What did the US allying with Unit 731 accomplish or what was gained?

[YUPPIE]

I have never ever found any documented reports of an apology from the US for covertly pardoning and allying with Unit 731. In fact, I read they outright ignored victim pleas as communist blabber and that was it from them. Even today neighboring Asian countries will constantly remind Japan of Unit 731 but the US has nothing to say of their involvement.

There's also nothing about what they gained from their research. All it says is it was a strategic move to intercept communism and that was it. What does this even mean or what are the details here? The mastermind behind Unit 731 and his cronies the US got ahold of went on to live full and ordinary lives unscathed.

Needless to say, that's the equivalent of letting Josef Mengele get off the hook. So I'm wondering what was gained or so important that America decided to not even attempt a "you have outlived your usefulness" after it was all said and done.

[Deletedaccount1]

The US was not allied with Unit 731, they gave their researchers immunity from war crime prosecutions in exchange for not providing the results of their research to the Soviets. This was a troubling time when medical ethics was not taken seriously in the US in terms of research. You can see this in the widespread belief in Eugenics and Social Darwinism among American elites. The Tuskeegee experiment is another example.

It is difficult to say what the results of Unit 731's experiments were or what influence they had on future research but it probably had an influence on later US biological weapon development.

You also need to take into account that any source writing about Unit 731 probably doesn't want to say "their experiments resulted in X advancement in science" because that could be read as endorsing their experiments.

[YUPPIE]

US biological weapon development.
.

that's pretty evil, isn't it? Just the sound of that. Also, your whole post is kind of scary in general on further investigation. Since in my mind, the US were/are the good guys in WW2 and Japan and Germany for the time were a mythical evil army.

[Deletedaccount1]

that's pretty evil, isn't it? Just the sound of that. Also, your whole post is kind of scary in general on further investigation. Since in my mind, the US were/are the good guys in WW2 and Japan and Germany for the time were a mythical evil army.

Yeah they are pretty evil which is why they're banned and it's a big deal when they do get used. We were the good guys but we had to pick up the pieces that the old bad guys left behind in order to fight the new bad guys (the Soviets).

[GreenJesus]

that's pretty evil, isn't it? Just the sound of that. Also, your whole post is kind of scary in general on further investigation. Since in my mind, the US were/are the good guys in WW2 and Japan and Germany for the time were a mythical evil army.

There are no "good guys" and "mythical evil armies" in real life.

[YUPPIE]

There are no "good guys" and "mythical evil armies" in real life.

Did the US do anything particularly bad in WW2 other than (debatably) the *second* nuke?

[Thekri]

that's pretty evil, isn't it? Just the sound of that. Also, your whole post is kind of scary in general on further investigation. Since in my mind, the US were/are the good guys in WW2 and Japan and Germany for the time were a mythical evil army.

The problem is your perception of history, not the reality. Especially at the end of the war, the Allies pardoned anyone that would be helpful to them going into the cold war. The same thing happened with German scientists and engineers.

The US and its non-Soviet allies were the "good guys", that just doesn't mean what you think it does. They did plenty of screwed up things to win. They firebombed population centers, and conducted systematic campaigns of starvation of civilians. All of these had a military objective, but sometimes that objective was basically "Deny them a labor force and break their will to fight", which justified most anything. Some of our soldiers killed prisoners, and the US wasn't really interested in investigating those claims, because they were seen as a distraction, so they just moved past it. These are nations, not heroic characters. Nations are made up of individuals, and sometimes they do messed up things. Also, war is hell, and it isn't pretty.

Unit 731 was seen to have potential value to post-war US military efforts, so the powers that be decided the need for them outweighed the need for justice. This was a rational, if not moral, decision. The Soviet Union was known to have invested heavily in biological weapons, and we desperately needed to level the playing field.

Anyway, as far as an apology, Japan should probably apologize first, it would be a little weird to apologize for them. But some recognition of what happened historically would probably be a good thing.

- - - Updated - - -

Did the US do anything particularly bad in WW2 other than (debatably) the *second* nuke?

Yeah. See above. We did low altitude night firebombing of Japanese cities specifically targeting the outskirts of a city to cut people off from escaping the firestorm. That is pretty messed up, and it leveled entire cities even before nuclear weapons.

[Rozz]

Since this thread is discussing US policies and actions during the 1930s-40s (and onward), it has been moved to General Off-Topic: Politics.

[YUPPIE]

There are no "mythical evil armies" in real life.

Khmer Rouge.

