by Hal Gold
There were also what we called "Q" operations. We would fill balloons with nitrogen and suspend containers of bacteria below them. They would be released to drift over Soviet territory to disperse bacteria. We never found out what effects this tactic had.
Why did the Japanese army research and develop bacteriological weapons? It was a way to kill a large number of people at low cost. The Geneva Convention's ban on biological warfare also caught the eyes of the Japanese. Unit 731's research did not produce many weapons for actual war, but mainly conducted research that was of no practical use, such as studying what happens when pathogens are injected directly into a person, and removing the organs of a healthy person for study.
These days, North Korea is receiving attention from the media. When I was serving in China, Kim II Sung was fighting against Japan's setting up the puppet state in Northeast China. We chased Kim for more than a year and devised plans to capture him, but we never succeeded. When I hear his name it brings back memories.
For fifty years, I said nothing about my experiences; I heard about the Unit 731 Exhibition here and came to see it. That made me remember those times and finally gave me the impetus to speak about what happened back then.
When we lost the war, the Chinese who had been my subordinates were friendly toward me. They said that Japan had been burned and razed flat, and that I'd be better off staying there than returning home. But I headed home and they helped me clear out when I left.
The Manchurians must already have known about Japan's losing the war when I first heard about it. They already had documents for appointments issued by either the army of Jiang Jieshi or Mao Zedong. We Japanese knew nothing about what was happening. Looking back at it now, it seems like a joke.
[In 1981, two reporters from the Mainichi newspaper sought out former members of Unit 731 for interviews. They concluded their coverage by noting that "naturally, some people did not want to talk. Some former members we approached said, 'You're mistaking me for someone else.' At the homes of others, they said, 'I can't talk about that,' and sent us away. One former technician, a lieutenant during the war, said that he would talk with us, but not in the house, so we interviewed him standing outside."
The interviews were carried in the November 27 issue of the newspaper. The following testimonies are excerpted from this article.]
Army major and pharmacist attached to Unit 731 (Anonymous)
[This resident of Hyogo Prefecture was sixty-six years old at the time of the interview. After the war, he went on to become the head of a medical research laboratory]
In April 1942, Units 731 and 516 joined together for tests near the Soviet border on the outskirts of the city of Hailar. The tests lasted three days and used approximately one hundred maruta. Four pillboxes were used, and two to three maruta were placed in a pillbox at a time for each test. Electrodes were placed on the victims and a desk and monitoring equipment were set up about fifty meters away.
Canisters of liquefied phosgene gas were thrown into the pillbox. As the gas spread and asphyxiated the victims, changes in their pulses and other vital signs were observed and recorded up until death occurred.
When death was confirmed, the officers went to the pillbox, checking for residual gas with litmus paper, and pulled out the bodies. A maruta who happened to survive was put through the test once again. There were no survivors. A tent was set up nearby where the dead were dissected.
One maruta was a sixty-eight-year-old man. Back at Unit 731, he had been injected with plague germs but did not die. He was put through the phosgene gas test and survived. An army doctor injected air into his veins, and he still did not die. The doctor then used an extra-heavy needle, and again injected air into the vein, but the man still survived. Finally, the doctors killed him by hanging him by the neck from a tree.
I remember the voices of surprise from the doctors when they dissected him. His internal organs were comparable to those of a young man.
One time, I saw a technician at Unit 731, a field-grade officer, carrying out tests aimed at combating frostbite. [The Mainichi article reported that the name of the technician was given, though it was not revealed in the article.] Five White Russian women were used in the test at the time.
The technician placed the women's hands into a freezing apparatus and lowered its temperature to minus ten degrees Celsius, then slowly reduced the temperature to minus seventy degrees. The condition of the frostbite was then studied.
The result of the test was that the flesh fell from the women's hands, and the bones were exposed. One of the women had given birth in prison, and the baby was also used in a frostbite test.
A little later, I went to look into the women's cells, and they were all empty. I assume that they died.
Army major and technician attached to Unit 516 (Anonymous)
[At the time of the interview, this man was a professor emeritus at a national university.]
In 1943, I attended a poison gas test conducted jointly by Units 731 and 516. It was held at the Unit 731 test facilities, east of Harbin. A glass-walled chamber about three meters square and two meters high was used. Inside of it, a Chinese man was blindfolded, with his hands tied around a post behind him. The gas was adamsite [sneezing gas], and as the gas filled the chamber the man went into violent coughing convulsions and began to suffer excruciating pain. More than ten doctors and technicians from the two units were present. After I had watched for about ten minutes, I could not stand it any more, and left the area. I understand that other types of gasses were also tested there.
Ishii Shiro's driver (Koshi Sadao)
[Koshi, who lost his own son to stray plague germs, has testified on video, on TV programs, and in person at the exhibitions. Part of his work included repeated trips to the gas chamber with a truck, each time carrying about ten maruta—and often with Ishii at his side. The gas chamber was a small installation inside a large building.]
