The diverse narratives of military medicine in wartime East Asia range from Dr. Robert Ko-sheng Lim (Kesheng Lin ) and his fellow Overseas Chinese medical personnel's valiant effort in soliciting blood donations from reluctant Chinese soldiers in 1944, to the Unit 731 doctors' reprehensible human experimentation in Harbin in the 1940s. These stories are part of a larger narrative of military medical success, failures, opportunities, and realities in the context of the Second Sino-Japanese war that lasted between 1937 and 1945. Doctors, nurses, and medical personnel working under the demands of intense warfare also revealed stories of individual resiliency and personal transformation. Their experiences contributed to the history of state building, resource management, and medical reconstruction in twentieth-century East Asia. Nevertheless, it is critical to identify how existing narratives of military medicine were often shaped by the outcomes of wars and political revolutions, even as more recent scholars have successfully challenged these narratives by focusing on the wide-ranging military medical practices, ideas, and personnel on the ground.
This article argues that the historiography of military medicine of Japan was shaped by the perception and nature of wars and conflicts in twentieth-century East Asia. The early scholarship on Japanese military medicine sought, on the one hand, to show how military medicine contributed to the success of the Japanese military on the ground. On the other hand, historians became increasingly skeptical of the actual success of such medical practices. Scholars in the 1990s and 2000s began to focus on unpacking the unethical consequences of military medical experimentation during the Second World War. In recent years, they have centered their research on agents of military medicine on the ground, creating a more nuanced understanding of military medicine.
