A university museum in Japan has broken a seven-decade taboo on discussing the dissection of live American prisoners of war by medical personnel.
The details are revealed in a section of a museum in the grounds of Kyushu University, in the city of Fukuoka.
The PoWs were captured after a US B-29 Superfortress was rammed by a Japanese fighter on May 5, 1945. Local records indicate 12 of the crew bailed out, but one died when his parachute cords were severed by another fighter and two others were stabbed to death by local people when they landed.
Nine of the crew were taken into custody, with Captain Marvin Watkins separated from his men and sent to Tokyo for interrogation. The remainder were handed over to a military physician and transported to Kyoto Imperial University's College of Medicine, the predecessor of the modern day institution.
In testimony against 30 doctors and university personnel presented to a hearing of the Allied War Crimes tribunal in Yokohama in 1948, it was claimed doctors gave the prisoners intravenous injections of seawater to test if it could serve as a substitute for sterile saline solution. Others had parts of their livers removed to determine if they could survive. Another experiment determined whether epilepsy could be controlled by removing part of the brain.
