EE in history on Unit 731

[tinto]

Hello,

I've started thinking about my EE and I've decided to do it in history, specifically the Japanese biological warfare unit, Unit 731. However, I'm having trouble coming up with an appropriate research question. What I wanted to investigate American cover up of this event after WW2; however it seems that the general consensus was that the cover up was done because there was valuable information to be gained from those experiments.

Thus I'm not really sure if I can even write about this, as there doesn't seem to be anything contentious or controversial about the American cover up (most people agree on the reasons behind it). Is this topic too narrow for 4000 words? Would it be possible to examine whether it was justified? What about an investigation into the effects of the American cover up? (which seem rather obvious?! and thus unworthy of an investigation...I'm not really sure).

Please advise! I'm feeling very lost and I'd appreciate any help.

[Emmi]

I'm not familiar with the specifics of your topic so I can't offer a very detailed response, but generally if the answer to your EE is obvious, it probably wouldn't make for a very good EE topic. Good EE topics generally have no "specific" answer, and especially in history, you want to be able to answer them from a variety of angles. For example, an EE title like "Was Guiseppi Garibaldi important to Italian Unification?" is bad, because duh he was. Instead a better one would be something like "Were Guiseppi Garibaldi's contributions to Italian Unification more significant than those of Cavour or Mazzini?" because this can be argued from many sides. If you feel that your current topic seems too obvious, try a different take on it. It's an interesting topic, so see what you can do with it so it becomes less obvious of an answer.

History EE's don't have to be super controversial, just remember that. Don't try to pick an event just because it's "super controversial." You can pick something that isn't as much. It should still be an important historical event though!

[prismofreality]

If you really want to do this topic, I would just try to explore a different part of it. Because if there is an overall consensus on the reason why America hid it, then it would be hard to do an EE on it because there would not be another point to argue, and the answer would be obvious from the start. Stay away from any justification thing because how would you measure that? People have different reasons for justifications, and what you might think they might not have been justified, another person might. Things like that with "was it justified?" cannot be properly measured, properly examined. It is too sensitive. Maybe go into the effects it had in Japan, or in the Manchuria region.