Unit 731

by Hal Gold

  In China, the rat is a deity of happiness. Handling rats the way we did must have appeared foreign to the Chinese. In Manchuria, pneumonic plague became epidemic during the dry season, and we were working on a method of preventing this, but the Manchurians did not realize it.

  Naturally occurring epidemics are dependent upon circumstances such as temperature, humidity, and rainfall. Without the concurrence of certain conditions, an epidemic will not occur. Even today, there are certain elements relating to epidemics that are not clear. For example, pickled vegetables depend on the action of microorganisms. Each year produces slightly different results, and even vegetables processed the same year under the same climatic conditions will sometimes vary from one barrel to the next. Artificially induced epidemics, however, are not dependent on such factors.

  A case of plague was discovered in Saigon, and I was called there to investigate. Saigon was the base for Japan's advance into Thailand, and the army commanders weighed the question of whether there was a chance of the disease's becoming epidemic. There was a fear that if it happened, goods and equipment could not be unloaded at port. I suggested calling off the advance and was reprimanded, and then I was given time to research the chances of a plague epidemic.

  With plague being carried by rats and fleas, the risk of an epidemic is high if three conditions are present: the variety of fleas that carry plague represents a high percentage of the total fleas present on rats; the plague germ is present in those fleas; and the rats carrying the plague-infected fleas are near areas of human activity.

  When the rats are put to sleep with chloroform as they were at the Singapore unit, the fleas also are put to sleep. They can then be brushed off onto paper, and the percentage of the plague-carrying variety can be determined. So we went to the harbor and searched the holes that the rats would crawl into. We found that the variety of rat was different and we concluded that there was no chance of plague breaking out.

  Back in 1939, at the Nomonhan Incident, the daily variation in temperature was extreme. Japanese soldiers were wearing fur-lined clothing. Gas gangrene bacteria were present on the fur, and if a soldier were hit by a bullet, it would carry the germs into the wound. Gas gangrene takes its name from the fact that when it enters the body it generates a foul-smelling gas. The cause of death of soldiers who died from gas gangrene was not listed as infection but as wounds received in action.

  This is a disease that was never seen in Japan. For this reason every day during the battle at Nomonhan, one of the researchers, Ishikawa Tachio, dissected about fifty bodies a day of Japanese soldiers who died from this infection, and he made specimens of about one hundred of them. Whenever lab specimens of humans are mentioned in connection with Unit 731, it is immediately assumed that they were maruta. But this was not always the case. There were also specimens made from Japanese casualties.

  Lecture, "Unit 731 and Comfort Women" (Nishino Rumiko)

  [Nishino Rumiko, who delivered the following lecture, is one of the most active writers and lecturers in Japan on the "comfort women" issue. She has authored numerous books and articles on the subject, and has also involved herself with the story of Unit 731, interviewing numerous former unit members. This lecture was presented at the Unit 731 Exhibition in Takatsuki City, Osaka Prefecture, in December 1994. J

  A Korean woman who served in the Japanese military brothels used the Japanese name Haruko. [This was a popular name for non-Japanese women, including comfort women, to adopt.] A Japanese soldier she knew developed a fever, and "Haruko" heard of this and went to take care of him. A personal warmth grew between the two. After that, they were both transferred to Burma, "Haruko" to an army brothel, the soldier to his new duty post. In Burma, the soldier searched for the comfort woman who had helped him, inquiring at the military brothels there, but without success

  In 1944, with the war going badly for Japan, the soldier was sent to work at a quarantine station in Harbin. And there fate brought him into a meeting again with "Haruko." It was a brief meeting; the soldier expressed his gratitude with some small gifts, including a fountain pen and some money, and asked for a way to contact "Haruko" in the future. Japan was headed for defeat, and he looked forward to meeting her again after the war.

  They never did meet. Then, in recent years the comfort woman problem started surfacing. Survivors among them who suffered shame and stigma for decades have slowly started coming forward, some seeking apology from Japan, others seeking compensation. With all this attention focused on the comfort women of the thirties and forties, the former soldier, now in his eighties, is sending out an appeal to help him search once more for "Haruko."

  The former soldier contacted me, and I went to visit him. He told me his story, that he had been a technician and a member of Unit 731 working in the plague research section. But he had another job, giving health examinations to comfort women. Once a week, the women were examined for venereal disease, and he was working in this capacity when he met "Haruko" at the quarantine station in Harbin in 1944.

  His work with the comfort women involved taking blood samples from them and sending the samples to Unit 731 for analysis. I have searched out another member of Unit 731 who was also assigned to examining comfort women for venereal disease. He visited the various brothels, at times examining up to one hundred women a day.

