2. Unit 731

In 1938, Japan tasked Unit 731with researching chemical and biological weapons. Thousands of victims ranging from infants to the elderly were tested on at bases throughout occupied China.

They were injected bubonic plague, anthrax, cholera and other pathogens. To best study these diseases’ effects on organs, doctors cut open subjects with no anesthesia.

 

Victims also underwent “field tests,” where they were tied to stakes as planes sprayed plague culture, or dropped bombs with plague-infested fleas.

Doctors also tested the limits of the human body by putting victims in pressure chambers until their eyes popped out, burriyng them alive, and hanging them upside down until they chocked.

After WWII, the U.S. government granted immunity to some of these scientists in exchange for their data. Gen. Shiro Ishii, head of Unit 731, lived peacefully until he died from throat cancer in 1959.