UFOs and Unit 731
In June 2005, Paraview-Pocket Books published my book Body Snatchers in the Desert which put forward a controversial angle for the events at Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947 – an angle that had nothing to do with crashed UFOs at all.
Rather, it had everything to do with experimental test-flights of advanced Japanese balloons, high-altitude experiments on human beings in the deserts of NM, and the very controversial “work” of the Japanese Government’s wartime Unit 731 that committed all sorts of diabolical experiments on human subjects.
Needless to say, with Roswell being the Holy Grail of Ufology, the book received a less-than-friendly welcome from those that so desperately wanted to hear that aliens had crashed at Roswell. Too bad. If we’re going to get to the truth about Roswell, then we need to follow all leads – whether they lead where some people want the case to go or not.
At the time of writing the book, the amount of available, officially-declassified material on Unit 731 was limited; but just recently no less than 100,000 pages of new (and formerly classified) documentation on the Japanese project was placed into the public domain via the National Archives. Check out this link for a description of the new files (as well as a link to PDF versions of the documents themselves).
Is there a smoking-gun in there that helps answer the mystery of what did or did not happen at Roswell on that fateful day back in 1947? Nope. But I’m encouraged that more and more files from the dark world of Unit 731 are starting to surface. And more are to come, too.
And on a final note, while even I think it was merely coincidental, I do find it very ironic that one of the high-level meetings held at the National Archives that was designed to discuss the declassification (or not) of files on Unit 731 and Japanese war-crimes (and that was attended by representatives of the CIA, FBI, Department of Defense and National Security Council) was held on June 21, 2005 – the very same day that Body Snatchers was published….
This post was written by
 Nick Redfern – who has written 1064 posts on UFOMystic.
Punk music fan, Tennents Super and Carlsberg Special Brew beer fan, horror film fan, chocolate fan, like to wear black clothes, like to stay up late. Work as a writer.
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Apr 12 2007 
April 12th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Hi Nick,
This is great news. I am excited to see more about this dark chapter (one of many) in AmeriKan history.
Please check out my comment in Greg’s recent post (“”) where I mention the Booz Allen & Hamilton paper “Operations Security Impact On Declassification Management Within The Department of Defense” and its relevance to declassified secrets.
“Clinton Library Will Not Release UFO Files”
http://www.ufomystic.com/wake-up-down-there/clinton-library-will-not-release-ufo-files/
I and others have commented on the thread / meme of Unit 731 / Fugo balloon connections to Roswell that seem to have been seeded in public view as far back as 1997 thru no less a propaganda outlet than Popular Mechanics. Of course there is also John Keel’s 1990 FATE article that portended this angle as well. Not to mention the 1995 Dateline NBC show “Factory of Death: Unit 731″.
http://www.anomalyarchives.org/enews/archivenews0507.htm
Thanks for the update Nick.
SMiles
April 12th, 2007 at 11:28 am
SMiles:
There are actually more threads to the Japanese angle than people realize:
As you mention there was the 1990 Keel article in Fate.
The Popular Mechanics article was interesting because PM reported that they had been “told” – in 97 – of a specific release of documents that would confirm the Japanese experiment for Roswell.
Also: Dr. Lincoln La Paz, who some researchers have linked with Roswell, was a WWII expert on Japanese Fugo “balloon bombs.”
Roswell witness Melvin Brown said that the bodies he saw “could have passed for Chinese.”
Respected Australian researcher Keith Basterfield has confirmed that he received an account from a man whose father served with British Intelligence that Roswell was linked with using human guinea pigs in experimental balloon flights (Basterfield’s source wasn’t aware of the specific Japanese origin, though). Basterfield confirmed that he got this story around 6 months before Body Snatchers was published.
Leonard Stringfield was provided with a story about strange Japanese bodies used in radiation experiments in 1947 and he published the story in 1991.
There’s quite a few similar tales to this – in fact, I’ve been planning on trying to do a follow-up report of some sort to Body Snatchers that willl detail all the new info that has come forward since publication of the book.
