On an Airplane Jump

Nicholas Alkemade was a British man who fought in World War 2. His job during the war was not an enviable one–he was the tail gunner in a British bomber. That position was one that had a short life-span. Many of the men who were tail gunners never lived to tell the tales of what they experienced as the bombers flew miles above Germany during the war. You see, the tail gunner had a great responsibility. The German attack planes that were sent up to stop the bombers would usually attack the Allied bombers from below and from behind. Men like Nicholas had the difficult task of trying to fend off the attackers so that the bombers could carry out their tasks. But that also meant that they and their small, cramped nest at the rear of the plane were incredibly vulnerable. They were the first ones to see and sometimes even feel the bullets the Nazi airplanes spewed into the bombers. And, too often, the bombers retuned to England after the bombing raids with no tail gunner at all.

On March 24, 1944, Nicholas, who was 21 years old, and his bomber group were tasked with making a raid on Berlin, the German capital city. And the attack was scheduled, as many were, at night, when it would be more difficult for the enemy to see the bombers. Three hundred planes were sent on the mission. Now, once the bombers crossed the English Channel, they were over enemy territory and thus susceptible to anti-aircraft fire as well as the harassing German fighters, fighters that were much faster than the lumbering big bomber.

Nicholas’s plane, a British Lancaster bomber, had a crew of 7 men. They had dropped their bombs, and they turned for home. That’s when a small squadron of German Stukas, a heavily armed fighter/bomber, attacked. Nicholas and the other gunners tried to fend off the Stukas, but their plane was shot up badly. It caught fire. It began to spiral down towards the earth. There was nothing Nicholas could do but abandon the burning plane.

When he landed, Nicholas was quickly captured. He’d sprained his leg when he landed, so he had to be assisted by the German soldiers who captured him. The Lancaster had crashed nearby, and four of his fellow crewmates never made it out of the burning plane. Nicholas was taken to the local Gestapo (the Nazi secret police) headquarters for interrogation. That part was routine; the Nazis wanted to know the location of Nicholas’s airbase, what the number of planes were in his squadron, and other such information that might help them in the war. Of course, Nicholas didn’t reveal anything other than his name, rank, and serial number. Oh, and he told them about jumping out of the burning plane, of course.

And that’s when the Nazis began to doubt Nicholas’s story. How did he manage to jump out and survive when four of his fellow crewmembers didn’t, the Nazis wanted to know. His tale seemed too incredible to believe. The plane was at 18,000 feet (5,500 meters) above the German nation when Nicholas bailed out. Something didn’t add up about his story, the Nazis said. Yet, Nicholas insisted that his version of what happened was the truth.

The Nazis called him a liar. They made the injured man return with them to the crashed Lancaster. They forced him to show them where he was when he jumped. And then he pointed to his parachute. That’s when the Nazis shook their head in disbelief, but they had to admit that Nicholas was telling them the truth. You see, the charred parachute that Nicholas pointed to, the one that he was to use in case of the bomber being shot down, was still in the plane, still lying in the burned out wreckage of his tail gunner’s position.

And Nicholas Alkemade had somehow survived when he jumped 18,000 feet to earth without it.

On a Segregated Unit

The size of the racial divide in the United States is still a matter of debate almost 250 years after the founding of the nation. Even service in the US Military has been segregated for most of the nation’s history. It took President Harry S. Truman in 1948 to officially desegregate the armed forces. Up until that time, Americans of any race other than white served in units made up of people of the same race. White officers served over those units. That was true even of frontline, battlefield, combat troops in World War 2.

The 442nd Regimental Combat Unit was one such outfit. While the non-commissioned officers were of a minority race, the officers were, as usual, white. They were part of the troops who participated in the liberation of France and the pursuit of the German Nazi troops across France, then into western Germany, and finally into the Nazi heartland in 1944 and ’45. In the months of fighting, the unit was one of the most decorated for what it did and the amount of time it served in combat. It was the fall of ’44 when the 442nd was tasked with a special mission that many military historians still talk about.

The unit was part of the 36th Infantry Division, and part of that same division was made up of the 141st Regiment, a group mostly comprised of Texans from that state’s National Guard. And, they were an all-white unit. It seems that these same Texans found themselves completely surrounded by Germans after a counterattack had cut off the Texans’ route of retreat. At first, other elements of the 141st tried to reconnect with the Texans, but the Germans kept them at bay. Some of the surrounded men sent out a small detachment to see if they could break through, but this effort, too, was thwarted.

