Unit 731: Firsthand Accounts of Japan's Wartime Human Experimentation Program

by Hal Gold

One of these tests consisted of taking blood samples. At least five hundred cubic centimeters was drawn at two- to three-day intervals. Some of the victims became progressively debilitated and wasted. Still, the blood drainage continued. Careful records were kept, and these experiments smack more of a combination of professional curiosity than of actual science: a simple, childlike curiosity to see how far a human being can be squeezed of blood until death occurs. Not all were drained to the point of death, though. Many were injected with poison when they could no longer serve as lab materials. Sometimes, when a subject was too weak to offer physical resistance, he would be killed with a blow to the head with an axe. The brain might then be used for further research.