Ep. 45: War Pigs

He was a physician. He held the rank of general. And for over a decade, he ran one of the most horrifying human experimentation programs in modern history — and walked away from it a free man.

This week, we head to Manchuria to unpack the story of Unit 731, the covert biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army, and the doctor who built it. We're talking vivisection without anesthesia, deliberate frostbite experiments, and weaponized plague fleas — all conducted under the banner of "scientific research." We'll walk through how a licensed physician convinced his government to fund it, why the victims were stripped of even the dignity of a name, and how a deal with American occupation forces after the war meant almost no one was ever held accountable.

As two nurses, this one hit different. We talk about what it means when the Hippocratic Oath gets weaponized, and how the West's Cold War priorities let a war crime of staggering scale disappear from most history books entirely.

** Content note: this episode discusses graphic human experimentation and wartime atrocities.