The 442nd was ordered to break through the German lines and “rescue” the Texas regiment. The issue for the 442nd was that they had been engaged in heavy fighting on one flank of the 141st for some days, and they were fatigued. However, knowing that their fellow Americans were in danger of being annihilated, the segregated unit accepted the challenge of re-connecting the Texans with the rest of the US Army. After three days of heavy fighting, the last day culminating in a fixed-bayonet charge up a steep, well fortified hill, the 442nd ended the German encirclement and relieved the 141st. The first message relayed to the 442nd from the happy Texans was, “Tell the 442nd we love them!”

Two weeks later, the commanding general officer of the regiment ordered a review of the troops. When the 442nd assembled, he turned to his First Officer and said, “Where are the rest of them?” The answer shocked him. “That’s all that’s left, sir,” was the reply. Over 800 killed, wounded, and missing were reported. Five of the unit were given Medals of Honor. General George Marshall and President Truman after the war gave the entire regiment commendations and ribbons. And, in the 1960s, Texas Governor John Connelly made the 442nd Regiment, to a man, Honorary Texans for their rescue of the Texas troops in October 1944, the only minority and segregated unit to receive such recognition.

What makes this story even more interesting is the fact that the entire 442nd Regiment–except for the officers, of course–was made up of troops of Japanese ancestry, most of them from Hawai’i.

On a Thoughtful Gift

The relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union between the end of World War 2 and the beginning of the Cold War changed exponentially. Allies during the war against Germany, the two nations became bitter enemies once the war was over. However, that transition from friend to foe didn’t happen overnight. Both nations mistrusted each other for years but saw the relationship as being necessary to defeat the Nazis. However, that doesn’t mean that, at times, friendly gestures were exchanged while the two countries were allies.

Take the gift that was given to the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman, in 1945. The gift was a hand-carved wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States. And the gift was formally presented to the ambassador by a large contingent of the Soviet Union’s young person’s organization, the Young Pioneers. The Pioneers were much like a politicized version of the Boy or Girl Scouts in the west, but in the case of the USSR, membership wasn’t optional. However, the presentation of the gift was reported in the press as a wonderful gesture of gratitude on the part of the young people to their vital ally in the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany.

You see, when Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union in 1941, the United States had not yet entered World War 2. The country was desperate to find the weapons and materiel to fight the war against the invaders. The United States arranged to begin supplying Russia with armaments and some products needed to fight. It’s safe to say that, without the aid of the United States, the USSR’s ability to defend itself against Germany would have been severely hampered. So, as the war was nearing the end in the summer of 1945, the giving of a gift to the US representative in Russia seemed more than appropriate.

At the presentation ceremony, Harriman, surrounded by the boys and girls in their red Pioneer scarves, graciously accepted the large wooden plaque on behalf of the United States. He ordered the plaque placed in the US Embassy in Moscow. It occupied a place of honor behind the large desk in the ambassador’s office and hung there for the next seven years.

Then, in 1951, something odd happened. A communications officer in the British Embassy in Moscow as sitting at a radio in his office one day when he suddenly heard something unusual on his set. What he heard was American voices coming over the air, bleeding through a Russian military broadcast he was monitoring. The communications guy couldn’t understand how that could be; the nearest American radio station that could be broadcasting was several hundred miles away in Western Europe. He continued to listen, then, it dawned on him what he was hearing. He jumped up and ran down the hall to the office of the British Ambassador.

It was then that the world found out, after seven years, that the beautiful carved wooden plaque that the Pioneers had presented to the Americans wasn’t what it seemed.

The gift, given by the Soviets to the Americans in the pretense of friendship, was actually a listening device.

On Getting Out of Dutch

The Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War 2 brought untold hardship to the Dutch people. Besides the impact of being under the control of the German military, the nation witnessed the deportation of most of the Jewish population to death camps and the suppression of human rights and freedoms. Also, much of the wealth, historical artefacts, and artwork was systematically looted by the occupiers.

One of the biggest–pun intended–offenders in the pillaging of not only Dutch but also all of occupied Europe was the German head of the air force, Reichsmarshall Hermann Goring. Goring was a wealthy man before the war, and he used his power and position and money to consume the finest wine, best food, and most coveted art available to the Nazis. He had a particular taste for the paintings of the Dutch Renaissance masters, painters such as Rembrandt and Vermeer and others. It became a symbol of the Dutch resistance movement and patriotism to hide valuable pieces of art from people like Goring, saving them in secret places until the day when the occupation would be over and the Netherlands would be free again.

