Canadian-American filmmaker Paul Johnson has promoted his new film "731", which depicts the horrific details of a chemical and biological terror campaign launched by the Imperial Japanese Army during China's occupation in World War II.
"There is a terrible war crime that took place in modern history. Most of us have heard about the European holocaust, the Nazi holocaust, Auschwitz and the death camps. While in East Asia, we had a similar thing, but for some reason the world has forgotten about it," Johnson was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.
Led by Doctor Shiro Ishii, the Japanese military unit 731 conducted a series of vile biological and chemical experiments on the innocent residents in northeastern China, including infecting them with diseases, poisons and performing dissections.
Among the unit's experiments was the unthinkable dropping of small bombs filled with plague-infected fleas on innocent villagers. Even today, some residents in the area suffer from a sort of rotten leg syndrome, which might be linked to the intentional contamination.
Records show that roughly 10,000 people in China and North Korea died as a result of unit 731's crimes, but the number of the victims is probably much higher, Johnson said in his film.
Unlike what happened to German war criminals, those responsible for unit 731 went unpunished.
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In the past 10 years, almost all Japanese TV stations have presented Japan as a "victim", while top Japanese TV broadcaster NHK has recently aired a documentary exposing the 731 unit's brutal atrocities in modern human history.
--IANS
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