The US government has confirmed that it separated soldiers by race when testing chemical weapons during World War II in order to see how non-whites reacted compared to “normal” white soldiers.

Though the formerly secret program was declassified in 1993, a new investigation by NPR includes interviews with former test subjects and documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request, which confirm the grouping of enlisted men by race to determine if different races reacted differently to the chemical agents. …