Page 39 - MaterialsTrial-JapaneseArmy-1950

in bacteriology and who used their knowledge to conduct scientific research and experimental
work for the purpose of devising new types of bacteriological weapons and of manufacturing
them on a mass scale as a means of active aggression.

Detachment 731 was supplied with equipment sufficient for the mass production of means
of bacteriological warfare and could therefore meet the Kwantung Army's requirements, Jin
bacteriological weapons.

Detachment 731 had a number of divisions—the functions of which I described at previous
interrogations—which engaged in devising new types of germs of infectious diseases suitable
for war purposes, in devising methods of long storage of bacteria, of increasing their
durability and of producing them on a mass scale.

The detachment's General Division, of which I was also in charge in the period of April-
June 1941, dealt with the distribution of personnel, finance, the planning of the detachment's
work and also with organizing supplies for the prisoners in the prison of Detachment 731. At
that time, through the General Division of which I was in charge, I maintained contact with
the Japanese Gendarmerie for the purpose of obtaining prisoners upon whom experiments in
forcible injection with lethal bacteria were to be made.

The 4th (production) Division, of which I was in charge from 1941 to 1943, was actually a
factory for the manufacture of pathogenic germs. The Production Division was supplied with
excellent apparatus for cultivating bacteria and this enabled us to produce monthly in a pure
form about 300 kilograms of plague germs, or 500-600 kilograms of anthrax germs, or 800-
900 kilograms of typhoid, paratyphoid or dysentery germs, or as much as 1,000 kilograms of
cholera germs. Such quantities of bacteria were not actually produced every month, they were
the calculated wartime requirements. Actually, the division produced bacteria in the
quantities needed for the detachment's current work.

For the purpose of testing the types of bacteriological weapons produced, and also of
devising means of treating epidemic diseases, Detachment 731 constantly performed
experiments on living people—Chinese and Russian prisoners, whom the Japanese
Gendarmerie in Manchuria especially sent to the detachment for this purpose.

To keep the prisoner experimentees, Detachment 731 had a special prison situated in the
interior of the detachment's premises; here the experimentees were kept in strict isolation.
The members of the detachment called the prisoners "logs." I myself frequently heard this
term applied to the experimentees by the Chief of Detachment 731, General Ishii.

Laboratory experiments on living people were performed by the lst Division.

In the spring of 1942, in addition to my other duties, I, for one month, acted as Chief of the
1st Division.

The lst Division conducted research work in the sphere of antiepidemic measures, but the
main object of this work was to devise the most effective means of bacteriological warfare;
and it tested the final results of its work on living people who were confined in the prison

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