There were different kinds of gas used for the tests. Mustard gas, lewisite, cyanic acid gas, and phosgene gas were all among the gases tested. Three of the chamber walls were glass, so that the conditions under which the victims died could be observed closely. Some of the maruta were tied to a dolly that rode on rails into the chamber. Then, the gas was piped in. We experimented with different concentrations. Photos and movies were taken, and very careful notes were made, such as what sort of symptoms a subject exhibited at how many seconds of inhalation. When the gas took effect, people would foam at the mouth.
A person's respiratory organs are similar to those of a pigeon. Generally, a person can maintain life in a given environment if a pigeon can. So pigeons were put into the chamber with the maruta as a comparison test. Sometimes, dogs were put in. All sorts of comparison tests were made.
At the Anda biological warfare bomb testing ground, we watched through binoculars from a distance of about four kilometers. There was very little sound when the bomb hit. Then, the contents released, appearing smoky. There was no gunpowder explosion that would kill the fleas. Each maruta had a head protector and a chest protector to prevent being killed by the bomb fragments. If bomb shrapnel were to get them, then the effects of the bacteria could not be evaluated. Only the arms and legs were exposed. Afterward, the progress of the plague through the body was observed.
Once, a maruta got loose, and, one after the other, they untied each other and began running away. Just about all forty of them scattered over the field. But there was no place to escape to by that remote airport. There was nothing else to do but get in the truck and run over them. Sometimes, I'd get one under the front; sometimes, I'd feel one crushed under the running board. In the end, all forty were killed.
Around June 1945, we knew that things were coming to an end. About that time, one day a truckload of about forty Russians came in. There were a lot of maruta already on hand, and there would be no need for them. So, the Russians were told that there was an epidemic in the region, and that they should get off the truck to get preventive injecti
ons. Then, they were injected with potassium cyanide. The men administering the injections rubbed the arms of the Russians with alcohol first. If you're going to kill someone, there's no need to disinfect the injection area; that was just to conceal the real intention. It only took a small amount, and even those big Russians fell back as soon as the injection was given. They didn't even make a sound—they just dropped.
Pharmacist attached to the laboratory at Dalian (Meguro Masahiko)
The last time I saw Ishii was at Dalian, around August 10, 1945. Everybody was gone, except for four or five people who stayed behind to blow up the buildings. Ishii wanted pictures of the site taken after the buildings were destroyed. He said he needed them for the Army Ministry. Large quantities of photos were taken and developed before Ishii left. He took the photos and flew to Tokyo.
After the war, there were fantastic payments to former Unit 731 members. Some people got up to two million yen. That kind of money was unheard of in those days, around 1948 or 1949. It was unbelievable. Maybe the American army brought it in: I don't know where it came from, but, almost without exception, anyone connected in any way at all with Unit 731 got something. That was the best-paying job there was.
A lot of university professors were connected with Unit 731. Especially upper-level people, like in the Ministry of Health and Welfare and those concerned with vaccines. They all had some connection with the Ishii unit in some way. They never said anything about it, but they all received pay for working there. Those are the people who built the foundation of today's Japan.
Captain, Japanese Imperial Army (Kojima Takeo)
[Kojima spoke at Tsukuba City in Ibaraki Prefecture.]
Perhaps there are some people here at this Unit 731 Exhibition who think that this was all there was to Japanese aggression at the time. Unit 731 was merely one segment of the dark shadow of Japan's aggression, and I would like to tell of my experience in this.
I graduated university in 1939, and in December of that year I joined the army. I was sent to the Kwantung Army in Shantung Province, where I spent six years, until the end of the war.
I learned Russian, and in May 1945, I was transferred to Intelligence, where I spent four months gathering data and listening in on and decoding Russian messages. After four months of this, it was as good as knowing nothing at all. Finally, they attacked. When they did, they did not use any coded telegraphic terms or coded text in their communications. Everything was sent in normal Russian.
We established the location of the Russian incursion with radio direction finders. We knew that after crossing the border, they had made a quick advance of eighty kilometers. That distance meant that they were not infantry, but mechanized units. Shortly after the attack, we retreated to the Korean border. There, I was captured and sent to a camp in Siberia. I was there for three years, and for two years after that I was transferred from one camp to another.
I was in the army for six years, and Siberia for five. In October 1949, the present country of China was born. Of the Japanese who had been in China and were then being held prisoner in Russia, 1,050 of us who were designated war criminals were sent back to China. We were incarcerated in a camp together with Chinese who were also considered war criminals, such as those who had served under Pu Yi or his brother. Among these approximately one hundred prisoners was the transportation minister of the puppet state of Manzhouguo.
I spent another six years in China. Finally, after seventeen years, I came back to Japan. I had joined the service at twenty-two years of age and returned home at thirty-nine.
