Local News

New Kyudai Medical Museum To Break Taboo, Discuss Wartime Vivisections

The Kyushu University School of Medicine has decided to exhibit documents at its Museum of Medical History, which is slated to open next April, from the vivisection experiments conducted on American prisoners of war at its predecessor, Kyushu Imperial University, toward the end of World War II. For years, discussing the incident was considered taboo, but with the 70th anniversary of the war approaching, the number of people with direct knowledge of the incident is dwindling. For this reason, medical school officials decided the museum’s opening was “the last chance to pass on a lesson from history”. The new museum will be built next to the main gate on the Maidashi Campus in Higashi Ward in the style of the Old Anatomy Lab, which used to be the medical school’s symbol. It will exhibit old charts, specimens and other documents and artifacts tracing the medical school’s history back to its founding as Kyoto Imperial University’s Fukuoka College of Medicine in 1903. The display on the vivisection incident will include a description thereof and a list of victims; School officials are also considering using a computer to allow viewing of digitized resources. Some members of the alumni association, which is financing the museum’s construction, did not think the darker side of the school’s history needed to be exhibited, but in the end, School officials decided it could not be ignored from a historical standpoint. In May and June 1945, eight U.S. airmen captured from a downed B29 bomber underwent experimental operations performed by School of Medicine faculty under the supervision of the Western District Army. Two men had lungs removed to see if they could survive with one lung, while another had his blood replaced with seawater; none of the men survived. At the Yokohama Tribunal In 1948, nine army officers and 14 university faculty were sentenced to death, life in prison or hard labor for their crimes but later had their sentences commuted upon the outbreak of the Korean War. While some of the perpetrators served limited jail time, none were ever sent to Death Row. Source: Nishinippon Shimbun 8/17

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General
Published: Aug 19, 2014 / Last Updated: Apr 1, 2016

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