The Soviet Invasion of Manchuria Part IV — AttrocitiesIn case you missed: Part I, Part II, Par

The Soviet Invasion of Manchuria Part IV — AttrocitiesIn case you missed: Part I, Part II, Part IIIDuring the Kwantung Army’s occupation of Manchuria, the Japanese committed some of the worst atrocities of World War II.   Everywhere the Japanese went, a wave of rape and pillage followed.  Japanese soldiers used Chinese prisoners for bayonet, target, and sword practice.  Mass execution of prisoners and civilians was common.  The sadistic rape, torture, and sexual mutilation of women was common.  A large fraction of the Chinese populace was conscripted into slave labor, were workers faced the remainder of the lives in hard labor, disease, and starvation.  While the Japanese claimed to be occupying Manchuria for the good of the people, the Japanese were cruel masters at best. When the Soviets began liberating the major cities of Manchuria, they discovered numerous mass graves and instances of destruction.Some of the worst Japanese war crimes were committed by an organization called Unit 731.  Based in Harbin, Unit 731 was a research and development branch of the Kwantung Army.  It was there that the Japanese conducted human experiments on prisoners, including vivisection, amputation of limbs, and exposure to disease.  Some of the worst experiments involved the testing of weapons on humans,  including chemical and biological weapons. In 1940 and 1941, Unit 731 tested a form of bubonic plague on the Chinese populace, using low flying airplanes to spray plague infected fleas over Chinese cities.  Thousands died as a result. Conventional weapons were also tested, including grenades, bombs, flamethrowers, and machine guns.  When the Soviets occupied Harbin on August 20th, they captured much of Unit 731’s files and records intact.When American forces invaded Okinawa in 1945, thousands of Japanese civilians committed suicide in fear of rape and torture.  During the occupation of Manchuria, at least 1 million Japanese civilians settled in the country.  Like the people of Okinawa, they too feared reprisal from Soviet forces.  Thousands committed suicide.  Worse yet, the Kwantung Army often took part in the killings, assisting civilians in killing themselves.  The Japanese civilians in Manchuria did have a lot to fear, especially by the Chinese, who used the invasion as an opportunity for payback after almost 15 years of occupation.  Chinese civilians formed mobs that raped, looted, lynched, tortured, and murdered Japanese civilians that were unable to escape in time.  The Soviets were not innocent when it came to war crimes as well.  The execution and torture of Japanese prisoners was common, and chaos followed the Red Army wherever it went.  When the Soviets captured Mukden on August 14th, three days of rape and pillage followed.  At the town of Gegenmiao, Soviet forces and Chinese civilians brutally massacred 1,800 Japanese civilians.During World War II the Soviet Union had collected somewhere between 560,000 and 750,000 Japanese POW’s.  Most were sent to Stalin’s labor camps, where they faced at least a decade of hard labor, starvation, and disease.  When they returned home, they often became outcasts in Japanese society.  Around 3,000 were held indefinitely, being convicted of various war crimes.  In 1949, 12 leaders of the infamous Unit 731 were held trial for war crimes in the city of Khabarosk.  All were convicted and sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment and hard labor, which was practically a death sentence. -- source link
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