by Hal Gold
By the time of the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, Takeda no Miya was known in Japan as the chairman of the Japan Olympic Committee and vice-chairman of the Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee. He was also important in other sports circles.]
I remember when I had to deliver the boss's briefcase to the Imperial Household Ministry. [The Imperial Household Agency, known as the Imperial Household Ministry before the war, is a centuries-old organ responsible for all affairs dealing with the emperor and the imperial family. One may assume that tapes being delivered to the ministry were bound for the emperor.] I was attached to the National Hygiene Laboratory then, and I was taken there in an official car with a driver, the unit leader's flag on the fender. I was just this Youth Corps boy, and yet the guard gave me a respectful salute when I handed him the briefcase. It had cans of 16-mm film, probably records of the boss's experiments, and its destination was an imperial conference.
I preserved a lot of human lab specimens in Formalin. Some were heads, others were arms, legs, internal organs, and some were entire bodies. There were large numbers of these jars lined up, even specimens of children and babies. When I first went into that room, I felt sick and couldn't eat for days. But I soon got used to it. Specimens of entire bodies were labeled and identified by nationality, age, sex, and the date and time of death. Names were not identified. There were Chinese, Russians, and Koreans, and also Americans, Britons, and Frenchmen. Specimens could have been dissected at this unit or sent in from other subunits; I couldn't tell.
The glass specimen cases were made by a unit member who had studied glass manufacture in Europe. He made pipettes and all types of glass lab equipment, and he gave me presents of small glass birds he made.
I was given work to do during dissections. I had jobs like carrying buckets full of blood and internal organs. Once, I was allowed to use a scalpel and cut open a maruta. I made a long cut from the neck down and cut the body open. It's simple—anyone can do it. After that, the specialists did the fine work.
In order to obtain accurate data from dissection, researchers want to have the maruta in as normal a state as possible. Usually they were put to sleep with chloroform, but some were tied down and cut open while fully conscious. At first the maruta would let out a hideous scream, but soon the voice would stop. The organs would be removed, conditions such as color and weight would be compared with healthy conditions, and then the organs would be preserved.
One unit team experimented by infecting wheat and watermelon seeds with typhoid and cholera, then cultivating the seeds to determine how the disease was retained in the crops. I heard that the purpose was planting disease-transmitting seeds in enemy territory.
Each of Japan's kamikaze pilots was given a drink of Imperial saké before leaving on their missions. A Unit 731 member once told me that "that saké is laced with a stimulant that was developed in Unit 731." Afterwards, I heard that the stimulant suppresses fear and agitates the pilots to throw themselves into the attack.
I saw the movie Black Sun 731 [a Hong Kong production]. In it, the commanding officer bullies the youth squad boys. That was not completely accurate. Research was the first priority. There was harmony among us, and we Youth Corps boys were handled carefully.
At Xinjing I worked with the hygiene team conducting what they called "manju" exams. [A manju is a bun filled with sweet bean jam; the word is a slang term for a woman's sex organ.] The official name was "disease prevention exams." We went from one brothel to the next, checking the women for syphilis. They had to get on their hands and knees with their buttocks raised for the exam. On a busy day we examined up to one hundred eighty women.
Syphilis would cause a woman's "manju" to swell up. Once during an examination, pus discharged from the woman's organ and hit the examiner in the face. A sample of her blood was taken to the unit for analysis and proved syphilitic.
There was an exchange of doctors coming and going from all parts of Japan. Each worked on his own research project and directed it at the unit. One was a former president of the present Iwate Prefectural University Hospital. He came to study bacteriology and became one of the most prominent researchers in Japan in typhoid, cholera, and dysentery. The man who taught me dissection is a leading professor at Kanazawa Medical University.
After I came back to Japan, I worked at making lab specimens.
In the summer of 1940 a plague spread into the capital city of Xinjing. One of the other former Unit 731 members says that it was spread by the unit. I have no way of knowing that, but we were called out and we enclosed the entire affected area in a sheet-metal wall about a meter high, then burned everything inside the enclosure to the ground. Next we examined all the Japanese and Chinese who had lived there. We also secured the areas where the houses had been burned.
The boss ordered us to dig up the bodies of people who had died from the epidemic, dissect them, remove and preserve their organs, and send the specimens back to unit headquarters. In some cases, mobile units came with orders to exhume the bodies and open them up, and then to take small specimens from lungs, livers, and kidneys and apply each to a petri dish. Organs that tested positive for the plague were taken back to the unit. The petri dishes of plague germs we gathered were taken to the Xinjing National Hygiene Laboratory and cultivated, then sent to the boss. That was the most distasteful job I had: violating people's graves.
On many occasions, I saw prisoners taken from their cells wearing leg irons and made to move around the grounds. I think it was around spring of 1939 that I saw three mothers with their children in a test. One was a Chinese woman holding an infant, one was a White Russian woman with a daughter of four or five years of age, and the last was a White Russian woman with a boy of about six or seven.
