Read Beat (...and repeat)
If you're like me, you like to know things but how much time to invest? That's the question. Here's the answer: Read Beat--Interviews with authors of new releases. These aren't book reviews but short (about 25-30 minutes on the average) chats with folks that usually have taken a lot of time to research a topic, enough to write a book about it. Hopefully, there's a topic or two that interests you. I try to come up with subjects that fascinate me or I need to know more about. Hopefully, listeners will agree. I'm Steve Tarter, former reporter for the Peoria Journal Star and a contributor to WCBU-FM, the Peoria public radio outlet, from 20202 to 2024. I post regularly on stevetarter.substack.com.
Read Beat (...and repeat)
"Marutas of Unit 731" by Jenny Chan
Writing in the Sept. 20, 2025 issue of the Korea Times, Park Jin-hai noted that “Jenny Chan grew up in America caught between clashing versions of history — her school textbooks skipped over the cruelties of World War II in Hong Kong, while her grandmother's stories painted a harrowing picture of life in Hong Kong under Japanese occupation.”
The co-founder of Pacific Atrocities Education, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco dedicated to recalling WWII history in Asia, Chan recalled being initially confused by the different versions. “I thought she was just probably making this up because I never learned about this,” Chan said.
“But she soon learned her grandmother’s memories reflected a broader, often-silenced chapter of Asian history — one in which 35 million lives were lost but rarely acknowledged in mainstream Western accounts,” wrote Park Jin-Hai in the newspaper account.
Since her 2012 graduation from the University of Illinois, Chan said she’s dedicated her life to uncovering, documenting, and publicizing war crimes committed in Asia during World War II. Chan notes that it can’t be forgotten that China suffered a third of the total casualties of all countries in World War II.
The author of Marutas of Unit 731: Human Experimentation of the Forgotten Asian Auschwitz, Chan talks about the biological warfare experiments and other horrors of Japan's Unit 731, an instrument of terror during WWII.
Marutas means logs, the name given the estimated 250,000 victims that were used in biological weapons research during the war, she said. Prisoners were purposely infected with dangerous viruses and bacteria such as the bubonic plague, anthrax, and smallpox, said Chan, adding that prisoners included Chinese soldiers, civilians, Russians, and Allied POWs.
Pacific Atrocities Education publishes books, audiobooks, and YouTube videos detailing WWII history, said Chan.
