A group of four remarkable Huntington High School juniors is headed to the National History Day Long Island regional finals at Hofstra University with their group documentary project titled “Unit 731: The Unpunished Scientists Behind the Japanese Holocaust.”
Huntington juniors Andrew Knowles, Paul Katigbak, Ryan Knowles and Julien Rentsch captured first place in Huntington’s local competition, which has propelled the teenagers to the LI finals, where they will vie for a berth in the State History Day championships in Cooperstown in April.
“The theme for this year’s National History Day is ‘Triumph and Tragedy,’ and we made a 10-minute documentary focusing on the Japanese Unit 731, a secret military unit during World War II that performed biological experiments on Chinese prisoners of war,” Andrew Knowles said. “While the Allied victory over the Japanese was a triumph, the tragedy was a secret agreement between the US government and Japanese scientists that protected members of the unit from prosecution in exchange for information from their experiments and research.”
All four members of the research team are on Huntington High School’s High Honor Roll. Their talents cut across every academic discipline and reach into the after school extracurricular program, too.
“Our documentary this year covers a secret unit in the Japanese army called Unit 731 and its unethical experiments on civilians,” Mr. Katigbak said. “We are very confident in the final product and hope to move onto states after the Long Island regional.”
The four teenagers collaborated on a group documentary that captured first place honors at last year’s State History Day in Cooperstown. “Diplomatic Relations on Trial: The First Spy Exchange of the Cold War” told the story behind the release of accused American spy Francis Gary Powers, whose U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot down by the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War in 1960. Mr. Powers was captured and interrogated for months. The Soviets convicted him of spying during a show trial. He was eventually released during a prisoner exchange over a bridge in Berlin.
“This year, my group did a documentary on Unit 731, a secret Japanese unit during WWII that did gruesome human testing on Chinese civilians,” Mr. Rentsch explained. “Last year we went to the nationals and we hope that our documentary can take us as far as possible again this year.”
The state championship is set for Monday, April 29 in Cooperstown. The national finals will be held June 9-13 at the University of Maryland, College Park.
“I think the topic itself was extremely interesting to learn about,” Ryan Knowles said. “The Americans, who are usually portrayed as the heroes of World War II, were engaging in behind-the-scenes deals with the Japanese to let these criminals off without punishment so that the Russians wouldn’t gain the information from their experiments. As well-intentioned as it might have been, the consequences were tragic.”