Han van Meegeren was a wealthy Dutch painter and art collector/dealer. When the Nazis came to his country, he took a different approach to their interest in Dutch art: He decided to sell pieces of his collection to them. Goring, who could have simply taken what van Meegeren had, was thrilled by the prospect of owning one item in van Meegeren’s collection, a Vermeer known as Christ with the Adulteress. Working through a dealer, the German leader traded over 100 stolen pieces of artwork by lesser artists for this particular Vermeer. Part of this was a public relations stunt by Goring, who wanted to show that, after all, the Nazis weren’t so bad because they had swapped artwork for artwork–even if some of it were stolen.

And, for his collaboration with the Nazis, Han van Meegeren was made an outcast by his fellow countrymen. He spent most of the war years in seclusion in one of his many houses, houses he had purchased with the sale of artwork in the pre-war years. After the war, van Meegeren was arrested (along with several others) for the crime of colluding with enemies of the state. He was put on trial, and his life was in the balance.

But, in court, van Meegeren made an astonishing claim. He said that he did what he did by trading with Goring not to give away a priceless national treasure in the Vermeer painting, but, rather, to save the dozens of other stolen paintings he’d received in the swap. The court considered his defense, but it was skeptical. Collaboration was, in the end, still collaboration. But van Meegeren defended himself further by claiming that the Vermeer he’d traded for was not worth much at all because it was a forgery. The Nazi leader had been duped into swapping legitimate works for a fake. Well, the court was astonished. The painting was well known and had all the hallmarks of being a work by the great master of Dutch art. How could he prove that it was a fake, the court asked van Meegeren. Again, his answer surprised the court.

Van Meegeren said he knew it was a fake because he had painted it. And to prove it, he painted it again for the court.

And that’s how Han van Meegeren went from Dutch collaborator to Dutch national hero.

On a Witch Trial

We’ve spoken about the history of witches in the western world before, but this story caught my attention because of its ties to Scotland. Many of us are aware of the beginning of Macbeth, the Shakespeare play, where three witches begin the story with the infamous incantation, “Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and caldron bubble…” Scotland has had a long association with witches, and Shakespeare knew that the new King James was Scottish; he knew his audience. But one real-life Scottish witch is peculiar for her supposed ability to read people’s minds and discover secrets that no one knew.

As late as 1735, Britain passed something called the Witchcraft Act. It made it a crime for anyone to either practice witchcraft or to claim the powers of a witch. Now, while that seems odd or harsh, the law was actually fairly forward-thinking. You see, rather than punish witches with death or allow for vigilante groups to go on witch hunts, the Witchcraft Act imposed a penalty of imprisonment. And, rather than be based on the idea that witches are real, the “new” law worked off the supposition that witches were charlatans, people who preyed on the weak-minded or the desperate. Think of it as more of a consumer protection law rather than a desire to punish based on any kind of religious belief. And, it was under this new act that a woman named Helen Duncan was arrested.

Helen lived in Edinburgh, a town that has a long history for being somewhat spooky, especially the Old Town part with its narrow closes and wynds. It seems that Helen had been conducting sessions in her home where she would contact the spirits of the dead. During a period of war in Britain, many people who lost loved ones in the conflict came to Helen, and she would speak to the dead and communicate the messages she received back to the grieving relatives. Some people today would say that she was a medium or someone performing what we might call parlor tricks. On one hand, this seems to be somewhat comforting to the relatives of the deceased and possibly harmless.

But then, Helen reached out to some people who had relatives onboard a certain British warship. While Edinburgh isn’t on the water per se, it uses the nearby port of Leith and has a long history of providing sailors for Britain and for merchant ships. And it seems that Helen told several people that their relatives had died because of the sinking of a British warship named the HMS Barham. Now, no one in the government had said that the ship had been sunk. As you can imagine, these relatives were horrified. They bombarded the government with inquiries regarding the safety of their loved ones onboard. A minor scandal arose. British officials were caught with no good option. If they reassured the families of the sailors that all was well, but then it turned out that the ship had indeed been sunk, then they would look either incompetent or dishonest. If they admitted that the ship went down, then they might be revealing war news that might embarrass the government and then questions would arise about why the government was keeping the deaths a secret.

It was a lose-lose. What do to?

The government decided to blame the messenger. Citing the new Witchcraft Act, the government ordered the arrest of Helen Duncan. The newspapers of the day printed details of Helen’s trial, and the public proclaimed her a hero for telling the relatives the truth when the government wouldn’t. Eventually, however, Helen was convicted under the provisions of the law and sentenced to jail. It was determined that she had heard a war-time rumor of the sinking of the ship and had parlayed that into a way to make money from the relatives of the sailors. And, also eventually, the public outrage about the scandal and seeming coverup died down.

