731

“731”… What is 731? Have you heard of this “lab”? It was actually a facility that researched how to kill people efficiently and cheaply. Some countries still use these methods today. 731; As we knew The killing capacity of Japanese soldiers was astonishing, and their methods of killing were even more horrifying. In the past, we have had detailed records and accounts of the tragic events of the Nanjing Massacre and the “Three Alls Policy.” Such cruel and cold-blooded atrocities seemed to represent the very limit of human brutality. But what you may never have imagined is that, during the war, there existed an even more inhumane plot for mass killing. Under Japanese planning, this scheme was being carried out secretly. Had it succeeded, the harm it would have inflicted upon humanity would have far exceeded that of the Nanjing Massacre and the Three Alls Policy. “731” was the designation of a Japanese military unit devoted to researching bacteria and creating plagues as weapons to kill people. Its headquarters was located in a place called Pingfang, more than twenty kilometers south of Harbin in Heilongjiang Province. After Japan’s defeat in 1945, this “city of death,” occupying 36 square kilometers and containing more than 150 buildings, was demolished by Japanese military engineers in just three days. In the days before August 15, 1945, Japanese imperial forces destroyed the entire germ-warfare factory in order to erase all evidence of their crimes. During the demolition, the explosions could clearly be seen and heard from nearby areas, with flames lighting up the sky. At the same time, large numbers of animals were released. To wipe out all traces of their unspeakable crimes, the more than two thousand Japanese personnel who left Pingfang were forced to swear an oath: 1. To forget everything that had happened there and never speak of it for the rest of their lives. 2. Never again to associate with former colleagues. 3. Never to hold public office in the future. To this day, most former members of Unit 731 kept their oath and carried the secret to their graves. Yet a small number of Japanese participants, unable to bear the burden of conscience, eventually stepped forward to testify about the crimes they had committed. Much of today’s research on Unit 731 has been pieced together from their testimonies and surviving documents. Even so, what these individuals knew represented only a small part of the full story. The people who truly experienced the terror of 731 were more than three thousand Chinese victims, including a small number of Mongolians and Soviets. None survived the endless torment and torture; not a single person walked out of Pingfang alive. The evil of the 731 incident was not limited to the atrocities committed in Pingfang and elsewhere. After the war, because of political intervention and shameful deals among powerful nations, the entire affair was deliberately obscured and distorted for more than thirty years. Only in recent decades has the truth gradually been revealed. Faced with overwhelming evidence, we are forced to confront accounts almost too horrifying to read. To test the human tolerance for poison gas, a White Russian mother and daughter were sent into a gas chamber while doctors observed their reactions through a glass window. The mother threw herself over her child in a desperate attempt to protect her, convulsing until death. To study frostbite, test subjects were forced to stand barefoot in temperatures of minus forty degrees until their legs froze so solidly that striking them produced a wooden knocking sound. One surviving photograph of such frostbite experiments has become infamous. Researchers also confined infected individuals together with healthy people to observe and record the entire process of infection. Vivisection — experimentation on living human beings — was the fundamental method of Unit 731’s research. Because anesthetics could alter bodily conditions and affect experimental results, many victims were dissected alive without anesthesia. The scope of the 731 incident was enormous. After the war, the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and other countries produced countless investigations and reports about the case. It is difficult to present a complete picture in a short time, but one name must be remembered: Shiro Ishii. He was the chief planner, promoter, and executor of Japan’s biological warfare program. Shiro Ishii was born into a prominent family in Kamo Village, Chiba Prefecture. It was said that he was exceptionally intelligent from childhood, able to memorize books after reading them once. In 1922, he graduated from Kyoto Imperial University. Standing about 1.8 meters tall, Ishii was driven by intense imperialist ideology and joined the military as an army doctor. This was near the end of World War I. In 1925, twenty-nine nations met in Geneva and, on humanitarian grounds, agreed to prohibit the use of poison gas and biological weapons. However, the United States and Japan did not sign the agreement. Ishii believed that if a weapon was terrifying, then it must also be effective. He became increasingly obsessed with biological warfare research. In 1927, he earned a doctorate in pathology and