Unit 8604

Unit 8604 or Nami Unit was a secret military medical unit of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) that researched biological warfare and other topics through human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and World War II era. It was formed in Guangzhou, Guangdong, near Hong Kong and headquartered at Zhongshan Medical University (Hal Gold, Unit 731 Testimony, 2003, p.50).

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For information on its origin see Kempeitai Political Department and Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory. Unit 8604 is considered a sub-unit of Unit 731, which serves as a general term in describing the Japanese biological warfare program. The acts of the Japanese biological warfare program are one of many major war crimes committed by the IJA from the occupation of Manchuria in 1931 to the end of World War II in 1945.

This facility conducted food and water deprivation experiments as well as water-borne typhus human experimentation. In addition, this facility served as the main rat-farm for the medical units to provide them with plague vectors for their experiments.

On 4 November 1994, the Japan Times reported the testimony of Shigeru Maruyama, a former member of the unit who said that one experiment involved starving prisonners to death and talked of seeing victims being operated on almost everyday.

References

• Barenblatt, Daniel (2005). A Plague Upon Humanity: The Hidden History of Japan's Biological Warfare Program. HarperCollins, page 165. ISBN 0060933879.