  Studies of venereal disease were fairly extensive, yet many Japanese books on Unit 731 make no mention of this area. I went into the records of the only court examination of Unit 731 members, the Khabarovsk trials [there were, in fact, trials in China, too], and in the second part of these records was a lengthy record which was released in Japan in the early part of 1950. There was doubt as to its authenticity, but careful corroboration showed it to be true, and within the records it was reported that there was a venereal disease research group within Unit 731. One Japanese writer, Morimura Seiichi, the novelist who has gained a name as a researcher and writer on Unit 731, wrote that venereal disease research was conducted by the tuberculosis research group in Unit 731, under the group leader Futagi. This was supported by the Khabarovsk court records. Morimura was researching former unit members for his writings. He searched out Futagi in Tokyo and found him still healthy, but unwilling to speak on his past work with Unit 731. Futagi later died with his lips sealed.

  With the team leader gone, the probe continued, looking for possible survivors among other members of the same team. I searched municipal records and located one man who was then in a hospital in Nagano Prefecture. I traveled there and spoke with him at his bedside. I asked about Unit 731 and he spoke freely about different aspects and activities. Then I asked him about experiments on women. He attitude changed, his lips closed tightly, and he refused to speak further.

  I saw that he was fatigued, and since he was over eighty years old, I didn't want to press him in his condition, so I left the hospital. But the subject was on my mind. I decided to go back again the next day. I avoided any mention of experiments on women, and we talked about his postwar life. He told me of how he had come back to Japan, given up his intentions of working as a doctor, and lived secluded in the country, subsisting on the food he grew himself.

  I heard his story, thanked him for spending time with me and started to leave the room to return to Tokyo. Just as I reached the door he called to me to wait.

  "Last night I thought about our talk," he told me. "I had decided to take this with me to hell, but I thought it over and now I want to leave it in this world." Tears came to his eyes—like a waterfall. Until then he had shown no emotion, but at that moment he changed, and told his story.

  He had performed vivisections on six living women. The one experience he did not want to speak of was that concerning a Chinese woman. In vivisections on living persons, sometimes chloroform is used to put the victim to sleep; at times it is not, and the person is cut open fully conscious. This particular Chinese woman, he told me, was put under chloroform but regained consciousness on the table. She started getting up, scre
aming, "Go ahead and kill me, but please don't kill my child!"

  "There were four or five of us working on the vivisection," he told me. "We held her down, applied more anesthesia, and continued."

  He told me that he has carried that memory ever since. He felt that bringing it out would place the other surviving members of the team in a difficult position, so for fifty years he had been determined to take that "to hell" with him.

  I managed to find one more person who had been a member of the Futagi team for a limited time. He had been a candidate to become a subunit leader under Ishii; he did not get this position but later became Ishii's private driver and assistant. Here is what he told me:

  "At first we infected women with syphilis by injection. But this method did not produce real research results. Syphilis is normally transmitted through direct contact. Investigating the course of the disease can offer no useful results unless it is acquired this way. And so we followed a system of direct infection through sexual contact. The reason Unit 731 researched venereal disease was because of the Japanese army's practice of using comfort women. By learning how the disease develops we tried to find a way to protect Japanese soldiers from sexually transmitted disease.

  "We were very limited in methods of treating venereal disease at the time, mainly just one type of injection. And a Japanese soldier catching venereal disease would not only be barred from promotion but in some units he would be reduced in rank and placed in detention while he was being treated for it. So, to an army man, catching venereal disease was a disgrace and a setback. As a result, many infected soldiers kept quiet about their infection and tried to get cured secretly. Venereal disease grew into a very serious problem in the military.

  "In Siberia, for example, the prices for going to a comfort woman station were prohibitively high compared with the salary of the Japanese soldier. So the soldiers took their pleasures by raping local Russian women. This led to an outbreak of venereal disease, with huge numbers of Japanese soldiers afflicted. The brass at Japanese headquarters saw their soldiers falling to venereal disease, and the problem became grave."

  The Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the Rape of Nanjing took place in 1937. There were twenty thousand recorded incidents of rape against Russian women during the period [in the five-month span] between those events alone. With the spread of venereal disease among the ranks and its threat to the discipline and efficiency of the army, it was natural for the high command to look to an army medical unit for a solution to the problem, and Unit 731 was called upon.

  Infection of venereal disease by injection was abandoned, and the researchers started forcing the prisoners into sexual acts with each other. Four or five unit members, dressed in white laboratory clothing completely covering the body with only eyes and mouth visible, handled the tests. A male and female, one infected with syphilis, would be brought together in a cell and forced into sex with each other. It was made clear that anyone resisting would be shot. Once the healthy partner was infected, the progress of the disease would be observed closely to determine for example how far it advanced the first week, the second week, and so forth. Instead of merely looking at external signs, such as the condition of the sexual organs, researchers were able to employ live dissection to investigate how different internal organs are affected at different stages of the disease.

  The victimization and suffering of women under Unit 731 had not been given much attention in accounts of Unit 731's activities until the comfort women issue was brought to the surface. The focus was largely on a racial basis, how the Chinese and Russians and Koreans were victimized. Now it has become clear how women have suffered as women, and attention is being directed to this issue also.