That was a low-altitude air drop test of typhoid or cholera. The air team and those who knew how to handle bacteria would get into a plane together and spread germs over a village or other areas of population concentration. After that, the area would be examined for the effectiveness of the attack. With plague, fleas were used as a carrier and transported in a ceramic bomb. At first, glass bombs were tried, but they did not work well.
Rats weigh about six hundred grams. They were infected with plague, then they were infested with three thousand to six thousand fleas each and loaded into the ceramic bomb. When the bomb is dropped and breaks, the fleas scatter. But a foolproof method of defense against the bacteria has to be devised, or this cannot be used as a weapon. It's not just the enemy that can be infected, but one's own troops.
The main ingredient of the defoliant used in the Vietnam War was dioxin. Of course, Unit 731 conducted basic research using dioxin. America took those research records and used them.
In the Korean War, doctors who had been in Ishii's unit went there and studied the military effectiveness of dioxin, but nobody speaks about this. They were taken to Korea because America used BW and was unable to protect its own army. That's why the former Ishii unit's men were taken to Korea. I was not there myself and did not see it, but the research in Korea included not just animals but human dissection. I am sure of that.
In Xinjing, I became infected with plague. I don't know how or when it happened, but I ran a high fever and collapsed. I was taken to the air corps hospital at Harbin and treated. The hospital was in a small, separate building from the hospital, and nobody was allowed in without authorization. The doctors were all from Unit 731.
I was sent to Port Arthur, then from there to a hospital in Hiroshima, then to a hospital here in Morioka, then later released. I was infected by the very bacteria we had created, then cured by the serum we had made. I became an unwilling test subject.
I received thirty-six yen a month for medical compensation and continued outpatient treatment. At the time, a school principal was earning eighteen yen a month. The whole family could live on the payments I received. That was hush money. But as a trade-off, a kenpeitai officer followed me every day, all day, watching everything I did.
In the hospitals at
Hiroshima and Morioka, only the hospital heads knew my sickness. They did not report it to the other doctors. The hospital head at Morioka told me, "It would be best if you did not go back to Ping-fang."
When I was twenty-one, I received an army physical exam and passed. The stamp was put on my paper by the regimental commanding officer, Murakami Yoichi. Below him was the recruiting officer. He came up to me, slapped my face (a normal disciplining method in those days) and asked me where I had been, what I had done, what my background was. I said nothing. Murakami came over and told me, "You don't have to say anything. Go into the navy."
So I went into the navy. During basic training near Yokosuka, we were in bayonet practice when I coughed up blood. The plague was not all out of my system. I was sent to the Yokosuka navy hospital, then to an air force hospital. After that I was transferred to a Red Cross hospital. I studied nursing there while I was being treated, and I learned environmental hygiene. One day, I took a doctor's place on board a minesweeper and we were hit by a torpedo. The ship sank, but I was saved and went to work in the hospital as a hygiene specialist.
Once, in 1960, some of us war buddies had a reunion at a spa in Japan. Among those who had been stationed in Harbin at the time, ninety percent did not know of Unit 731. Thinking of that now, it was idiocy—using people as consumable materials. But at that time I was so involved, I was unaware of reality. In those days, when you said the word tenno ["emperor"] and you weren't at attention when the syllable te came out, you got your face slapped. This is the first time for me to speak about those days in front of people. My recollection might not be complete, so please forgive me.
One more thing. I cannot give my name yet, but when the time comes, I will identify myself and speak openly about the facts of war, the value of life.
Hygiene specialist (Wano Takeo)
[Wano was attached to Unit 731's Medical Examination and Treatment Center outside of Harbin. He spoke at Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture, in July 1994.]
The Unit 731 examination and treatment center was separated from unit headquarters, so it is less well known. At the time, there were a lot of cases of communicable diseases, and our work was examination, treatment, and prevention of disease for army personnel and their families. The Harbin Army Hospital was inside the city, but our operations were located away from it. We averaged about seventy patients per day.
Our building was called the south wing, a wooden structure built by Unit 731. Next door was a brick building, and I saw the Ishii water purification machine in there. When I went there, the building was not finished yet and I was assigned to Pingfang for a while.
In our work, the biggest fear was the danger of getting infected ourselves, with plague and other diseases. When a plague patient came in everyone was so careful of cuts that we avoided shaving.
My main work was examining blood, urine, and feces, and looking for changes in hemoglobin. During the four years I was at the south wing I made frequent visits to the headquarters at Pingfang. I also had to go into the prisons to deliver the blood samples that I brought from our division, and receive blood samples and tissue specimens.
When we entered the prison buildings, we had to walk through a tray of disinfectant. Then we were inspected at a door, and finally met the person we were to hand the samples to. Miyamoto, the man who worked there, later died of typhoid. I used to meet him and a technician there all the time; I never met them outside of that room.
