Unit 1855 was a unit for human experimentation that belonged to the central Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the North China Army of the

Imperial Japanese Army The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...

, stationed in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

between 1938 and 1945. Unit 1855 was established by the North China Army in 1938. The unit was located in a facility not far from the

Temple of Heaven The Temple of Heaven () is a complex of imperial Religious Confucianism, religious Confucian buildings situated in the southeastern part of central Beijing. The complex was visited by the Emperor of China, Emperors of the Ming dynasty, Ming and ...

in Beijing, and had a staff of about 2000 men. The unit was commanded by the

surgeon In medicine, a surgeon is a medical doctor who performs surgery. Even though there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon is a licensed physician and received the same medical training as physicians before spec ...

Col. Nishimura Yeni, who reported directly to

Shirō Ishii Surgeon General was a Japanese microbiologist and Military medicine, army medical officer, who served as the director of Unit 731, a biological warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. Ishii led the development and application of biological ...

Unit 731 , short for Manchu Detachment 731 and also known as the Kamo Detachment and the Ishii Unit, was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentat ...

. According to the testimony of the Korean Choi Hyung Shi, who worked as an interpreter with Unit 1855 between 1942 and 1943, the Unit conducted experiments with plague,

cholera Cholera () is an infection of the small intestine by some Strain (biology), strains of the Bacteria, bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea last ...

and

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposu ...

on Chinese and Korean immigrants to China: :"When I first arrived there, some one hundred prisoners were already in the cells. Whenever the Japanese doctors made contact with the people being tested, they always did so through an interpreter. The test subjects were infected with plague, cholera and typhus. Those not yet infected were kept in different rooms. There were large mirrors in the rooms with the subjects so that those undergoing the testing could be observed better. I spoke with the prisoners using a microphone and looking through the glass panel, interpreted the questions from the doctors: "Do you have diarrhea? Do you have a headache? Do you feel chilly?" The doctors made careful records of all answers. With the typhus test, ten people were forced to drink a mixture of the germs, and five were administered the vaccine. The two groups were separated from each other. The vaccine proved effective with all five to whom it was administered. The other five suffered horribly. In the plague tests, the prisoners suffered with chills and fever, and groaned in pain...until they died. From what I saw, one person was killed every day." It has been estimated, that Unit 1855 killed about 1000 people between 1938 and 1945. The unit evacuated the facilities in Beijing during the Japanese defeat in 1945, and the Chinese entered the building, which was not destroyed and was still standing as of 1996.

Branches

Unit 1855 had a branch in Chinan, which was a combination of prison and experiment center.Hal Gold,
Unit 731 Testimony
', Yenbooks: Singapore, 1996

References

{{IJA special research units Japanese biological weapons program Imperial Japanese Army Japanese prisoner of war and internment camps Japanese human subject research Beijing in World War II Medical experimentation on prisoners of war Japanese war crimes in China