Ranshaw, Page |1

John Ranshaw

Professor Gordon

UWRIT 1103-023

19 January 2017

Footnote Research

Footnotes are sites of intriguing snip bits of information that help add to the information

within a text. The footnote on page 29 does that for the text, in To Kill A People, in which it goes

into greater depths about an unknown atrocity. This unknown atrocity took place during the

events of World War II and was the best kept secret of the war. It took place in Japan and was

shrouded by the horrors of the holocaust allowing for it to hide in the background. This unknown

was that of Unit 731.

Unit 731 was a specific unit in the Japanese imperial army that was funded by medical

schools and universities to carry out horrific experiments. These experiments where done on the

prisoners of war that Japan had taken and most of them from China that they had imperialized at

the start of the war. There sole purpose was to decided and create next generation bioweapons,

ultimately preparing themselves for germ warfare. These inhuman experiments involved

deliberately having people contract anthrax, bubonic plague, cholera, and other horrific things

such as vivisections without anestetia. However, after all the secrecy, destruction of evidence,

and the truth finally coming out the US Post-War Adminstration decided to trade amnesty to the

war criminals of Unit 731 for all the research that they collected during their experiments. This

allowed some of the worst war criminals like Hisato Yoshimura to walk free and get jobs in the
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public and private sector. The US left these criminals walk free after horrifically experimenting

on an estimated 3,000 people.

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Works Cited

"Unit 731 General Facts." UNIT 731 - Unit 731 General Facts. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Jan. 2017.