One day I’ll get around to it.
April 12th, 2007 at 11:41 am
SMiles:
Here’s somewhere else I got a tip on from an old-timer that read Body Snatchers: Fort Stanton, New Mexico.
Fort Stanton during WW2 was where various Japanese people were interned. It also housed people with mental and learning disabilities, and also state prisoners.
As you know from Body Snatchers, the thrust of the story was that the bodies at Roswell included people with disabilities, state prisoners, and Japanese POWs.
Now take a look at this link to a map of New Mexico (Fort Stanton is designated by a red star) and see how close Fort Stanton is to Roswell.
Link: http://fortstanton.com/visit.htm
Hmmm…..
There are some weird stories about 1940s activity at Fort Stanton.
April 13th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Nick, I can understand why some all-believers might’ve got upset with your ‘Body Snatchers’ book, because it challenged the ‘Spacemen’ explanation for Roswell.
But it also didn’t go down too well with some of the likes of the anti-conspiracy brigade.
Yet when you look at how the US government pretended to be treating black americans with VD as a guise for actually withholding treatment in order to observe the effects the VD had on their physiology over more than half a century, and the way the UK government deliberately but covertly subjected our own troops to the likes of nuclear radiation, purely for the purpose of observing the subsequent effects, why do people still find it so hard to accept governments conspire?
Whatever it was that happened at Roswell, the very least that can be said of your highly intriguing ‘Body Snatchers’ scenario is it underlines the weakness of the weather balloon explanation, and double-underlines the likelihood there most definitely was, and remains, some sort of governmental conspiracy.
April 13th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Dear Nick,
IUFO Media Matters support the witnesses that were there. I don’t personally get angry at other theories. The thousand of reports of craft stand all by themselves to prove we are not alone. I think any theory which is consistent with Major Marcel and Colonel Blanchard and the 27 witness account is fine. It must include how this material was very exotic and could not be broken with a sledgehammer. How it was memory material. It must prove to me the base commander of the most elite bomber group, most secure base mistook a Japanese experiment for something unexplainable and why.
I also get angry with any leeks from the government without knowing the true character of the source. We know they lie and misinform (which means some of it is true). You have to really produce a smoking gun for to me believe shadowy government types over honest common people who had nothing to gain from speaking out. Keep trying but I will stick with the witnesses the people that were there.
In fact On UFO Media Matters will present that testimony from these original Roswell witnesses filmed in 1978 as soon as it arrives. The DVD is called “Recollections Of Roswell”. I believe we should here it from the horses mouth instead of the Jackasses from the govenment.
Joseph Capp
UFO Media Matters
April 14th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Joseph:
I understand what you are saying, and there is no doubt that the memory metal angle is the one aspect of the case that – even for me – leaves aspects of the story still open.
You perhaps misinterpret what I said in Body Snatchers: I don’t dispute the honesty of the people who said they saw unusual bodies (certainly not me), or unusual materials and wrecked vehicles.
Open to interpretation is the origin of those bodies etc.
You talk about smoking guns; yet no Roswell-ET smoking gun has ever surfaced (you can’t include the MJ docs because they are leaks without provenance).
I will say this: I found officially declassified documents showing that in the summer of 1947 radiation experiments had been undertaken at Oak Ridge on a number of dwarfs, including progeria sufferers. I recommend a Google search on progeria if you don’t know what a progeria sufferer looks like. Then take note of the fact that in the critical year of 47, people with that condition and various other forms of dwarfism were the subject of radiation experiments – the results of which were shared with people from the nuclear aircraft research project (ANP; later NEPA). On top of that, I have NEPA letters (CC’d from the Sunshine op) about how certain “specimens” could be brought from Manchuria for use in radiation experiments. “Specimens”: not a nice terminology.
It’s ironic that you mention the witness accounts being “fine.” I don’t dispute that for those who were there. I find it introguing, however, that one of those was Melvin Brown who stated re the bodies: “they could have passed for Chinese.”
As he was there, would you accept that or discard it, as he was by definition a witness?
