Documents of 1945 vivisection of U.S. POWs on exhibit at Fukuoka museum
Documents related to a 1945 vivisection of U.S. prisoners of war (POW) are being exhibited at the medical history museum of Kyushu University in the city of Fukuoka until June 22 with the aim of promoting medical and peace education by sharing lessons from the past.
In the incident, eight captured U.S. soldiers died after undergoing experimental surgeries at Kyushu Imperial University, the predecessor of Kyushu University, in the late stages of World War II.
Dr. Toshio Tono, who witnessed the surgeries as a medical student at the time, collected documents related to them before he died at the age of 95 in 2021. His family donated about 30 of the documents to the university in 2024, and some of those are now on display.
The documents include a floor plan of a school building in which the location of the anatomy laboratory where the surgeries were conducted is written by hand, as well as a copy of a suicide note left by a surgeon involved in the incident who took his own life after being arrested.
After the war ended, Tono was questioned by the WWII Allies as a witness to the incident. He also testified at the trials of those involved.
Eager to learn exactly what led to the incident, Tono repeatedly visited the area near the border between Kumamoto and Oita prefectures, where a U.S. B-29 bomber had crashed. He interviewed local residents about how U.S. soldiers were taken from the scene.
Based on the documents he collected, Tono wrote a book about the vivisection incident, which was published in 1979.
Kyushu University now recognizes the social significance of Tono's efforts and the high academic value of his collected documents.
At the time of the incident, the university was headed by an Imperial Japanese Navy admiral. According to Tono's book, the university was effectively under the navy's control, and the surgeries on the U.S. soldiers are believed to have been conducted at its behest.
Still, many details of the incident remain unknown, partly because the professor who performed them killed himself before the trial.
The surgeries are believed to have included lung resection and the injection of seawater into blood vessels as part of efforts to develop a blood substitute.
The incident was uncovered by the General Headquarters of the Allied occupation forces, also known as GHQ in Japan, and a total of some 30 people from the university and the former navy were indicted. In August 1948, 23 individuals were convicted of war crimes.
The incident inspired Shusaku Endo's novel "The Sea and Poison."
Ryoko Nakajima, a sixth-year medical student at the university now, helped to sort the donated documents. "In wartime, people may do things (against their wishes) if they are forced," said the 25-year-old. "I renewed my pledge to maintain a sense of ethics as a doctor."
"I think my father would be very happy (with the exhibit)," said Tono's first son, Atsuhiko, 68, who is also a doctor. "I hope people of all ages, especially younger generations, will learn about the incident."
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