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Shirō Ishii
Sign in to saveAlso known as Shiro Ishii, Shirou Ishii
Japanese army medical officer and microbiologist, war criminal and director of Unit 731 (a biological warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese Army)
Key facts
- Native name
- 石井 四郎
- Born
- ( 1892-06-25 ) 25 June 1892, Shibayama, Chiba , Japan
- Died
- 9 October 1959 (1959-10-09) (aged 67), Tokyo, Japan
- Allegiance
- Empire of Japan
- Branch
- Imperial Japanese Army
- Service years
- 1921–1945
- Rank
- Surgeon general ( lieutenant-general )
- Commands
- Unit 731
- Conflicts
- Second Sino-Japanese War World War II
- Awards
- Order of the Golden Kite , Fourth Class
- Alma mater
- Kyoto Imperial University
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Shirō
- Family name
- Ishii
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Empire of Japan
- Languages spoken
- Japanese
- Religion
- Latin Church
- Notable work
- Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night
- Field of work
- unethical human experimentation
- Conflict
- World War II
- Military branch
- Imperial Japanese Army
- Military rank
- lieutenant general
- Image
- Shiro Ishii at a reunion party of Unit 731 members after the war.png
- Significant event
- International Military Tribunal for the Far East
Show 13 more facts
- date of birth
- 1892-06-25
- date of death
- 1959-10-09
- cause of death
- laryngeal cancer
- Commons category
- Shirō Ishii
- manner of death
- natural causes
- name in kana
- いしい しろう
- name in native language
- 石井 四郎
- allegiance
- Empire of Japan
- start of work period
- 1921-00-00
- interested in
- chemical warfare
- significant person
- Tetsuzan Nagata
- present in work
- Eyes of Dawn
- military unit
- Unit 731
via Wikidata · CC0
~14 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Surgeon General Shirō Ishii (Japanese: 石井 四郎, Hepburn: Ishii Shirō; [iɕiː ɕiɾoː]; 25 June 1892 – 9 October 1959) was a Japanese biological weapons specialist, microbiologist and army medical officer who served as the director of Unit 731, the largest biological warfare and chemical warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Ishii led the development and application of biological weapons at Unit 731 in the puppet state of Manchukuo during the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945. This included the Battle of Changde, the Kaimingjie germ weapon attack, and the planned Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night biological attack against the United States, which intended to spread a weaponized bubonic plague. Ishii and his colleagues also engaged in human experimentation, resulting in the deaths of thousands of subjects, most of them civilians or prisoners of war.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Shirō Ishii” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.