We were born and raised in a society of emperorism. A person's absolute responsibility above the army and government was to the emperor. The emperor was a living deity. The emperor's command was supreme and controlled the entire country. We were told how we must serve the emperor, how we should behave toward our parents, how we should behave toward our teachers, and how we should behave toward our siblings. We were taught that Japan is a sacred country, that the people of Japan are a superior race, that the people of China, Korea, Southeast Asia, and Russia were all inferior races, and the superior race must govern them. And, by doing so, we would bring them happiness. This was the cause to which Japan must devote itself. In addition, shrines were built all over the country, and we all professed loyalty to the country and the emperor. This was our prewar education.
The purpose of the war, to put it bluntly, was to gain natural resources and create a market in the occupied lands for Japanese goods. The eight hundred thousand troops of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria were all self-sufficient from the land. With certain, limited exceptions, even arms were produced there. In order to form an army close to the border, seventy thousand Chinese were forced into service to help us hold our positions. This information could not be allowed to be released, so later these Chinese were all killed in mass executions and buried. In later years, with the building boom in Manchuria, bones have been unearthed at construction sites.
Soon after we went into the service, we were given training to get our courage up. We were ordered to watch beheadings. Chinese were made to sit by a hole in the ground, and the seasoned soldiers would cut their heads off. Blood spurted up from the neck into the air, and the bodies would roll into the holes.
Then we had bayonet practice. Victims had their hands tied behind them around a tree, and were used as bayonet targets. We had to watch this as part of training. This was a shock to me, and for two or three days, food would not pass through my throat. But, two years later, I became an officer in charge of a platoon, with about twenty-five men under me. Later, I became a company commander with one hundred fifty men, and that meant that if I didn't build strong platoons and a strong company, I would fall behind. And so I, too, tested the courage of the soldiers under me by using Chinese prisoners. This was normal training in the Japanese army.
In my first experience in battle, we were about to move into the combat zone. The Chinese knew we were coming, and their soldiers took off their uniforms and dressed like farmers. We couldn't tell farmers from soldiers, so our orders were to kill any men we came across.
We traveled through the night, and by dawn we were approaching the combat area. Also at dawn, farmers were leaving their homes and heading for the fields. My men killed them. Some were cut down with swords by soldiers on horseback. If we saw farmers working in the fields, we shot them.
What I will talk about next is something that is extremely difficult for me to say before you. Once, when I was leading my soldiers along the banks of the Yellow River, we came across a solitary house. My men opened the door, and there was an old man, a young couple, and two children inside. They looked at me with terror in their eyes. I ordered my men to kill them. The soldiers lined them up side by side—the old man, the married couple, a boy about ten years old, and another boy about seven—and shot them.
The next day, I thought I'd check the house. The old man, the couple, and the older child were dead. The seven-year-old boy was sprawled out face up on the earthen floor, staring at me. I just turned and left the house. Things like these were normal, daily occurrences. This was just one operation.
From 1942, the Japanese war front expanded, and there was a shortage of labor. It was difficult for Japan to meet production requirements. So it was decided to round up able-bodied Chinese and send them to Japan as laborers. We held meetings for about a month to figure out how this could be done. It was like moving pieces around on a game board.
The method we decided on was another field operation. We established a circle thirty-two kilometers in diameter encompassing entire villages and settlements. We then lined the circumference with several tens of thousands of soldiers. The troops started moving into the circle, pressing everyone in toward the center, just as if we were on a rabbit hunt. We had a tank corps in reserve in case a settlement put up strong resistance. When there was a village or settlement up ahead, I would fire off a machine gun, and that would scare everyone away from us and into the center. Whenever
we could, we captured Chinese and handed them over to the kenpeitai officers. They would look the men over, pick out those who seemed able to do physical labor, tie their hands behind them, and then string them together like beads. We conducted this encircling operation three different times through the fields and mountains of the Shantung Peninsula, and rounded up some eight thousand Chinese. These records are in the archives of Japan's Self-Defense Agency in Tokyo.
In other operations, acting on orders from the commander of the army, we would pick out villagers at random—both old and young—and torture them to get information on where arms were hidden or being made. Then, we would kill them.
We also worked with Unit 731. Whenever we were out on an operation and an infectious disease broke out in a village, we would call off the operation, return to our base immediately, and receive inoculations. At times, we went into areas where cholera had broken out. We had practiced for a week beforehand how to disinfect ourselves as quickly as possible after being exposed in such areas. First, we would disinfect ourselves, then the weapons and the horses. We also disinfected our food. After these training sessions, we worked in cholera-spreading operations.
Cholera germs were introduced into the targeted area. We would first determine that the disease had actually broken out, and then move in. Whenever the Japanese army moved in, the Chinese would always run away. As they did, they spread the disease, and the cholera infected one person after the other and spread the disease, according to our plan. The dead and those who couldn't move were lying all around. It was summer, and they were black with flies. It was a gruesome sight. We continued this operation for about two weeks, and the success reports on the mission stated that about twenty thousand Chinese died from cholera. There were 1,200 men in our operation, and among these two hundred were identified as carriers of the germ. Fifty of them developed cholera, and five of them died. These five men, for some reason or other, did not receive preventive inoculations. The ones who were detected as carrying the germs were treated, but it took many days before they were completely cleared of the disease.