As to why someone might mistake a huge Japanese-originated balloon for something more exotic, here’s the thing that many fail to take note of:
Your comments re Roswell are made with the benefit of a 60 year hisory/lore/study of UFO reports; so we know what UFOs are supposed to be and not be, and how (according to the witnesses) how they maneuver etc.
But Roswell occurred barely 2 weeks after the Kenneth Arnold sighting, so here’s my point: at the time of the crash, there was no UFO history, no books, no magazines, no research groups, nothing.
So, when unusual debris is found at a time when the Saucer era kicked off only 2 weeks earlier, no one knew that Saucers weren’t made of balloon like debris – because there was no history to fall back on that could be used as a comparison.
This is exactly what my sources told me: it wasn’t that the people at Roswell mistook a balloon for a Saucer. Rather, it was that – only 2 weeks after Arnold – no-one still had any idea what saucers were, and so it was highly possible that they could have been made of balloon materials.
Think about it: hypothetically, you find lots of unidentified debris in a field, everyone is talking about these weird saucers in the sky, and you think: “Could this material be from one of them?” And there’s no reason you shouldn’t think that, because there is absolutely *no* subject history to fall back on to use as a comparison.
I agree with you that there is plenty of evidence that a real UFO mystery exists, but I don’t happen to accept anymore that it crashed at Roswell.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Alan:
The main reason people in ufology don’t want Roswell to be anything other than alien is simple: much of the accepted UFO lore as to how these things are perceived depeneds on Roswell.
Roswell is the most thoroughly investigated crash case; and if it collapses, then we have no alien bodies, no crashed saucers, no back engineering, no MJ12 etc.
Now that doesn’t mean no UFOs. There’s no doubt that there *is* a real UFO mystery. But without Roswell, the idea that this is a purely physical mystery with craft piloted by little men is massively underminded.
Fact is, many in ufology don’t want Roswell underminded because of the above, and of course for good old belief systems.
April 14th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Hi Nick: When you say “good old belief systems” I have to ask how old? haha. I’m thinking back to 9000 BCE. You may have noticed I spent about 2 months defending and debating your Body Snatchers book on http://unexplainedmysteries.com — well most of it was under the “Debunking the Disclosure Project” thread that I started.
I hope you were serious about reading the Stargate Conspiracy by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince. Even CNN is now promoting the “alien invasion” hype and as SC demonstates, these good old belief systems are part of the CIA-Freemason-Theosophist-UN secret societies. The Council of Nine ties into what I discovered — http://nonduality.com/hempel.htm.
April 15th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Drew:
For me at least, belief systems are a curse for ufology – purely because so much is belief driven and therefore very easy to manipulate. We only have to take a look at Greg’s “Project Beta” book to see how someoene with a passionate belief system re. UFOs can have their life utterly destroyed by the official world.
We should all beware of the “I want to believe” factor and avoid it all costs. That’s what I believe (LOL).
April 15th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Nick…
Not getting into UFO belief systems and politics…they just give me gas…but as to Unit 731 itself, I suppose you know that the possibility seems to exist that there was, for a while after WWII , a covert smuggling (around SE Asia) of their “playtoys”, the bio-war neurotoxins Sarin and Tabun . There is also some speculation (written up in Fortean Times a couple of years back) that some of this contraband stuff was being transported through the Straits of Malacca, near Indonesia, in the late forties and got loose and in the air aboard the old freighter hauling it, the S.S. Ourang Medan . Two ships (The SS Silver Star and the SS City of Baltimore) responded to an S.O.S. (the wireless operator seemingly the last to die) and a boarding crew found everyone dead on board with fixed horrific grimaces…even the ship’s dog. Presumably by the time the rescue ships arrived the released gases had dissipated, blown away and lost their potency.
Before they could investigate further the boarding crew found themselves on a ship staggering from below-decks explosions. They beat a retreat and headed back to their own vessel while the Ourang Medan flared up with fire and then rolled over and sank.
From what?
