Page 13 - MaterialsTrial-JapaneseArmy-1950

Administration, at which he, Kimura, was present, General Ishii, Chief of Detachment 731,
had expressed the assurance that he would continue to receive arrested persons for
"experimental" purposes in the same way as in the past. (Vol. 2, p. 194.)

Official documents of the Japanese Gendarmerie found by Soviet troops in Japanese
archives in Manchuria corroborate that so-called "special consignments" of prisoners were
practised in 1939 and later. Among the discoveries was Order 224 of Major General
Shirokura, Chief of Gendarmerie of the Kwantung Army, in reference to sending a "special
consignment" of 30 prisoners to Ishii's detachment in 1939. (Vol. 17, pp. 35-38.)

That prisoners were killed on a mass scale is shown by the testimony of accused
Kawashima Kiyoshi:

"From 500 to 600 prisoners were consigned to Detachment 731 annually. I myself saw
whole batches of them being received from the gendarmerie by personnel of the detachment's
1st Division." (Vol. 3, p. 59.)

". . . From information known to me because of the character of my duties in the
detachment, I can say that not less than 600 persons died every year from experiments
performed on them by Detachment 731." (Vol. 3, p. 146.)

"... In the five years that the detachment was located at Pingfan Station, that is, from 1940
to 1945, not less than 3,000 persons passed through this death factory, and were killed by
being infected with lethal bacteria. How many died before 1940, I do not know." (Vol. 3, pp.
60-61.)

Similar crimes were perpetrated by Detachment 100, the 6th Section of whose 2nd
Division specially engaged in experiments on human beings.

Witness Hataki Akira, who was a laboratory assistant in Detachment 100, testified as to the
activities of the detachment as follows:

". . . Detachment 100 of the Kwantung Army was called an antiepizootic unit, but actually
it was a bacteriological unit, because it bred and cultivated the bacteria of glanders, anthrax
and cattle plague, that is, the germs of epizootic diseases. Detachment 100 investigated the
action of bacteria by means of experiments on domestic animals and human beings, for which
purpose the detachment had horses, cows and other animals, and also kept human beings in
its isolation cell, which I know from what I saw myself." (Vol. 13, p. 111.) Another witness,
Fukuzumi Mitsuyoshi, who served in Detachment 100 as a veterinary surgeon, testified:

". . . Being an experimental unit, Detachment 100 had a research staff of bacteriologists,
chemists, veterinaries and agronomists. All the work of this detachment was conducted in
preparation for bacteriological sabotage and warfare against the Soviet Union. The personnel
of the detachment and its branches carried on research ... in methods of employing bacteria
and virulent poisons on a large scale for the mass extermination of animals and human
beings.

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