(NaturalNews) Recently declassified documents reveal that the U.S. government forcibly subjected military servicemen to chemical testing of mustard gas and other noxious agents during World War II. Black servicemen in particular received the brunt of such experimentation, an investigation by NPR's Caitlin Dickerson has uncovered.

Some 60,000 black men who served in the U.S. Army back in the 1940s were threatened with imprisonment if they didn't comply with having deadly chemicals blasted on their skin, the investigation found. Interviews with former victims tell the gruesome narrative of these serious crimes against humanity inflicted on Americans by their own government.

"It felt like you were on fire," recalls Rollins Edwards, a 93-year-old black man from Summerville, South Carolina, who was among the troops forced into literal gas chambers for U.S. military chemical experiments. "Guys started screaming and hollering and trying to break out. And then some of the guys fainted, and finally they opened the door and let us out, and the guys ... were in bad shape."

Black soldiers forced to endure chemical poisoning by their own government

Edwards' account concerns the effects of a concoction of mustard gas and lewisite that was deliberately piped into gas chambers that he and his comrades were forced into by their governing officers. They didn't ask questions out of fear of reprisal, but what they suffered isn't much different than what Adolf Hitler forced his prisoners to endure.

Documents declassified in 1993 reveal that all sorts of gases were tested on American troops by the American military apparatus during this grim period in U.S. history. Military officers apparently wanted to see how effective their own protective gear was against these chemical agents, so they used African-American military members as human guinea pigs.

"Tests were conducted to evaluate the protective qualities of various respirators (gas masks), ointments and clothing," reports Mint Press News. "To examine the effectiveness of an ointment, for example, mustard gas was applied directly to bare skin and to skin treated with ointment.

"In another test, soldiers stood in an open field, wearing various types of protective clothing, and were sprayed with mustard gas by a plane flying overhead. And in the 'man-break test,' soldiers were locked in gas chambers while the chemical agent was piped in."

Mustard gas, Tuskegee, and vaccines: the military-industrial complex and its legacy of human rights abuses

Such exposure was obviously harmful to these soldiers, who reportedly suffered all sorts of chronic health issues including skin, eye and lung damage. Many of them also suffered lasting mental health problems, only to later develop even more serious health conditions like cancer and even blindness.

This is similar to what African-American men were forced to endure as part of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which took place from 1932 to 1972. As you may recall, men living in rural Alabama were tricked into receiving "free health care" but were actually assaulted by the U.S. government with a sexually-transmitted disease (STD) that left them chronically ill.

More recently, drug giant Merck & Co. engaged in similar behavior with regards to the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, which it was recently revealed is particularly harmful to young black boys who receive it before the age of three, although it is important to remember that MMR is harmful to all young children.

While the U.S. military now claims that it no longer conducts such chemical experimentation on citizens, its extensive history of deception on this important matter suggests that this might not be the case. After all, in each of these incidents, from the mustard gas testing to syphilis experimentation, government officials withheld what they were doing from their test subjects. Who's to say that this same illicit behavior isn't still happening in the shadows with military vaccine programs, for example?

Sources for this article include:

http://www.npr.org

http://www.mintpressnews.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

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