Might it be that she was sunk deliberately to keep her cargo from being examined by anyone? Might it be that this Dutch-registered vessel sailing out of Dutch-administered territory took a couple of torpedoes from a Dutch submarine to encourage her on her trip to the bottom? Having nerve gas on board and transporting such in those days would be a BIG international incident. A rip-roaring hullabaloo. And, sure, enough, there seems to have been a lot of monkey business going on here with funkied-up shipping reports and “press management” of the incident.
I mention the Ourang Medan here in this context because its mystery has always been one of those “Invisible Horizons” enigmas that many have, over the years, tried to link to UFOs…without any substantive justification whatsoever. So, in its own curious way, this old classic mystery of the sea is a “kinda-sorta” hook-up with your topic, UFOs and Unit 731.
Bill
April 16th, 2007 at 8:57 am
Bill
Yes, I well remember the Fortean Times article – a very intriguing story.
There’s also another Unit 731-UFO link: namely that the transfer in the post-WW2 era of most of the Unit 731 documentation/materials to the USA was arranged by General Charles Willoughby, who happened to be a good friend of none other than Colonel Philip Corso of “The Day After Roswell.”
September 27th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Hello, Nick!
Having recently begun posting to your fine site, I’ve only lately gone through this thread. While I maintain an open mind about Roswell, I’d like to get your feedback on a couple of points:
1) For myself, I pretty much accept that the Roswell incident will never be satisfactorily explained one way or the other, to either side’s satisfaction. For me, I’d just as soon it never happened. Have you found this feeling of overkill to be growing among many researchers, or am I just ahead of the curve on this?
2) I can accept the tie-in with Unit 721 and the description of the bodies. But one thing that cannot be explained is the deep, wide, long gouge left in the earth by whatever crashed on Brazel’s ranch. If your explanation accepts the viability of large amounts of debris, as well as the bodies, then does it not have to account for the gouge as well?
3) Can you also account for the fact that the I-beams, though described as being as light as balsa wood, wouldn’t burn with a lighter or a blow torch? And can you also ascribe a reason why neither Marcell nor his son would have been able to recognize the embossed pictoglyphs (my terminology) on the beams? And why the glyphs wouldn’t be in plain English? And why they were embossed. rather than just being written on the beams? And why they were in purple, rather than simple black or the occasional red ink?
OK, so more than a couple of questions. (:^D)
I think you’d have to admit, there are some seriously unique events associated with the debris, if true, that sets Roswell apart from any other reported incident so far. Never have we the public been able to see through the eyes of three hundred (at last count) witnesses to the crash and retrieval, and now, even some of the members of the military disinformation teams.
I think that, because of the amount of anomalous detail, this is one reason why so many UFO researchers point to this particular crash as a watershed event in UFO reporting.
– TS
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:48 am
Templarscribe:
1. There has indeed been overkill with Roswell. The big problem I see it is that ufology has made Roswell its premier case; and if Roswell collapses (as an ET event, at least) then in the minds of the media and the public (as well as in substantial parts of the UFO community), the ETH will likely be perceived as having collapsed too. Ufology should be focusing on the collective body of data as a way to impress upon people that something truly strange is among us, and not almost literally making everything dependent on Roswell.
2 and 3 (combined): These are all good points and, being honest, I don’t have good answers for these points. I have always said to people that in my opinion the “human experiment” angle of Roswell provided to me and other researchers (such as Keith Basterfield – 6 months before Body Snatchers was published), Tim Cooper, Leonard Stringfield, Popular Mechanics etc) makes me believe it is valid.
However, the problems re unanswered question re gouges, the i-beams and glyphs etc, are likely to remain unanswered due to the passage of time and the lack of hard evidence that today – 60 years on – we can study.
I think all we can do is keep digging and hope to find something that will answer these questions. However, I’m doubtful that we will get much more now, as the case gets further and further into history.
I will, however, have more data coming forward soon that will add more to the Unit 731 story and Lincoln County, NM (where the crash happened) – and this from official files.
Best
Nick