Complicity and Cold War Politics: The Long Shadow of Unit 731 in Sino-U.S. Relations

Abstract The horrific human experimentation Ishii Shirō and his colleagues conducted at Unit 731 is a dark chapter in China’s War of Resistance against Japan. Less well known, however, is the U.S. role in covering up this atrocity with a postwar decision to grant immunity to the perpetrators in exchange for the research data they possessed. Moreover, there exist strong allegations to this day in China that the United States subsequently conducted bacteriological warfare against Chinese and North Korean civilians in the Korean War. This article examines how memories of this “victor’s justice” remain a strong component of Chinese patriotic education today. It argues that China’s “century of humiliation,” which focuses on Chinese victimization at the hands of foreign imperialists, did not end in 1949 with the formation of the People’s Republic of China, but rather the Chinese Communist Party employs it today to portray Chinese victimization at the hands of U.S. imperialism through at least the end of the Korean War in July 1953. Furthermore, this article suggests that understanding Chinese public memory of Unit 731 is extremely relevant to understanding contemporary Sino-American relations because these memories help shape public perception of the United States for ordinary Chinese.