U.S. Responses to Japanese Wartime Inhuman Experimentation after World War II

Abstract

In 1945-46, representatives of the U.S. government made similar discoveries in both Germany and Japan, unearthing evidence of unethical experiments on human beings that could be viewed as war crimes. The outcomes in the two defeated nations, however, were strikingly different. In Germany, the United States, influenced by the Canadian physician John Thompson, played a key role in bringing Nazi physicians to trial and publicizing their misdeeds. In Japan, the United States played an equally key role in concealing information about the biological warfare experiments and in securing immunity from prosecution for the perpetrators. The greater force of appeals to national security and wartime exigency help to explain these different outcomes.

Healing Without Waging War: Beyond Military Metaphors in Medicine and HIV Cure Research

“…The exigency of war has been used to vindicate unethical research as exemplified by secret dealings between the United States and Japan for the exchange of data needed to develop more effective biological weapons in the context of the looming Cold War (Brody et al 2014, Nie 2006). Moreover, the war metaphor has contributed to justifications for unethical research such as the U.S. Public Health Service’s studies in Tuskegee and Guatemala.…”

U.S. Complicity and Japan's Wartime Medical Atrocities: Time for a Response

“…That what the United States did, or omitted to do, involved a cover-up of the medical atrocities is also argued in many other papers and books on this topic, including in Moreno (2001), Harris (2002), Nie (2006), and Brody et al (2014). 3.…”

“…To learn about the tolerance of the human body, prisoners were exposed to extreme temperatures or other extreme conditions, including oxygen, food or water deprivation, electroshocks, and lowering of air pressure. To test weapons, the doctors and researchers detonated bombs (with or without pathogens) near a prisoner and then dissected or vivisected the victim to study the bombs' effects (Brody et al 2014;Harris 2002;Moreno 2001). There was no regard for the suffering of the victims, who were referred to as "maruta" (Japanese for "logs").…”

“…Medical schools or medical associations in Japan have also never issued statements repudiating the barbarity of the Japanese doctors and researchers, who had often been members of their institutions (Harris 2002, 336). 1 All this is in stark contrast with Germany, where many of the Nazi doctors were convicted at the Nuremberg trials (which also resulted in the Nuremburg Code with guidelines for human subjects research), where medical associations and also universities acknowledged the involvement of (their) medical personnel in medical atrocities committed during the war, and where the government officially acknowledged and apologized for the atrocities committed by Nazi doctors (Brody et al 2014;Yamazaki 2006).…”

When Saying Sorry Is Not Enough: Acknowledging Past Wrongs in Human Subjects Research

“…Members of the American government were concerned about preventing others, namely, the Soviet Union, from using the data toward any future biological warfare program. As Brody et al (2014) explain, "Wartime exigency does more than simply prioritize national security over human rights. It urges toughness and decisiveness in decision making, such that a moral blindness that would be seen as a deficiency in other times is instead seen as a virtue and a necessity" (228).…”