Unit 731

I was always interested in being a 'Nazi Hunter', you know? The Boys in Brazil, all that jazz. It just seemed exciting, and I was a total history buff. Turned out that 'Nazi Hunting' was done and dealt with. I was born a little late. Still, I kept digging, just as a side hobby. Operation Paperclip was still interesting. All these Nazi scientists recruited after the war- well known ones, mostly, like Wernher Von Braun, Heisenberg, you know. Then I started to wonder- you keep hearing about German super-science, but what about the rest of the Axis? Surely they had some sort of scientific research? Italy turned out to be a dead end- I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. A few quacks and that stupid wall with 'SI SI SI' all over it behind Mussolini's ugly mug. Japan, on the other hand... Japan was apparently big into biological warfare- plague fleas, things like that, with innocuous names like 'Warhorse Disease Prevention Shop' and 'Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department'. The former was home to the rather infamous Unit 731, and the latter Unit 100- both of which were involved in heavy shit. Human expirimentation, cultivation of plagues and other diseases... they had plenty of involuntary test subjects, after all. All those living within occupied China were considered fair game. But I was interested in people, so I dug some more. Since the Cold War is well and over, more things were being de-classified- mostly useless white noise, but a few interesting tidbits emerged. There are practically no records on Unit 731 or Unit 100 during WWII. None. Whether there were never any done, or they dissapeared or were destroyed, I have no idea. Shiro Ishii, Masaji Kitano, and Masami Kitaoka were the three names I got. So what had happened to them after the war? Masami Kitaoka was later arrested in 1956. He had been using his work at the National Institute of Health Sciences to infect patients with different diseases, mostly to mental health patients whose testimonies would not be believed. When the authorities arrived to arrest him March 23rd, 1956, the official report simply listed 'Suspect dead [Natural Causes]'. Natural causes my ass! Ishii and Kitano, on the other hand, were granted immunity in return for their research. I got a little... well, obsessed is too strong a word, but it was interesting. Directly after WWII, in early 1946, Ishii and Kitano both weaseled their way out of the Tokyo tribunals. After they had been thoroughly debriefed for their research, they went their seperate ways. Kitano went back to Japan, and Ishii to America. That's where the official story ends, and things get a lot more... odd. Kitano practically vanished. No official record, nothing. The best I could find is a half-assed KGB report stating that he was 'at large in Japan.' The CIA, however, was much more thorough in paranoically tracking... well, everyone. The de-classified reports I dug up seemed to indicate that one 'Dr. Ishii' was '[consulting] researchers at Fort Detrick', dated 1949. Fort Detrick is fairly notorious as being an expirimentation center for biomedical research, so for me, 'Ishii' is a no-brainer. Knowing Ishii's 'habits', I went and dug up old medical records for Fort Detrick. Most of it was useless- unreadable scripts of everyone with a broken bone. But then I managed to find the files for the psychiatric ward. Back then, doctors didn't realize PTSD existed. They wrote it off as some sort of insanity. I found a report describing one 'Pvt. Richards'. February 17, 1947: 'Subject describing vivid memories, is often agitated. Running mild fever. Keeps insisting that he's being tortured by a Jap. Probably another one of his 'flashbacks', but according to his records, Richards was never listed as a POW.' March 2, 1947: 'Richards is getting worse. Classify as insane and transfer to solitary confinement- he assaulted one of the nurses, claiming that the poor man was his tormentor. Had to apologize to the man in person. I didn't recognize him, though. Odd, I thought I knew everyone." March 5, 1947: '0800 hours. Subject dead, natural causes. Similar to Typhus, though subject's records show perfect medical health, no illness. I'll have to track down the nurse.' The similarity is as obvious as it is startling. Ishii was back to his old tricks, expirimenting on people who were deemed too insane or unstable to testify against him. An after-note in a review of convicted war criminals described Ishii as running a clinic in Japan, where he performed examinations and vaccinations for free. It was dated 1948- it seems likely to me that this was actually Kitano- though it is entirely possible that the two colleagues met from time to time. I initially kept searching for Ishii in project MKULTRA, but after a while, I realized I was barking up the wrong tree. Psychadelic drugs and brainwashing was hardly Ishii's specialty. That being said, I lost track of him for a while. Then, in 1961, a Japanese newspaper article caught my eye. A man posing as a health official arrived at a government office and gave the six employees present 'antibiotics' in the form of pills. While it's impossible to be certain, it seems the actual content of the pills was atropine- an extract from the bella donna plant, causing rapidly increasing heart-rate, palpitations, and convulsions. Supposedly, $25,000 was stolen, and it was written off- poorly- as a robbery. The pharmaceutical-grade drugs used lead me to believe that Kitano, founder of the Green Cross Corporation, a major pharmaceutical company, was responsible. Things went quiet again afterwards. I made a small note to myself- 'Green Cross, Kitano Masaji'. That led to the next tidbit. In the late 1980s, Green Cross was accused of distributing blood contaminated with HIV, knowing that they were tainted. Up to 3,000 individuals were victimized. While researching this, I found a small fringe site run by some Japanese individual. His claims brought this into a new light- the contaminated blood was not only known to be contaminated, but was marked as such. All blood that tested positive for HIV contamination were all in lot 18440-B. All 800 documented cases which referenced the lot number. The common claim was that this scandal was a result of poor quality control- but this lot was specifically tracked. Carefully. Other lot number records show that this was far from common practice. Kitano was still alive, and still involved in Green Cross. I found it intensely hard to believe that this was a coincidence, but his name was never mentioned. He was reported dead in a car accident soon after. In 2008, war criminal Radovan Karadžić was arrested. He had been underground under a fake identity- Dr. Dragan David Dabić- as a doctor in alternative medicine. He ran a small clinic. Which did examinations and innoculations for free. A small-time reporter went to all known patients of 'Dabić', and a recurring theme emerged. Of the 12 patients interviewed, 11 reported that they were 'surprised at how wealthy Dabić seemed for such a small-time practicioner'. 7 reported being 'attended to by a nurse of Asiatic descent, probably Japanese'. 4 had died of diseases. But who was this 'nurse'? Shiro Ishii and Masaji Kitano were surely dead by now- they would have both been over a hundred years old. Both Ishii and Kitano ran clinics, they must have had nurses- successors? But what was the motivation of the two men? Misplaced and warped patriotism for a long-dead Empire? Money? Power? Or perhaps that was the only life they knew? I don't know, but I'm ending my search here. But be careful. Not every healer is to be trusted.