii's group and the emperor protected. More than that, it wanted secrecy and exclusivity. The Soviets pressed to bring them all to trial so that the secrets America had obtained from the Japanese could be made available to everyone,

especially obviously them, but America won. And Unit 731 made its contribution to the Cold War. Sweet. America wins. Yes, nice. America, hell yeah, America wins. And most of them, including Ishii, would go on to work in many different pharmaceutical companies

here in the USA for the rest of their lives. And Ishii would live a peaceful, comfortable life here in the US until the age of 59 where he would die of throat cancer. Thank God. Fuck him, I'm glad that that got him. However, it does not dismiss any of the secrets that America kept, the burying that we actively did

alongside the participants of Unit 731 and all of Ishii's subordinates, taking positions in America and making money and just becoming a US citizen, which is fucking crazy. Like, for example, in the case of the Frostbite specialist, Dr. Yoshimura, former upper level member of the unit, together with their cooperating medical researchers in Japan, made great and quiet use of their data

to further their careers in Japanese academia, science, industry, and politics. And still, the post-war history of Unit 731 is not confined to the stories of those former members who used their experience for their own personal gain. Like an invisible yet undeniable present ghost, the defunct outfit has continued to stop Japan, the world in other ways as well.

Just for clarity's sake, just show you how bonkers this whole thing is. Because these dudes had things we needed, we were totally like war crimes, whatever, bro. Yeah, exactly. If you had nothing we needed, a great example is Hideki Tojo, who was literally just like the,

I think he was both prime minister and the head of the military, and pretty much straight out the war, charged with war crimes immediately. This dude attempted to kill himself. I think shot himself in the chest. We saved his life. Just so he could like pay the price.

Just to hang him. Just so to hang. Just to hang him. Like, that is where we were. If you were not useless, if you had no use to us, we were just like, hang them. They are criminals.

But if you were like, I killed a bunch of people and I learned a few things, and maybe that'll be helpful. We're like, all right, come on. We're not in. That's where we were. That's crazy. We will absolutely in the future

do a multi-parter on Operation Paperclip, looking at the German side of things, and how, in my opinion, Josef Mengele, his own paranoia, is what prevented him safety, because he was so afraid of getting caught. When in reality, had he approached and done very similar things,

he would have lived an equally cushy life, like the Operation Paperclip folk did, that cooperated. I just keep thinking about how one day I'd like to do an episode about The Last Castle, which is just a fantastic story, and one day I'll have to do that. As the wrap up, let me give you a brief description

of what some of these people did post-war. Ishi Shiro specifically spent his last years in relative and unwilling inactivity. He was afraid of being taken by the Soviets for war crimes, and after negotiating his way into immunity with US authorities, he could not locate meaningful work. His lack of what would today be called, quote,

people skills, made him unwelcome to many of his former subordinates who had moved on to lucrative positions of respect, and preferred to distance themselves from Ishi. He wanted to work at Naito Ryochi's company, which we'll get to, but he was not wanted there either. Ishi contracted throat cancer, and there were rumors of former unit members

having a hand in it, and died in 1959 at 69 years of age. And of course, Kitano Masaji, one of his older subordinates, officiated his funeral. Yeah, even his own dudes at that time were like, no, we don't want you. And there's, yeah, rumors that they killed him. Then there's Naito, Kitano Masaji, and Futagi Hideo. The American military action in Korea at the time

brought a demand for blood. Sick. Hearing opportunity knocking, Naito, Kitano, and Futagi decided to go into business together, and they established Japan's first blood bank in 1951. Heavy purchases by the armed forces of the United States set the company on the road to financial success,

and the blood bank was later named Midori Jujiji, or Green Cross, and it continued along its prosperous path. It is now one of Japan's leading pharmaceutical companies, and has even moved overseas, setting up offices here in the US. These were started by unit 731 scientists. I hate that.

People who did human experimentation. I feel like we should be watching this. I feel like we should be watching this as like a little, like, after the end of the movie thing. And it's like, why can't we be friends? Yeah, yeah, the gray screen. I thought you'd be in War Crongdale. And the worst part is, again, they set it up for money.

