SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. teachers from a number of high schools on Saturday discussed ways to educate young generations on the facts about World War II (WWII) atrocities committed by the notorious Japanese chemical and biological warfare troops Unit 731.

Gathering at a seminar held at the 19th Teaching for Social Justice Conference in downtown San Francisco, the teachers focused their discussions on the topic of the appalling crimes committed by Unit 731, which conducted lethal biological and medical experiment on living humans during the war.

Danielle Dybbro, a member of the Teachers Committee of San Francisco-based grassroots organization, Education for Social Justice Foundation (ESJF), which hosted the seminar, gave the teachers a lecture titled Unit 731: the Forgotten Asian Auschwitz, on how to execute the educational program.

She elaborated on approaches to teaching students about Unit 731 and its use as a Japanese biological warfare research facility in northeast China during WWII.

Unit 731 was described as one of 26 death factories set up by the Japanese troops in Asia, where inhuman medical experiments were conducted on thousands of innocent Chinese, Mongolians, Koreans, Russians and Allied prisoners of war, including American servicemen.

She encouraged the teachers to have students compare the Japanese crimes to the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany and to brainstorm ideas about how such an event could have happened in modern history.

Dybbro told Xinhua after the seminar that Saturday's topic was geared to the curriculum that can be taught to older students with a brief overview introduction of what was happening in Asia and linking it to Nazi experiments in Europe.

Forest Borie, a teacher with John Henry High School in Richmond, East Bay in Northern California, said he has already had a real lesson plan to help his students understand this part of history in his World History class.

"I'm kind of on the hunt for new material all the time, and this is going to be an effective one," he said, adding that he hopes the knowledge would help empower the students to think about how to prevent the history from happening again in the future.

Kylie Ruff, a 21-year-old senior student at Saint Mary's College, a private school in Walnut Creek, California, said the seminar is "absolutely mind blowing and that this isn't talked about more often in schools."

"It's really important for kids to be exposed to this gruesome topics and what has happened, because it needs to be prevented in the future," she told Xinhua.

She said the Japanese troops conducted deadly experiments on humans and labeled them, which was really gruesome and dehumanization of the people in their captivity.

"I really wish that I saw a lot of more people from my school here because I really think that this is stuff that is valuable information for our youth and our next generation," she added.

Later Saturday, the ESJF will present another workshop on the topic of Comfort Women, an equally heinous crime committed by Japanese wartime troops, who victimized tens of thousands of Asian women that were sexually exploited and forced into sexual slavery during WWII. Enditem

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