Men Behind the Sun 1988

“Friendship is friendship; history is history.”

A group of Japanese boys are conscripted into the Youth Corps, then assigned to the Kwantung Army and ushered into a facility tied to Unit 731, headed by Lt. Gen. Shirō Ishii. There, they witness brutal experimentation conducted in the name of science, with the goal of finding a highly contagious strain of bubonic plague to be used as a last-ditch weapon against the Chinese population. The atmosphere is tense, clinical, and deeply unsettling as the young recruits grapple with what they are being asked to witness and participate in.

Across the grim corridors, the boys strike up a fragile friendship with a local mute Chinese boy, and they spend time tossing a game of catch together, trying to hold onto a sense of humanity amid the horrors around them. Yet orders soon pull them away from this small glimmer of innocence. They are instructed to bring the Chinese child back to the facility, and in a moment of naive compliance they go along, convinced that harm will not come to the boy. Instead, they witness a harrowing act: the senior medical staff vivisect the child and preserve his organs for research. The shock of this atrocity ignites a small, desperate uprising among the youths, who rally to defend the vulnerable and push back against cruel authority.

As the narrative tightens, a pivotal revelation reshapes the dynamics of power within the camp. The doctor at the center of the operation, [Lt. Gen. Shirō Ishii], pushes forward with a chilling weapon: a prototype ceramic bomb designed to keep fleas alive inside and subvert conventional defenses. To test its efficacy, he orders Chinese prisoners to be tied to crosses for a grim demonstration. The plan falters as aerial forces retreat, and chaos erupts: Chinese prisoners break free, while Japanese troops close in, shooting or trampling many in a frantic, brutal scramble.

When the world learns of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Russia declares war, the camp’s leadership faces its own collapse. Ishii orders his subordinates and their families to commit suicide, but a shift in mindset leads to a reluctant evacuation rather than mass suicide. The facility then destroys its own research, erasing evidence and disposing of test subjects by killing them, even as the remaining infrastructure is blown to pieces.

That night, the soldiers and their families wait at a train station, hoping to return home to Japan. A lone survivor of Unit 731, disguised as a Japanese soldier, attacks one of the waiting crowds but is suddenly stopped, impaled by a Japanese flag. The sight leaves the Youth Corps clutching the blood-stained flag in stunned silence as they depart, a stark image of the war’s lingering specter.

In the years that follow, the story reveals a troubling aftermath. Ishii cooperates with the Americans, turning over his research and agreeing to work for them. He is later moved to the Korean War, where biological weapons appear on the battlefield again, underscoring the enduring legacy of the experiments. The Youth Corps, forever linked to 731, are shown to endure hard lives after the war, their wartime involvement casting a long shadow over their education and future prospects, a weight that lingers long after the conflicts have ended.