Between the nineteen thirties and nineteen forty-five, a covert Imperial Japanese Army facility in occupied Manchuria conducted lethal experiments on thousands of Chinese, Korean, and Russian prisoners — deliberate infection with plague and cholera, vivisection without anaesthesia, frostbite experiments, pressure chamber tests, and biological warfare attacks on civilian populations. Estimates of the death toll range from three thousand to twelve thousand inside the facility alone. When the war ended, General MacArthur granted the perpetrators immunity in exchange for their research data. None were prosecuted.

In this episode of 5 Minute Strange, we cover the full documented history of Unit seven thirty-one — the scale of the experiments, the biological warfare operations against Chinese cities, the destruction of evidence at the end of the war, and the American decision to trade justice for data. Several of the scientists went on to distinguished careers in Japanese medicine and academia. Not one of them was tried for what they did.

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