Ep 122: History Repeats with Liam Carballal and guest Rich Acritelli on hmTv

Podcast Description – Ep 122: History Repeats with Liam Carballal and guest Rich Acritelli

In this powerful and eye-opening episode of History Repeats, host Liam Carballal sits down with historian and educator Richard Acritelli to explore one of the darkest and often overlooked chapters of World War II: Japan’s war crimes and the atrocities committed by Unit 731.

Together, they unpack the brutal history of Japanese imperial expansion, biological warfare experimentation, the Bataan Death March, and the Rape of Nanking. Rich shares harrowing firsthand accounts from POWs like Arnold A. Boxel—survivors of unimaginable cruelty who lived just miles from today’s Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center.

Through historical analysis and personal storytelling, this episode sheds light on how Japan’s descent into militarism paralleled that of Nazi Germany, and how postwar politics allowed many perpetrators to escape justice. It’s a sobering reminder of the consequences of silence, denial, and unchecked nationalism.

Tune in for an unflinching conversation about how history doesn’t just repeat—it warns.

Transcript

Ep 122 of History Repeats with host Liam Carballal and guest Richard Acritelli, presented in clean, readable prose without timestamps or closed caption formatting:

Liam Carballal:
Hello and thank you for joining me today. I’m your host, Liam Carballal, and on this episode of History Repeats on hmTv, I’m joined once again by my guest Richard Acritelli. Great to see you, Rich.

Richard Acritelli:
Liam, how you doing, buddy? Always good to be here.

Liam:
Today, we’re diving into a heavy and often overlooked topic: Japanese war crimes during World War II, particularly the atrocities committed by Unit 731. Rich, before we started recording, you mentioned writing about this recently?

Rich:
Yes, I actually wrote an article for my local paper on the subject, and I’ve done extensive research on WWII POWs. One person who really stayed with me is Arnold A. Boxel. He survived the Bataan Death March and later wrote Rice, Men and Barbed Wire. He lived nearby in Syosset and was eventually liberated by Soviet forces after nearly three years of imprisonment.

Liam:
That’s incredible. And he went to the Merchant Marine Academy?

Rich:
Yes, he trained there and helped lay sea mines around the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Bay. He was even stationed at Corregidor with General MacArthur before MacArthur was evacuated to Australia.

Liam:
And this was in Manchuria, right?

Rich:
Correct. Manchuria—part of China rich in natural resources—was crucial to Japan’s expansion. Japan, being an island nation with few natural resources, relied heavily on exploiting conquered territories like China, Korea, and others in Southeast Asia.

Liam:
It’s wild to think that someone who lived 15 minutes from the Holocaust Center here was directly connected to that part of history. Let’s rewind a bit and talk about how Japan transitioned into fascism. I think a lot of people forget how young Japan is as a modern state. Before the Meiji Restoration, it was still a feudal society.

Rich:
Exactly. The U.S. opened Japan up to trade in 1853. From there, Japan rapidly modernized. In less than a century, they went from isolationist to industrialized. The Japanese even encouraged students to study abroad—Stony Brook, Columbia, Adelphi, Cornell—and bring back knowledge to strengthen Japan against Western powers.

Liam:
That modernization helped them fight on the Allied side in WWI, right?

Rich:
Yes, they were allies in WWI. And during the Russo-Japanese War before that, the Japanese treated Russian POWs better than Russia treated its own soldiers. They followed Geneva Conventions and Hague principles. But something changed.

Liam:
They fell off the bike, so to speak?

Rich:
Exactly. The military started influencing the government more in the 1920s. Japan, like Germany, had a middle class, a strong educational system—but they took a sharp turn into ultranationalism and militarism. The economic depression didn’t help either.

Liam:
And Americans, deep in the Depression, weren’t paying attention to atrocities across the world.

Rich:
Right. Local economics drove foreign policy. Nobody cared about Manchuria when they didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. That gave regimes like Japan’s the cover to expand aggressively.

Liam:
You mentioned the Washington Naval Treaty earlier. That really bothered Japanese militarists, didn’t it?

Rich:
Oh, absolutely. They felt constrained by Western powers. The Japanese sought racial equality clauses in the Treaty of Versailles and were denied. That resentment helped fuel their militarism. They wanted to be treated as equals on the world stage and felt snubbed.

Liam:
Let’s bring it back to Unit 731 and its architect, Major Ishii Shiro. What do we know?

Rich:
Unit 731 was Japan’s secret biological warfare program. Some of its leadership were indicted after the war, but many escaped justice. The U.S. protected them in exchange for research data to use against the Soviets in the Cold War—same story as Nazi scientists brought over under Operation Paperclip.

Liam:
They performed horrific experiments—snake venom, anthrax, the bubonic plague…

Rich:
Yes, and worse. Injecting people with horse urine. Locking families in gas chambers to observe reactions. Testing pilots' endurance until their eyes literally popped. It’s beyond inhumane.

Liam:
And the emperor supposedly didn’t know?

Rich:
That’s the narrative, but he absolutely did. After two atomic bombs, young Japanese officers still refused to surrender. That level of fanaticism doesn’t develop overnight—it was fostered from the 1920s onward.

Liam:
Like the Rape of Nanking, right?

Rich:
Yes. The USS Panay incident happened just before. A neutral American ship bombed by the Japanese while evacuating civilians near Nanking. The Japanese dropped 20 bombs, strafed the ship, and later paid $2 million in damages. But then came the Nanking Massacre—300,000 civilians killed, women raped, bodies dumped into rivers.

Liam:
There was even a German diplomat there who reported it back to Berlin in horror.

Rich:
Exactly. Even the Nazis were shocked by what they saw. That says something.

Liam:
And you said Arnold Boxel survived all this?

Rich:
He endured the Bataan Death March—beaten, starved, no water. Later shipped to Manchuria in unmarked hell ships where some were torpedoed by U.S. subs. He ended up in a freezing POW camp in Harbin with other Allied soldiers. When liberated, he weighed only 90 pounds.

Liam:
Just like Holocaust survivors.

Rich:
Yes, they were indistinguishable from them in photos. Starvation, torture, dehumanization. All done in defiance of the Geneva Conventions and the medical oath.

Liam:
It’s terrifying how quickly a nation can descend into that kind of horror.

Rich:
Absolutely. That’s why remembering history is so important—because history really does repeat.

Liam:
Rich, thank you so much for sharing your insights today. And thank you to everyone for tuning in to History Repeats on hmTv. We’ll see you next time.