They just saw an opportunity, and they formed the first one, and Green Cross still exists today. It is still out there saving people's lives. In February 1988, US medical researchers identified 18 patients in Japan who had become infected with the AIDS virus through transfusions or infected blood products

exported from the United States by Green Cross. The following May, two of the infected patients brought suit against the company and other related ones. Dr. Yamaguchi Kenichiro, a medical practitioner who's lectures on unit 731 and its effect on Japanese medicine, had stated in his talks his belief that the company knowingly imported and distributed AIDS-tainted blood

as part of its program for trying to develop an AIDS vaccine. So they were still doing- Wait, what? Yes, I know! I was the entire time we were saying this, I was like, now hold on, the time period, we just didn't know enough. They did this on purpose?

They were like, yes, look at this scene! It's insane! This is, you know what, this is, this is literal, like, all right, it's not literally, but it's very close to just like, Captain America fought Hydra in the 40s, and then like- They're back.

Hell, Hydra. Like, it feels like that for Hydra. It's fucking crazy. It's so messed up. And the thing is, like their thought was, successful development of such a medicine would mean astronomical profits. Government approval to market a new substance, however,

is difficult to obtain without a history of successful use on humans. Yeah, just a bit. Commenting further on connection between AIDS and biological warfare, Dr. Yamaguchi adds his voice to the chorus of those who find it hard to believe the orthodox explanation that the disease started with monkeys.

It is much easier, he says, to think that it was developed in Fort Dietrich as part of their ongoing biological warfare program, after which it somehow leaked out. A researcher at Fort Dietrich was said to have remarked to that effect, to the effect that, quote, that within 10 years, the US would have developed a biological weapon that would be more devastating

than anything to date. Just 10 years after that statement, the first AIDS case appeared. The Fort Dietrich origin says Yamaguchi is a much more scientifically realistic explanation. Does that ring familiar to today's day and age at all? Where? Where?

Diseases don't hop from animal to human. That's never happened before. Preposterous. God. One of the former unit members described Unit 731 in a post-war interview as the best-paying job anyone could have gotten at the time. The fuck out of here?

Okay, this is fucking insane. Shut the fuck up, dude. But now we have a long list. Nazis, it was good exercise walking around like that. Yeah, and that's, I'm sure, what it was in their mind in a lot of ways. Researchers were paid as civilian employees for the Imperial Japanese Army,

but we now have a brief list of some of the major players of the Unit 731, but some of these major players were as civilians rather than as military, but there's not that many of them. You can look it up. There's just like a list of names and what they did in the place, but again, it's not that long a list.

It's maybe three, six, nine, 10, 11, 12. It's like 15 people, 16 people is all we know. That's all we have. And there's so many testimonies you can read that we didn't even touch things from people that were attached to virology experiments and so on. There's so much to just imbibe, and it's all so valuable just to understand

the truth of the history, and I would really encourage you to read it. I blasted through these books in like a couple of days, and it's worth it. Unfortunately, like I said, they get their own. They lived happily ever after for the most part, and America made that very possible, where America's word dreams can come true,

and that's the end of Unit 731. And I hope at the very least, if you were able to laugh along with us, great, but at the very least that you were, at least walk away with a better understanding of some of the more human crimes and atrocities that happened not that long ago, World War II, you know? So there you go, boys.

Fuckin' hell. Unit 731, Ishi Shiro, the long-promised, over 100 episodes ago, I promised we'd do this, is now done. I'm very happy. It's three parts, they're big, chunky episodes. It's big, big listening, so I appreciate you all tearing through it with us and joining us.

Next week, we're going back to the Old West, boys, with another crazy fucking story of another crazy fucking cannibal that lives in the wild. I was literally going to ask you, it's not about a cowboy that eats other cowboys, is it? It is, actually. It absolutely is.

It's gonna be another- Is there not high demand for cowboy cannibal? By the way, is there a movie called Cowboy Cannibal? Because there should be. Listen, have you ever seen a cannibal the musical? There you go. I have not, but Boon Helm was one of my favorite little series we did, and I found another one

that hooked me, and this is gonna be great. I'm announcing cannibal the musical as the next rotten popcorn. Okay, I'm down. Is that what we're doing? I don't know when on the list it goes after whatever the hell else I've said. I was just gonna be there.

That's on there. All right, I'm down. Well, boys, we gotta go do a mini-sode, so thank you all over at Patreon for supporting us and honestly, just being our lifeblood, and thank you all for listening and just really being there and having the numbers continually going up.

It's really cool to see the growth of this show continue. We couldn't do it without you, so please spread the word, let your folks know, leave us reviews, follow us on the socials, support us in whatever way you can, and we'll continue doing big, deep dives like this as our show ages. That's it for us.

We love you. Bye. Bye. I look up to when there's a bird to fly, and a dozen lines of traffic across the sky. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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