Japanese Human Experiments with Animal Blood Confirmed; 9-Year-Old Child Also Died

Analysis by Kyoto University Professor Takeshi Yoshinaka

Presumed to Have Experimented in Search of Methods to Treat Wounded Soldiers

Claims that the Japanese Empire conducted human experiments, such as injecting animal blood from horses and cattle into patients—including children—during the Second Sino-Japanese War have been confirmed as fact. There were fatalities as a result of these experiments, including the death of a nine-year-old child.

According to Kyodo News on August 9 (local time), medical universities such as Kyoto Prefectural Medical School, Kyushu Imperial University (now Kyushu University), and Kumamoto Medical School (now Kumamoto University) carried out various human experiments on patients before and after the Second Sino-Japanese War. The experiments involved injecting different types of blood into patients: preserved blood stored for long periods, blood of different blood types, and blood taken from animals.

Kyodo News, in collaboration with Takeshi Yoshinaka, Clinical Professor at Kyoto University’s Faculty of Medicine who researches war and medical issues, verified these facts through analysis of papers published in academic journals from that era.

At a museum in Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, China, the original medical journal from a field hospital is exhibited, showing evidence of Japanese military biological experiments during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Photo by Xinhua News Agency

There were fatalities during the course of these experiments by the Japanese authorities. At Kumamoto Medical School, a man who received a transfusion of horse blood after brain surgery subsequently died. Another account described how a nine-year-old boy was injected with blood plasma that had been preserved for 21 days and died immediately after the injection.

It is presumed that these human experiments were conducted in an attempt to find suitable transfusion methods to treat wounded soldiers on the battlefield, where it was difficult to secure blood supplies.

Professor Yoshinaka analyzed that, in addition to the goal of developing treatments, there was also the intention to consider the use of long-preserved blood or animal blood as alternative transfusion packs. He pointed out, "It appears that, in the process of cooperating with the war effort, the medical personnel at the time had lowered psychological and ethical barriers against unethical human experimentation."

Earlier, in June, Kyodo News reported that evidence of human experiments was found in Japanese army organizational records. These records detailed that, in 1938, blood from horses, sheep, and dogs was injected into 23 human subjects. There was also an experiment in which chicken blood was transfused to observe how long red blood cells remained in the human body.

In the records, the test subjects were described as “patients,” but their specific identities or whether transfusion was genuinely necessary were not noted. The experimental locations were also omitted, raising the possibility that the experiments may have been conducted on prisoners of war or local civilians captured during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.