Page 18 - Marutas of Unit 731

Chapter 3

A Beta Testing Site

Harbin, located in Northern Manchuria, was a culture hub in the 1930s. A
trading port and ver y diverse city, religions practiced there included

Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism, Islam, Judaism, Catholicism, Christianity,

and Russian Orthodoxy. Due to the Russian in uence, architecturally,

Harbin resembled more of a European city with cobbled stone streets,

department stores, and the pres ence of European artists. As with most
“Concession” cities in Imperial China, Harbin was divided into three areas—

the industrial area where the desperately poor lived, the middle class

Chinese area, and the “Russian Concession” where Wester n foreigners,

Japanese, and well to do Chinese lived.

Although it was not as super cially attractive as operating a human
experimentation facility in the middle of Tokyo, Harbin was still too

cosmopolitan for any biological warfare research to go unnoticed. Since

human experimentation was against inter national law, Ishii had to nd a

place that provided maximum secrecy. He chose a place in the Nan Gang

District, a seedy district in Beiyinhe, a village about 70 kilometers southeast
of Harbin, and began conducting human exper iments.

One day in 1932, Ishii and the Japanese army entered the village and

evacuated the whole block where Xuan Hua and Wu Miao intersected. ey

occupied a multi-use structure which had supported 100 Chines e vendors

selling clothes and food to the local villagers and set up a temporar y site for
large-scale human experimentation. ey then draed Chines e laborers to