But Helen Duncan would be the last person convicted in Britain of being a witch…in 1944.

On A Sister’s Secret Service

Patricia and Jean Owtram were sisters born two years apart in the 1920s. When World War 2 came to Britain in 1939, both sisters were eager to do their part in the war effort. It was the younger sister, Jean, who joined the Special Ops at the age of 18. She managed to get stationed overseas for much of the war. As the British and their Allies managed to push back the Nazis, the war took Jean to such places as Egypt and Italy and eventually Austria as the war neared its end.

But Jean was not able to tell her family about what she did during the conflict. She had to sign a state secrets contract that forbade her from telling anyone–even close family–about her wartime activities. She worked much of her time organizing and contacting guerilla activities in the places she was stationed. Jean also worked as a codebreaker for a time, and she had some work at Bletchley Park, the famous codebreaker headquarters and home of such people as Alan Turing. Of course, lives would have been put in jeopardy if she talked about her work, so she kept her secret faithfully.

And Jean wasn’t the only member of the family to go overseas. The sisters’ dad, Carey Owtram, served in the British Army in the Far East. He was captured after the Battle of Singapore. He served out the rest of the war in a Japanese POW camp. The girls’ dad was part of the group of British prisoners on the infamous River Kwai, and when the war ended, he returned home a hero.

The fact that Jean had top-secret clearance and no ability to tell anyone about her work didn’t deter her from writing to her sister Patricia. The two corresponded throughout the war, but absolutely no secrets were revealed by Jean to Patricia. Patricia’s newsy letters were filled with information about the family and the weather and what books she was reading and what boys she liked, and those letters made Jean feel like she was home. And even though Jean had the unique opportunity to work with refugees after the war, she chose to return to her dear sister and her loving family and care for her father who had only then returned from his ordeal as a POW. Life returned to normal for the family.

Jean worked as a social worker in Scotland for a time then was employed by a university in England for a time before retiring in 1980. Patricia gained some university degrees and worked most of her career in television production. The sisters both married and had families but remained close to each other always.

Then, several years after the war, the British Government decided to declassify information related to the state secret programs like the ones Jean had been involved in during the war. The family never knew anything about the details of Jean’s work; all she had told them was that she was deployed in administration work. But the declassification revealed the level of secrets that Jean had kept all those years. The family was amazed. Patricia was especially proud of her little sister.

And then, it was Jean’s turn to tell the family her surprise. It seems that when Jean was globetrotting around and helping to win the war, Patricia had been hard at work for the Allied cause as well. And what Patricia shared with her loved ones was that she had been a codebreaker associated with Bletchley. She had then worked directly under General Eisenhower for SHAEF in London and was privy to top secret information regarding such events as D-Day.

You see, unknown to anyone, it turns out that both sisters had secret lives no one knew about.

On a Promotional Flight

We probably can’t relate to how much of a media star Howard Hughes was in his time. Maybe–maybe–the closest we could get is if we merged Bezos and Musk and Zuckerberg together, we might begin to understand Hughes’s hold over the public imagination of the 1930s and ’40s. He was, among other things, a financier, a real estate baron, a film mogul (director and producer), a manufacturer and innovator in many fields. One of his major areas of productivity was in the advancement of aviation. Besides being the brains behind Trans-World Airlines (TWA), Hughes set/broke many records for aerial speed in aircraft he himself designed. You have also probably heard about the largest plane ever (dubbed the Spruce Goose) that he built and flew.

During World War 2, Hughes worked closely with the US Government in developing new aircraft for the war effort. One of his stellar accomplishments (pun intended) was the creation of the Constellation, a sleek long-distance passenger airplane that was commissioned by Hughes just as the war was breaking out in Europe. He saw the future, Hughes did, and he knew that after the war was over, people would want to travel long distances cheaply and comfortably. That’s where the Constellation came in. It was the first aircraft to feature a pressurized cabin that would allow it to fly safely and comfortably at high altitudes unlike any other aircraft before it.

Hughes took delivery of the aircraft in 1944 and flew it from California to Washington DC as a publicity stunt. He thought it would drum up business for his airline and new star of the fleet (again, pun intended), the Constellation. Skipping across America (and back), Hughes planned stops along the way to land and take local dignitaries up for quick flight so that they would be able to experience the thrill of luxury air travel. And so, he and the president of TWA went to DC and flew some government officials around before heading back west. One of his stops on the return was in Dayton, Ohio. Upon landing, there seemed to be a bit of confusion because almost no one was there to take the promotional flight. One in particular was an old man in a rumpled suit who didn’t even seem too excited to be included.