bacteriology and married Toshiko, the daughter of the university president Araki. Afterward, Ishii traveled at his own expense through nearly thirty countries in Europe and America. Witnessing the military and scientific achievements of the Western powers only strengthened his determination to develop biological weapons for Japan. Upon returning home, he vigorously promoted his germ-warfare plans, claiming that all major Western nations were secretly conducting similar research. According to scholar Wu Tianwei, Ishii argued that biological warfare was highly effective and inexpensive — “the poor man’s atomic bomb,” ideally suited to Japan’s national conditions. Soon he gained support from army officials, including Nagata and Araki Sadao, and began small-scale research at the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory of the Army Medical School in what is now Shinjuku, Tokyo. After the Mukden Incident, Ishii established a facility at Beiyinhe, northeast of Harbin, under official orders from the Japanese Army Ministry to develop biological weapons. During this period, the unit publicly operated under the name “Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Department.” The unit invented the Ishii-style water filter, which solved drinking water problems for the army and even earned imperial praise. In reality, Ishii devoted his entire life to two subjects: plague and water quality. The horrifying contradiction was that he kept the beneficial results for himself while using the destructive applications against others. Ishii worked tirelessly to cultivate powerful connections and promote himself. By 1936, one year before the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, his efforts paid off. According to Wu Tianwei, Emperor Hirohito ordered the expansion and renaming of two biological warfare units: one became Unit 100 in Changchun’s Mengjiatun area, while the other expanded near Harbin at Beiyinhe. Hirohito reportedly also provided Ishii with 250,000 yen in funding. Later-discovered documents revealed the official paper trail behind these funds. Supported by these authorizations and seals, Ishii launched his machinery of death. By 1941, when the unit was officially designated as “Unit 731,” the organization publicly known as the Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Department had already grown to more than three thousand personnel. Later interviews in Tokyo included testimony from former Unit 731 member Yoshio Shinozuka. Yoshio Shinozuka: I was once a member of Unit 731. On May 12 of that year, I arrived in Harbin, at a place called “Pingfang,” about 25 kilometers south of the city. The area had been designated as a special military zone. Our unit was commonly known as the Ishii Unit, and later renamed the Kamo Unit, or Unit 731. Although these names were used internally, externally it was uniformly referred to as the Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Department. In reality, however, “Pingfang” was continuously producing large quantities of pathogens and conducting research on cultivating bacteria for the purpose of launching biological warfare. Later, it went even further by carrying out live human experiments. It truly could be described as a highly advanced industrial city with fully developed scientific facilities. It included massive R&D institutions, manufacturing plants, and land and air transportation systems. But what deserves particular attention are the Fourth Division, responsible for production, and the First Division. I mainly belonged to the research department. As I mentioned, most of the people in the First Division were university professors, associate professors, lecturers, and teaching assistants. These individuals were gathered and organized into that department, where many major experiments were conducted. There is absolutely no doubt about this. According to statistics, beginning in 1938, Shiro Ishii used military orders to recruit more than one thousand outstanding scientists from famous universities throughout Japan to participate in this killing program. Even so, Ishii’s problems were not easily solved. Causing death with bacteria was one thing; using bacteria effectively as weapons for killing was another. He needed to determine which bacteria were most effective, how to cultivate them, package them, transport them, and spread them as epidemics in order to achieve the greatest lethal effect. This entire chain of technical problems was efficiently answered through live human experimentation. Ishii understood very clearly that these acts were inhumane, which is why he referred to the square building at Pingfang as “the secret within secrets.” 筱冢良雄: 我过去是731部队的队员，在那一年的5月12日来到哈尔滨，地点是在哈尔滨以南25公里处的“平房”。那里被设为特别军事区。我们这个部队一般通称为石井部队，后来又改称为加茂部队，731部队。虽然改成这样的名称，但是对外一致称为关东军防疫给水部。可是事实上，”平房” 是在不断大量制造病原菌，以及为了发动细菌战而进行病原菌繁殖的研究。后来更进一步对人做活体实验。确实称得上是一座设施完善的尖端科技工业城，这里包括了庞大的 R and D的机构制造工厂以及陆空运输设备。但值得我们注意的是第四部生产和第一部。我主要是负责研究的部门; 第一部如同我所说，大部分的人都是大学里的教授副教授讲师以及助教这样的人，将这些人集中组织起来在那个部门，曾进行过许多次的重大试验，这是绝对错不了的。据统计，从1938年开始，石井以军令征召了日本国内各知名大学的优秀科学家，一千余人参与这一项杀人计划。即使如此，石井的问题还是无法解决。因为细菌可以致人于死命是一回事，运用细菌杀人却是另一回事儿。他必须了解哪一种细菌最有效，如何培养怎么包装运送以及扩散变成病疫，进而达到最佳的杀人效果。这一连串的技术问题，石井都从活体实验中有效率地得到了解答。他十分清楚这是违反人道的行为，所以称“平房”的四方楼为秘密中的秘密。