Toshio Tono (野利夫), a Japanese doctor who participated in the May 1945 incident in

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2024. May 15. This is an article about Asahi Shimbun today,

Toshio Tono (野利夫), a Japanese doctor who participated in the May 1945 incident in which eight crew members of the U.S. military bomber B-29 died alive at the age of 92 in 2021, but the Kyushu University Medical Department decided to keep and display the data he had.

On May 5, 1945, 55 B-29 bombers were dispatched from Guam to strike a Japanese airfield in Fukuoka, and 30 Japanese naval fighters were dispatched to stop it, but two B-29s crashed.

At this time, 10 out of 21 crew members of the B-29 were killed, and 11 succeeded in escaping by parachute, but the captain with useful information was sent to Tokyo, and the remaining eight were biopsied in the anatomy lab of the Kyushu Imperial University’s medical department, and the other two were beheaded (along with about 40 other U.S. prisoners to eliminate evidence of abuse of prisoners of war).

They removed the lungs, stomach, liver and brain from living prisoners and tested how much bleeding would kill them. They also tested what would happen if they put in blood diluted with seawater instead of blood (in anticipation of a shortage of blood for many Japanese soldiers if the U.S. attacked the mainland after Okinawa). (He died 10 minutes later after putting in seawater.)

The mastermind, Professor Ishiyama of the First Surgeon General, committed suicide after being arrested by the occupying forces, and another mastermind, his student, was already killed in an air strike. The Japanese military and university officials avoided responsibility, but 30 people, including Japanese military officers and professors from Kyushu University, were charged with war criminals and 23 were convicted.

Those involved in the trial protested that they could not resist the military orders, and moreover, they could not resist the orders of Ishiyama, the first surgeon, but one professor who participated in the biopsy later recalled, “Innocent Japanese people were killed by indiscriminate airstrikes by the U.S. military. I thought it was natural for an enemy soldier to die [through biopsy]. I believed it was a war.”

At that time, Tono was a 19-year-old medical student who participated in a biopsy, held a glass bottle of seawater to be infused in the body, or cleaned the floor with water to clean up.

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2024. 5. 15. Asahi Shimbun Succeeds “Dark History” of Kyushu University’s Medical Department, and decides to store and display materials on “Livisection Incident.”
      https://digital.asahi.com/articles/ASS5H2W0FS5HTIPE00FM.html?iref=pc_photo_gallery_bottom
2025. 8. 21. FNN Prime Online, “pressing my head for eyeball extraction.” The “hurt” that plagued the life of a doctor who joined a late-war biopsy case
      https://www.fnn.jp/articles/-/224768
      Wikipedia, Kyushu University Biological Dissection
      https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B9%9D%E5%B7%9E%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%A6%E7%94%9F%E4%BD%93%E8%A7%A3%E5%89%96%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6
2026. 5. 14. Kyushu University Biological Dissection Case Asahi TV Broadcasting
      https://youtu.be/Z0GoRHRhOjI
      February 10, 2020, Oh My News, the death of Yun Dong-ju, the reason for the need to find out, the death of poet Yun Dong-ju and the case of biological dissection of Kyushu Imperial University
      https://omn.kr/1mhcr