Unit 8604 4352018 214656694 2008-05-24T17:03:15Z 121.108.24.61 '''Unit 8604''' or '''Nami Unit''' was a secret military medical unit of the [[Imperial Japanese Army]] (IJA) that researched [[biological warfare]] and other topics through human experimentation during the [[Second Sino-Japanese War]] ([[1937]]-[[1945]]) and [[World War II]] era. It was formed in [[Guangzhou]], [[Guangdong]], near [[Hong Kong]] and headquartered at [[Zhongshan]] Medical University (Hal Gold, ''Unit 731 Testimony'', 2003, p.50). For information on its origin see [[Kempeitai Political Department and Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory]]. Unit 8604 is considered a sub-unit of [[Unit 731]], which serves as a general term in describing the Japanese biological warfare program. The acts of the Japanese biological warfare program are one of many major war crimes committed by the IJA from the occupation of [[Manchuria]] in [[1931]] to the end of World War II in 1945. This facility conducted food and water deprivation experiments as well as water-borne [[typhus]] human experimentation. In addition, this facility served as the main rat-farm for the medical units to provide them with [[Bubonic plague|plague]] vectors for their experiments. On 4 November 1994, the ''Japan Times'' reported the testimony of Shigeru Maruyama, a former member of the unit who said that one experiment involved starving prisonners to death and talked of seeing victims being operated on almost every day. {{IJA special research units}} ==References== {{reflist}} *{{cite book | last = Barenblatt | first = Daniel | title = A Plague Upon Humanity: The Hidden History of Japan's Biological Warfare Program | publisher = HarperCollins | date = 2005 | location = | pages = page 165 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=ABQ2GQ4--NYC&pg=PA165&lpg=PA165&dq=unit+8604+nami+-wikipedia&source=web&ots=yyD6jGmndn&sig=z8FZnlBcDn2xr0dSYQB0D8x1r_Q | doi = | id = ISBN 0060933879 }} [[Category:Biological warfare facilities]] [[Category:Imperial Japanese Army]] [[Category:Japanese human experimentation]] [[Category:Second Sino-Japanese War]] [[Category:War crimes in China]] {{WWII-stub}}