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Evil Doctors and Scientists From World War II

Khalid Elhassan January 15, 2021 33 min

Second Battle of Champagne - Second Battle of Ypres — French soldiers wearing gas masks in WWI trenches, waiting for an order to launch an attack. Flickr

20. Dr. Ishii Murdered Thousands in a Variety of Gruesome Ways

Unit 731’s main compound in China. Wikimedia

During Dr. Ishii’s evil experiments, thousands were killed with a host of deadly pathogens, ranging from the bubonic plague to botulism, to which prisoners were exposed in a variety of ways. Victims were injected with bacteria, had it added to their food and drink, or it was smeared on their clothes. To test the effectiveness of aerial dispersal of diseases, bombs full of gangrene or other deadly bacteria were exploded over prisoners. Ishii and Unit 731 subjected prisoners to other atrocities as well. Victims were starved, exposed to extremes of temperatures, bombarded with X-rays, killed in giant centrifuges, boiled alive, or even dissected alive.

Thanks to the thousands of test subjects killed in the camps of Unit 731, plus the hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians outside who were exposed to the plague, Ishii brought biological warfare to new heights – or lows. By 1945, even as Japan was reeling on her last legs, she still had a horrific last card to play: weaponized deadly pathogens. Ishii and Unit 731 had encased the bubonic plague, botulism, anthrax, smallpox, cholera, and other diseases into bombs that were routinely dropped on Chinese soldiers and civilians.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.