Shiro Ishii

Shirō Ishii
Major (later General) Shirō Ishii, in 1932
Native name	石井 四郎
Born	(1892-06-25)June 25, 1892 Shibayama, Empire of Japan
Died	October 9, 1959(1959-10-09) (aged 67) Tokyo, Japan
Allegiance	Empire of Japan
Service/branch	Imperial Japanese Army
Years of service	1921–1945
Rank	Surgeon General (Lieutenant-General)
Commands held	Unit 731, Kwantung Army
Battles/wars	Second Sino-Japanese War World War II
Awards	Order of the Golden Kite, Fourth Class

Surgeon General Shirō Ishii (石井 四郎, Ishii Shirō^?, [iɕiː ɕiɺoː]; June 25, 1892 – October 9, 1959) was a Japanese army medical officer, microbiologist and the director of Unit 731, a biological warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese Army involved in forced and frequently lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).

Ishii was born in the former Shibayama Village of Sanbu District in Chiba Prefecture, and studied medicine at Kyoto Imperial University. He was commissioned into the Imperial Japanese Army in 1921 as an army surgeon, second class (surgeon lieutenant). In 1922 he was assigned to the 1st Army Hospital and Army Medical School in Tokyo. There his work impressed his superiors enough to gain him post-graduate medical schooling at the Kyoto Imperial University two years later. During his study at the Kyoto Imperial University, Ishii would often grow bacteria "pets" in multiple petri dishes. His odd practice of raising bacteria as companions rather than as research subjects made Ishii notable to the staff of the university.