But Hughes was a showman. He gave the small group the usual sales speech and then took off with the gaggle of notables (plus the older man) and showed them what the future of air travel would look like. Throughout the more or less 50 minute flight above Dayton, Hughes let the passengers take turns sliding into the co-pilot’s seat to get a bird’s eye view of things from up front. When it was the older man’s turn, Hughes said to him, “Would you like to fly her?” The old man sort of shrugged and placed both of his hands on the yoke. “It really flies itself, doesn’t it?” the older man remarked to Hughes. Hughes smiled and nodded. And the man had some questions for Hughes. “What’s the wingspan?” he wanted to know. Hughes told him: 123 Feet.

“Do you do much flying?” Hughes asked the man as he got up to allow the next passenger to sit. “No, sir,” the old man said, shaking his head, and then he began to exit the cockpit. Then, he paused as if in thought. He turned back towards Hughes.

“123 feet, you say? That’s about as far as we flew the first time,” Orville Wright grinned.

On a Hidden Past

Dennis Whiles met Jean Clarke at a YMCA dance near Norden, California, in the early 60s. Jean liked that Dennis was a good dancer, well-spoken (Jean said he sounded like he was always giving elocution lessons), a smart man, and a hard worker. Norden is a ski resort area in the “elbow” of California that borders Nevada. Dennis worked the winters there as a ski instructor (he was a natural on the slopes, it was said) and as a construction worker in the summers. Jean also admired the way Dennis interacted with the two children she’d had from a previous marriage. The pair decided to get hitched in 1964.

There was one thing that bothered Jean about Dennis, and that was that her new hubby was rather tight-lipped about his past and his childhood. What she was able to cobble together was that he had been raised in an orphanage. He said that the story he’d heard was that his mother and father had been killed in a car crash, and he was left. He told Jean that he was as mystified about his past as she was.

However, Jean wasn’t convinced. There were several “lost years” in the story Dennis told. For example, what did he do from the time he left the orphanage in the late 1930s until the early ’60s–a roughly 25 year gap in his timeline? What did he do in the war? Where did he live? Dennis wasn’t forthcoming about those details. He mostly shrugged off questions like those.

And then there was the issue of the passport. Dennis had a social security card and a drivers license, but he had no birth certificate. Without that, the man couldn’t get documentation that would allow the couple to travel overseas. They lived in Hawai’i for a time, but Jean wanted to go to Europe, and there was no way Dennis could join her. And he claimed to not know where or when for sure he was born. All of his was incredibly sketchy to Jean.

Finally, after 20 years of marriage, she’d had enough. She confronted Dennis. She told him that he was a good man and a good dad and a decent husband, but she was done. Then, she gave him an ultimatum: Either tell her the truth about his past, or she would leave him. Dennis hung his head. “I will tell you,” he promised, “but you can’t overreact.” Jean let out a full breath of air. “I promise,” she said. “I just want to know the truth; I have to know the truth.”

And so, Dennis Whiles told her his true story.

It began for him in 1945, at the end of World War 2. You see, Dennis Whiles wasn’t his real name, it was the name he took while crossing the United States after leaving the Army. It was the name of a man he’d worked for a while. And he’d been incarcerated in New Mexico for much of the war, too, he admitted. He told his wife that if she’d’ve paid any attention to the wanted posters at the local post office, that she might’ve seen his photo because he was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for years.

Jean was shocked. She couldn’t put the man in front of her with the person described in the story. She was quiet for a moment, and then she asked, “So, who are you, really?”

“My name is George,” he said slipping into an accent. “George Gaertner. I was born in Germany, escaped from a German POW camp in New Mexico at the war’s end, and I never looked back.”

On a Bike Trip

It was a warm late spring Saturday, June 10, 1944, in Limoges, France. Six young friends decided to take a bike trip into the country. France in the springtime is glorious, and the hilly vistas in the countryside surrounding Limoges were alive with blooms and greenery. The friends packed a lunch and the obligatory bottles of wine to accompany it. It promised to be a fine day.

The small group felt like celebrating for the first time in years. You see, news had reached the city that the Allies had invaded the beaches of Normandy, some 300 miles north of Limoges. After years of humiliating occupation by the Germans, it seemed that the iron grip of the Nazi invaders was coming to an end. So, a celebratory day in the countryside by bike seemed like a wonderful way to spend a Saturday.

