Unit 731
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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. There's nothing wrong with the patient strapped to the operating table. He's terrified and fighting against the restraints. But otherwise, this man is in perfect health until your supervisor steps forward and shoots him in the leg. Remove the bullet you're instructed, so you obey. You've performed this procedure many times in school, but never on a patient like this, who's been given no anesthesia or painkillers whatsoever. You work as carefully and compassionately as you can, but the patient screams and writhes the entire time. It's torture. Once the bullet's out, you receive your next task.
Remove a piece of the patient's intestine. After that, a piece of his arm. And after that, a chunk of his brain. You understand now. This patient is not meant to leave this operating table alive. He's one of the truly unfortunate ones. He'll be kept conscious the entire time until scientific experiments become too much for his body to handle. And once his body is wheeled off to the crematorium, another patient, another victim, will be brought in at his place. Again, you take up your scalpel and make the first incision. You block out the patient's screams as well as your own conscience. This is no time to debate right from wrong. You've already seen what happened to the other doctors who questioned orders in Unit 731.
It's 1932, and deep in the heart of Japanese-occupied Manchuria, something monstrous is taking shape. Near the city of Harbin, Chinese prisoners are being forced to construct a mysterious compound. It seems to be part army base, part laboratory. But the prisoners don't know what they're building. Their Japanese oppressors make them wear blinders as they work, like horses, to keep them from grasping the full picture. Because the horrifying truth is, many of these Chinese prisoners will never leave this place alive. They're erecting a concentration camp for their very own extermination. Overseeing the construction is an army medical officer named Shiro Ishii. Shiro is a man of medicine, a man of ambition. This facility is the culmination of everything he's worked for. It'll be his personal playground, a place to perform unthinkable medical experiments on human beings with complete impunity. Only he knows the horrors that are to come. Shiro has always believed that people deserve the lives they're born into.
As a child, this meant that the peasants working his wealthy family's land deserved the brutal mistreatment they received from Shiro's father. Poverty and suffering were simply their lot in life. Shiro also believes he deserves the wealth and privilege he was raised in. The gods have smiled upon him. He's destined for greatness. Shiro considers it his duty to socially climb, and if lesser people get crushed under him along the way, well, then so be it. This attitude has served Shiro well. By shrewdly placing himself near powerful people, he's received incredible medical research opportunities and has rapidly advanced up the ranks of the Japanese army. But the real reason he stands here today overseeing the construction of a unique medical base catered to him is because an idea occurred to Shiro. An idea so horrific that few others would dare to even think it, let alone speak it out loud. But Shiro dared because he saw this idea as an opportunity to serve the most powerful person in all of Japan, Emperor Hirohito himself.
Just a few years prior, as a curious student of medicine and biological weaponry, the idea comes to Shiro while he's familiarizing himself with the Geneva Protocol. This agreement, signed by the League of Nations in 1925, bans the use of chemical and biological weapons in war. Japan is emerging from a period of isolation, trying to learn from other nations and find advantages. But just because the Europeans decided to ban these weapons, doesn't mean Japan has to follow. In fact, Shiro believes that the greatest men in the empire are those who can out-thank those cocky Westerners. One of his heroes is Togo Hayajiro, a Japanese admiral who achieved incredible military victories by ignoring many of the European rules of warfare. Shiro wants to be just like him.
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