Page 19 - Marutas of Unit 731

construct the Zhong Ma complex to house the Togo Unit. Ishii named it
aer Togo Heihachiro, who was one of his favorite war heroes and the

greatest naval strategist who brought Japan victor y over Russia during the

Russo-Japanese War. e Chinese laborers were under paid and constantly

watched by guards, limiting their movements and preventing them from

seeing what was happening in the complex. e complex was completed in

one year and had 100 rooms, 3-meter-high brick walls and a surrounding
electric fence. One thousand captives at a time were imprisoned. To ensure

secrecy, security guards patrolled the complex 24 hours a day ever y day.

Saburō Endō, Director of Operations of the Kwantung Army, once inspected

the “ Tōgō Unit.” In his book, “e Fieen Years’ Sino-Japanese War and Me”,

he described it as follows:

[It was] converted from a rather large soy sauce workshop,

surrounded by high rammed earth wall. All the attending

militar y doctors had pseudonyms, and they were strictly

regulated and were not allowed to communicate with the
outsiders. e name of the unit was “ Tōgō Unit.” One by one,

the subjects of the experiments were imprisoned in a sturdy

iron lattice and inoculated with various pathogenic bacter ia

to obser ve changes in their conditions. ey used prisoners

on death row in the prisons of Harbin for thes e exper iments.
It was said that it was for national defense purposes, but the

experiments were performed with appalling brutality. e

dead were burned in high-voltage electric furnaces, leaving

[10]
no trace.