Japan's Wartime Medical Atrocities: Comparative Inquiries in Science, History, and Ethics (Asia's Transformations)

Prior to and during the Second World War, the Japanese Army established programs of biological warfare throughout China and elsewhere. In these “factories of death,” including the now-infamous Unit 731, Japanese doctors and scientists conducted large numbers of vivisections and experiments on human beings, mostly Chinese nationals. However, as a result of complex historical factors including an American cover-up of the atrocities, Japanese denials, and inadequate responses from successive Chinese governments, justice has never been fully served. This volume brings together the contributions of a group of scholars from different countries and various academic disciplines. It examines Japan’s wartime medical atrocities and their postwar aftermath from a comparative perspective and inquires into perennial issues of historical memory, science, politics, society and ethics elicited by these rebarbative events. The volume’s central ethical claim is that the failure to bring justice to bear on the systematic abuse of medical research by Japanese military medical personnel more than six decades ago has had a profoundly retarding influence on the development and practice of medical and social ethics in all of East Asia. The book also includes an extensive annotated bibliography selected from relevant publications in Japanese, Chinese and English. Introduction: Medical atrocities, history and ethics / Arthur Kleinman, Jing-Bao Nie, and Mark Selden pt. 1. Japan's medical war crimes and post-war trials Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army's biological warfare program / Tsuneishi Keiichi The legacies and implications of medicine-related war crimes trials and post-war politics / Suzy Wang Research on humans at the Khabarovsk war crimes trial : an historical and ethical examination / Boris G. Yudin pt. 2. Guilt and responsibility : individuals and nations Data generated in Japan's biowarfare experiments on human victims in China, 1932-1945, and the ethics of using them / Till Bärnighausen Discovering traces of humanity : taking individual responsibility for medical atrocities / Nanyan Guo On the altar of nationalism and the nation-state : Japan's wartime medical atrocities, the American cover-up, and postwar Chinese responses / Jing-Bao Nie pt. 3. Ethics and historical memory : parallel lessons from Germany and USA Bioethics and exceptionalism : a German example of learning from medical atrocities / Ole Döring The racial hygienist Otmar von Vershuer's relation with the Confessing Church and his post-war rehabilitation / Peter Degen America's memory problems : diaspora, civil society, and the perils of "chosen amnesia" / David B. MacDonald Japanese and American war atrocities, historical memory, and reconciliation / Mark Selden. Annotation Prior to and during the Second World War, the Japanese Army established programs of biological warfare throughout Chinaand elsewhere. In these âfactories of death, â including the now-infamous Unit 731, Japanese doctors and scientists conducted large numbers of vivisections and experiments on human beings, mostly Chinese nationals. However, as a result of complex historical factors including an American cover-up of the atrocities, Japanese denials, and inadequate responses from successive Chinese governments, justice has never been fully served. This volume brings together the contributions of a group of scholars from different countries and various academic disciplines. It examines Japanâs wartime medical atrocities and their postwar aftermath from a comparative perspective and inquires into perennial issues of historical memory, science, politics, society and ethics elicited by these rebarbative events. The volumeâs central ethical claim is that the failure to bring justice to bear on the systematic abuse of medical research by Japanese military medical personnel more than six decades ago has had a profoundly retarding influence on the development and practice of medical and social ethics in all of East Asia. The book also includes an extensive annotated bibliography selected from relevant publications in Japanese, Chinese and English