The blood samples I received from them were taken from maruta who were infected with viruses. The samples were in prepared slides. I traveled by truck between Pingfang and the south wing twice a day, carrying specimens and papers. Another part of my job was carrying human organs.
There was no real research in vaccine at the examination and treatment division. The Pingfang teams developed an invigorative solution, and we injected it into patients who were close to recovery. The base was garlic, and I injected it into myself sometimes to overcome fatigue.
We used a lot of Chinese workers. Some couldn't work without heroin, and we gave it to them.
At the south wing we also performed dissection. One of the researchers had dissected a huge number of maruta at Pingfang and came to be known as the "dissection wizard." He's now active in the medical world.
We had a patient at the south wing who was a member of Unit 731. I thought that he had contracted syphilis, but he had the plague, and he died. I think his body was sent to Pingfang. And people who died at the south wing were all dissected. If no family member came we would dissect immediately and preserve them. The preserved bodies were probably sent to Pingfang.
There were nutrition specialists at south wing, and they were consulted by Pingfang for advice on diets for the maruta.
An order came from Unit 731 to form examination and treatment teams, and go out into the villages to treat the people. An unknown disease broke out among one of the tribes and we went out there. It was typhus, and we treated it for fifteen days, then came back. Another time we went out to a town between Harbin and Xinjing when typhoid broke out. Our job was to keep it from spreading.
Unit 731 was working to make biological weapons. For that, it is also necessary to have a knowledge of treatment of disease. Our division went to treat people, but our work required the dissection of maruta. Our data was used in the development of biological weapons, and the total direction of all our efforts was toward warfare.
On August 10, 1945, we boarded a train at Harbin. We heard talk about an uprising in Korea, but in about ten days we made it back to Japan.
There is one thing I would like to mention about this exhibit. It is stated that when the war ended, rats ran around infecting people with plague. That is not true. I heard that the rats were all killed with chemicals and did not infect the area. The maruta were also killed.
Hygiene specialist (Anonymous)
[The speaker gave this talk at Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture, in July 1994.]
Five people were selected from each prefecture to become hygiene specialists, and I was one of Iwate's five. In January 1941, we arrived in Dalian. We spent three months training in a unit there, and in March I was transferred to Pingfang and entered Unit 731. I was eighteen years old.
At the former unit we were always hit around by the senior soldiers, and it was rough. But at Unit 731, there was harmony. There were only medical officers and civilian doctors. There was no seniority among soldiers, no noncommissioned officers. The facilities and the food were good, and we didn't get hit.
As soon as we came to Unit 731, I heard rumors about human experiments. They told us, "You're in a unit that infects prisoners with bacteria and dissects them. Get yourself ready for it."
From April to July, we had general education. There were about two hundred of us in the same residence hall. Later, we worked at dissecting dogs. After I opened up a dog, the instructor explained the organs.
Part of our work was growing bacteria in glass dishes. They warned us not to touch the bacteria with our hands. We were told, "Don't remove the cover until you get the order to do so." We were ordered to apply the bacteria culture medium to the glass dish as a preparation stage and leave it overnight. In twenty-four hours, the bacteria would generate. The medium was sweet, like jelly, and we would eat it. The officer would scream at us, "If you eat that, you'll die."
During the education period, we followed orders. They told us, "Always keep your gas mask with you." Sometimes we could go into town for the night. They'd take us in a truck, we'd go to the movies and have fun in town, then the truck would pick us up again and take us back to the unit.
Ishii, the unit leader, was an exalted man—he was higher than the emperor. I thought that he was a great man because of the water filtration system he had invented. I almost cried from appreciation.
Sometimes I drove truckloads of Chinese for tests. Around May 1941—we were still wearing winter uniforms—we were told to load some Chinese prisoners into a truck. There was just a mat rush on the floor o
f the truck. We had guns, but I don't think they were loaded. The newest members of our group had less than half a year of service.
The officers told us where to take the Chinese. We pulled the canopy over the back of the truck and started out. There were between twenty and thirty of them. We drove for about three or four hours and we were told to stop and unload the Chinese. We were in an open plain; there was nothing around. The interpreter told the Chinese, "Go!" and they were happy to be running around. They were all men, all built better than we were, some in good clothing with shoes, others in sandals. Some were coal carriers, still black with coal dust the way they had been when they were picked up. Others were dirty with the soil of whatever work they were doing.
The truck went back empty. A couple of civilian employees and four or five soldiers stayed. A few days later, I carried another load of about the same number of people out there to the same place. The ones we had brought before were still there, lying huddled together on the ground in groups of five or six, blue with cold, begging, "Help . . . help." So we carried them by hand back to the truck. When we got back to the unit, we were ordered back to the barracks. That was the only time I ever carried anyone in such bad shape, but I made three or four trips out to the plain carrying prisoners. They were strong and healthy when we hauled them out there, but later they were shaking, screaming: "My stomach hurts!"; "I'm finished!": "I'm dying!"