Human subject research in Japan began in World War II . It continued for some years after . Unit 731 , a department of the Imperial Japanese Army located near Harbin ( then in the puppet state of Manchukuo , in northeast China ) , experimented on prisoners by conducting vivisections , dismemberments , and bacterial inoculations . It induced epidemics on a very large scale from 1932 onward through the Second Sino-Japanese war . It also conducted biological and chemical weapons tests on prisoners and captured POWs . With the expansion of the empire during World War II , similar units were set up in conquered cities such as Nanking ( Unit 1644 ) , Beijing ( Unit 1855 ) , Guangzhou ( Unit 8604 ) and Singapore ( Unit 9420 ) . After the war , Supreme Commander of the Occupation Douglas MacArthur gave immunity in the name of the United States to Shiro Ishii and all members of the units in exchange for all of the results of their experiments . The United States blocked Soviet access to this information . The Soviets prosecuted some of the Unit 731 members during its Khabarovsk War Crime Trials
Unit 731
Unit 731
Unethical human experimentation