The group decided to leave early that morning and strike out northwest of Limoges. They made their way through the outlying villages of La Vergne and La Lande and on a route that took them slightly south of what is now the runway of the Limoges Airport. By the time they reached Saint-Quinten, they had left the noise and traffic of the city behind and were truly in the countryside.

About one o’clock, the group of friends coasted into a sleepy village. They had decided that they would take a rest break and have their lunch in the grassy area of the square when they reached the small town, and so they slowed down as they entered the village. But something was wrong. The main street of the village was lined with military vehicles, German army vehicles, and armed men were standing next to them. The group of cyclists had no choice but to continue. There was no chance for them to turn around and leave the village the way they came.

Perhaps this was only an identity check. After all, the Germans were on high alert since the invasion. They were keenly aware of French resistance activity that had seen an uptick since the Allies landed only four days before. Maybe all the Germans in the village wanted was to make sure the cyclists were who they said they were–innocent friends out for a bike ride on a warm Saturday.

But no.

The Germans were on a mission of revenge. The resistance had struck damaging blows to the Nazi war effort around Limoges, and the occupiers were out for blood. They rounded up the villagers and separated them–men, women, and children. The women and children they put in the centuries old church building. The men…well, the men they first put into barns. Then they shot and burned them. A large bomb was detonated in the church building where the children and women had been herded. Those who survived the bomb, fire, and smoke were then shot. Fires were set all over. When the massacre ended later that evening, not one of the over 350 buildings in the village was left standing.

And the six cyclists from Limoges, the six friends who only wanted a nice day of biking in the French countryside, they became part of the 643 victims of the destruction of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane.

On Some Animal Experiments

I probably should be a vegetarian for many reasons (health becoming more and more important), but the corporate and wholesale killing of animals for food might be one of society’s great overlooked atrocities. Additionally, cosmetic and chemical companies as well as science and university laboratories often use animals for testing purposes, putting the animals in horrid conditions and subjecting them to terrible deaths. This is one such story, except the animal testing wasn’t done by a corporation; it was performed by a government.

The Japanese Empire of the 1930s began fighting what would become World War 2 as early as 1931 by invading the Chinese province of Manchuria. Japan recognized the effectiveness of chemical and biological warfare from the success of such weapons as poison gas in World War 1. The fact that the world agreed to ban such weapons in the 1920s testified, Japan believed, to exactly how effective they were. So, Japan secretly began testing new and different chemical and biological weapons on animals. The Japanese military unit in charge of this top-secret program was called Unit 731. And it was set up in the recently conquered Chinese territory in Manchuria in a large facility that included not only laboratories and storage areas but also holding units for the testing subjects.

We aren’t sure how many animals were killed in the testing of these weapons by the Japanese, but estimates are in the hundreds of thousands. In an effort to keep their military and scientific staff from becoming too attached to their test subjects, Unit 731 mandated that all testing animals be referred to as “logs.” The reasoning was that these test animals were to be consumed like wood fuel in fires. That way, those involved in the program could distance themselves from the horrors that were involved in the chemical and biological testing done on the subjects.

And the horrors were real. Test subjects were injected with live bioweapons and their deterioration recorded, even sometimes on film, until they died in horrible agony. Some were put in glass rooms where experimental gasses were slowly introduced and had to be observed as they gasped and writhed and slowly, painfully, died. Some were even subjected to pressure chambers until their bodies practically exploded under the pressure exerted upon them. Then, as in all reports, the number of “logs” experimented upon were recorded and details on how they died were documented.

For records keeping, the Japanese Army officially referred to the testing unit by the seemingly innocent name of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department. But the results of the testing was far from innocent. Using the data extrapolated from their experiments, Unit 731 practiced controlled and limited chemical weapon releases into selected areas of China it didn’t yet control to see how the agents affected population areas outside of the sterile confines of their army laboratories. We don’t know how many people died from those releases, but, again, probably hundreds of thousands of deaths resulted among human populations who never knew what killed them.

After the war, the United States Army was very interested in what Unit 731 had been doing because it wished to have the information gleaned by the years of research for their own bioweapons projects. So, the US hushed up the program. No effort was made to account for or compensate the relatives of the victims of the experimentation performed by the unit.

You might be thinking that it’s impossible to compensate animals who had been experimented upon.

But it’s possible because the hundreds of thousands of testing subject in the program were human animals.