  Another issue being brought closer to the fore now is that of children. Yoshimura Hisato, who later became head of the Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, was in charge of frostbite experiments. He was known as an outstanding scholar and researcher. One of his experiments was with a three-month-old baby. A temperature-sensing needle was injected into the baby's hand and the infant was immersed in ice water, then temperature changes were carefully recorded. After the war he issued a paper on this experiment and the results. Since it would have been impossible to conduct an experiment like this in postwar years, it became obvious that this was conducted when he was with Unit 731. From this, we can understand that he used babies born to imprisoned mothers. Records from China identify babies being born to pregnant captives, and also to women made pregnant through forced sex in venereal disease experiments, and these babies were also made use of in the unit's experiments.

  One of the former researchers I located told me that one day he had a human experiment scheduled, but there was still time to kill. So he and another unit member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. One of the unit members raped her; the other member took the keys and opened another cell. There was a Chinese woman in there who had been used in a frostbite experiment. She had several fingers missing and her bones were black, with gangrene set in. He was about to rape her anyway, then he saw that her sex organ was festering, with pus oozing to the surface. He gave up the idea, left, and locked the door, then later went on to his experimental work.

  Youth Corps member (Anonymous)

  [The speaker, seventy-two years old at the time he gave this account, spoke at Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture, in July 1994.]

  In 1937, when I was fourteen, they were recruiting for the Naval Air Corps Youth Unit here in Morioka. I stole some money from my father's bureau and went to the recruitment center to join. But there was an army medical officer there, and he called to me and said, "You! Go to the Army Medical College."

  I did. In June I entered the Army Medical College in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The officer who told me to go was killed in the Nomonhan Incident in Manchuria.

  At school, we were given tough exams, and out of fifty in my class, six or seven were selected. Ishii, the boss, had been to Germany and was our instructor. Afterwards, I was assigned to the Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Unit as a civilian employee.

  In December, we left the port of Niigata and were taken to Harbin via Korea. I still have an old calling card with my Harbin address. At first we were taken to a Special Service Organization building under the command of an army officer. The first time we were mustered was to hear an address by the unit leader, Ishii. We were the first-year class members of the Youth Corps. The corps was divided into four classes—first-year through fourth-year—of about twenty boys each.

  Then we moved to Pingfang and were put through a tough study program. From 8:00 a.m. on, we had courses in such subjects as general education, foreign language, and hygiene. In the afternoon, we assisted the unit members. We worked and studied all the time and had only about three hours' sleep a night. There was a library with extensive stacks of books and foreign language material, and six library specialists to help us.

  Before we came to Pingfang, we studied the water filtering device developed by Ishii. We did this at a brick building outside of Harbin and near the medical examination section. We went to Pingfang before the facilities were completed. We were treated well. We were poor, but there in the countryside we had good things to eat that we had never seen before. We had about two years of education under the army, up until July 1939. Next, I was assigned to a team researching bacteria propagation. The others in my class were each assigned to different teams and we didn't see each other very much after that.

  We used to go from Pingfang into Harbin to study Chinese. Sometimes we would go to the Unit 731 secret liaison office. I met the boss many times. He treated us with affection. Once when he came into the toilet to bring me toilet paper, he reminded me to "study hard."

  I used to call my cap a "chapeaux." I was scolded by the boss several times for that. He would bark at me, "Call it boshi!" The army especially disliked foreign terms for nomenclature. [The term was a holdover from the days when the French army was the model for the Japane
se army.]

  Once, when a few of us boys were walking in the corridor, the boss came up to us and said, "In one year this place used the total tax revenues of Northeast China. That's how important your work is. So work hard." But we were treated with importance only as consumable equipment for war purposes.

  At Unit 200, a Unit 731 subunit, we bought three hundred thousand rats for test purposes. I remember the man in charge, Lieutenant Takahashi. He used to be section head of the Iwate Prefectural Hygiene Department [in postwar days].

  There were several poison gas test sites outside of Harbin. The Anda site was up against the side of a mountain, and I was there during human experiments. A lot of top brass from the Kwantung Army came to watch. Takeda no Miya was there also. Twenty or thirty maruta had their hands tied behind their backs around wooden posts set in the ground, and the gas tanks were on the ground waiting.

  For a week before the test, the meteorological team was checking the weather. Then, on one test, the wind shifted and the gas came blowing in our direction, and everybody had to run.

  [Takeda no Miya was an imperial prince and a cousin to Emperor Hirohito. It was common practice for people of the imperial family to serve in the military, but Takeda's role in Manchuria is of particular interest. He was the officer in charge of finances for the Kwantung Army, and all money flowing to Manchuria-based units went through his office. He went to Pingfang on numerous occasions and to other units, obviously to check up on how the funds he was dispensing were being spent.

  At times he used a pseudonym to conceal his identity. He took one character each from his name and title and reversed them, so that "Takeda no Miya" became "Miyata." A story from another former Youth Corps member recounts the time his unit received a visit from a Colonel Miyata Sanbo. It was midsummer, and it was the custom of the unit administration to place a large column of ice in the rooms of high-ranking guests to bring down the temperature. The Youth Corps boy and his associates all thought it strange that while a colonel was nowhere nearly high enough to receive this courtesy, Miyata's room was honored with an ice column. Later, they discovered the real identity of the man.