Scholars criticize Japan's wartime atrocities, calling for just medical ethics

A group of scholars have gathered in Japan's Kyoto to criticize the country's concealing of wartime medical crimes including those committed by Unit 731, the Japanese army's biological warfare division during World War II, vowing to face up to the truth behind the atrocities.

Instead for being tried for war crimes, the researchers involved in the Unit 731 were given immunity in exchange for their data on human experimentation. "In some sense, it forms the source of Japan's medical crimes," Shoji Kondo, author for "Evidence of Unit 731 crimes" said Sunday.

"The cover of germ war connected with post-war crimes has influenced descendant medical staff's attitude to the medical ethics, leading it to a twisted way," he noted.

For a long time, medical crimes have been kept secrets by the Japanese government and medical circle. But recently, both the Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto and Kyushu University in Fukuoka have disclosed more vivid evidence relating to Japan's medical crimes during WWII.

With the disclosure of more materials proving medical crimes, Japan's further ignoring or whitewashing the crimes will only lead the country to more passive situation, said writer Aoki Fukiko.

Kishi Tsuchiya, associate professor of Osaka University, said: "The obliquity and distortion in Japan and Japan's medical circle will not disappear as long as the country does not recognize the truth that it has killed thousands of civilians by human experimentation, as well as not apologize to victims and compensate their families."

"Medical justice cannot be realized without squarely facing history," he added.

It's impossible to avoid those negative assets in the medical history of Japan, while its attitude is in marked contrast with Germany, which convicted 23 medical doctors for their crimes in 1946. Endi