Mystery Bones Tied to WWII War Crimes Could Expose Horrifying Human Germ Experiments

A group of experts and activists are plying the Japanese government for an investigation into a collection of human skeletons that they think may be linked to germ warfare.

Knewz.com has learned that the said remains are an awkward topic for the country as it has a history of war crimes .

The bones were first recovered 3.5 decades ago and the prevailing speculation suggests that they could hail from 20th-century anatomy studies—or they could be the result of germ warfare testing.

The contention around the discovery in Tokyo, the country’s capital, intensified when a former nurse claimed she had been directed to bury human body parts at the site after Japan surrendered and American soldiers converged on the capital at the end of World War II.

Said former employee of the Emperor Hirohito regime kept the secret for 60 years and then broke her silence at the age of 88.

Her claims earned her a face-to-face meeting with the country’s health minister and this interaction action triggered a series of events including the relocation of residents and the demolition of apartments standing on the alleged site in 2010.

Notably, 12 human skulls had already been unearthed close to the said area eleven years prior (in 1989) during the building of a Health Ministry research facility.

If the controversial remains are confirmed to be from this era, it would revive memories of a dark chapter in Japanese history, specifically of Unit 731—a notorious wartime outfit headquartered in Japanese-controlled northeast China during World War II .

This division had numerous departments and was tasked with the testing of germ warfare on prisoners of war.

Cruelties inflicted on these prisoners included injecting them with typhus and cholera, allowing them to be bitten by rodents and fleas, unnecessary amputations, live organ removals for practical lessons, and freezing humans (to death) in endurance tests.

The man responsible for these atrocities was General Shiro Ishii, who, according to the United States Naval Institute , “used men and women as involuntary test subjects, causing them unspeakable pain and suffering.”

Ishii, however, would dodge the fate that others like him (in Germany) suffered on the cross member of an American gallows. He cut a deal with the U.S.

“Perhaps the most notorious was Gen. Ishii of Unit 731, who escaped postwar prosecution in exchange, apparently, for supplying the U.S. government with details of his gruesome human experiments,” a paper in the National Archives stated .

Japan has since apologized to Asia for its oppression – which during that era included forced Korean labor at its mines and the sexual exploitation of women in the region – but it has balked at the idea of delving into it citing the lack of sufficient documentation.

The country has already refuted the idea that the skeletons could be linked to Unit 731 claiming instead that they hailed “most likely from bodies used in medical education or [were] brought back from war zones for analysis,” per CBS News .