[ParanoiD84]

Well the us did drop two nukes on them should even out abit after the japanese horrible warcrimes slaughtering 20+ million chinese in the most gruesome ways like impaling infants on bayonettes to name one example, they also say that mengel the german doctor could learn a thing or two from the japanese leaders at Unit 731 that's how fucking fucked up they where.

Now why people always just seem to focus on the nazis is beyond me when the japanese did the same shit and killed just as many as nazi germany or around that numbers give or take some millions.

My guess is that schools dont even teach about the japanese warcrimes and the 20 million killed i know mine barely touched on it with only saying they invaded china and that was it.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Did the US do anything particularly bad in WW2 other than (debatably) the *second* nuke?

You mean aside from imprisoning hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans for no reason other than their ethnicity?

[YUPPIE]

You mean aside from imprisoning hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans for no reason other than their ethnicity?

that was *after* wasn't it?

[TEHPALLYTANK]

that was *after* wasn't it?

In what universe is the year 1942 "after" WW2? It happened after Pearl Harbor, not after WW2.

[Powerogue]

I think it says something that I never learned about it in my US history classes. I had to google it.

Sounds like tacitly promoting seriously immoral scientific experiments that killed a lot of people by giving them immunity for their crimes in exchange for not selling said information to the Soviet Union.

Pretty messed up and certainly needs to be brought up more, but hardly seems the worst thing the US did. Namely because we didn't commit atrocities so much as not condemn/prevent them.

"During the final months of World War II, Japan planned to use plague as a biological weapon against San Diego, California. The plan was scheduled to launch on September 22, 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier." from the wikipedia article is particularly damning. I don't even know what to think about that this might have occurred if we hadn't dropped the nukes and instead chose the prolonged war option.

[Shadowferal]

Lots of history stuff they don't teach for what ever reason. The first organized protest against slavery in the US was led by Quakers in 1688;
black soldiers fought on both sides of the Civil War;
before Rosa Parks, there was Elizabeth Jennings Graham in 1854 who refused to leave a streetcar in NYC. The court case eventually desegregated street cars in the city;
the deliberate poisoning of liquor during Prohibition;
the Indian Relocation Act of 1956...the list goes on and on...

And I don't ever recall "Operation Paperclip" ever mentioned in my highschool history class.

[josykay]

Did the US do anything particularly bad in WW2 other than (debatably) the *second* nuke?

Isolited warcrime incidents, and unrestricted submarine warfare, which would during the Nuremberg Trials shatter most charges against Dönitz.

[Ashnazg]

Pretty messed up and certainly needs to be brought up more, but hardly seems the worst thing the US did. Namely because we didn't commit atrocities so much as not condemn/prevent them.

"During the final months of World War II, Japan planned to use plague as a biological weapon against San Diego, California. The plan was scheduled to launch on September 22, 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier." from the wikipedia article is particularly damning. I don't even know what to think about that this might have occurred if we hadn't dropped the nukes and instead chose the prolonged war option.

Its convenient to hand-wave away nuking of nearly half a million civilians (e.g. the total war toll of ~8 years of Syrian warfare) as some sort of military necessity, but at the end of the day, these two incidents are still some of the biggest war time atrocities against the civilian population.

[ipaq]

Refuse to help Europe against Hitler for 4y+ is pretty Evil.

Did the US do anything particularly bad in WW2 other than (debatably) the *second* nuke?

[Adam Jensen]

Refuse to help Europe against Hitler for 4y+ is pretty Evil.

The war in Europe started in 1939. Americans joined in in 1941. We'll call it 1942 because it was December 1941. That's 3 years. Not 4+. Less then 3 since, we're going from September 1939 to December 1941.

WWI was also fresh in everyone's minds. The whole appeasement up to the invasion of Poland was due to the fact that no one wanted another world war after the horrors of the last one. Americans felt the same way. Once again, like in 1914, many felt Hitler and the war was "Europe's problem." People supported Lend-Lease because we liked Great Britain, but a full scale invasion and actual war-fighting was not very popular until Pearl Harbor, hence all the conspiracy theories about how FDR "allowed" it to happen.

Finally, while Americans likely viewed Hitler with distaste, as an enemy, things like the Holocaust had not yet happened. Some of the worst parts of Hitler's campaigns and actions had not yet become common knowledge. Blitzing London certainty would have soured American opinion of Hitler even further but he wasn't as synonymous with the word "evil" as he is today.

[breadisfunny]

the same thing allying itself with former nazi's to make the rockets in the apollo program to teach the moon. also nice name change tsunagi.