Page 47 - MaterialsTrial-JapaneseArmy-1950
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aforementioned expedition also took with it typhoid germs, but I myself do not exactly
remember this.
The object of General Ishii's expeditions of 1940 and 1942 was to perform experiments to
devise methods for the mass dissemination of bacteria under definite fighting conditions. At
the same time, however, there were actual cases of the practical employment of bacteria as a
weapon of war against the Chinese Army. The plague-infected fleas used by General Ishii's
expedition in 1940 caused outbreaks of plague in the area in which they were disseminated,
concerning which I gave detailed evidence at the interrogation on October 22, 1949. Whether
the object was achieved as a result of the use of the afore-mentioned bacteria, I do not know.
The bacteria that were produced under my direction were used for experiments to devise
methods of disseminating bacteria under field conditions that were carried out on a proving
ground especially equipped for this purpose at Anta Station. These experiments were
performed on living people who were called "logs."
At the time I served in the detachment, I knew that the detachment, had a special prison in
which to keep the people to be experimented on, and who were doomed to die as a result of
these experiments.
Experiments on the proving ground at Anta Station were carried out systematically. I
myself took part in two of them— the first at the end of 1943, and the second in the spring of
1944.
On each occasion ten experimentees, who looked like Chinese, were brought to the
proving ground; preliminary to the experiments they were tied to stakes driven into the
ground, then bombs containing bacteria were exploded near them. As a result of the first of
the afore-mentioned experiments, some of the experimentees were infected with anthrax and,
as I learned later, they died.
On both these occasions I went to the Anta proving ground for the purpose of ascertaining
on the spot the effectiveness of the action of the bacteria I produced. . . .
In addition to the foregoing, I know that Detachment 731 systematically performed
experiments on living people under laboratory conditions. In these cases the experimentees
were forcibly infected with various kinds of bacteria, after which they were kept under
observation for the purpose of discovering the most effective infectious-disease germs.
The performance of experiments on living people accelerated the solution of the problem
that confronted the detachment of devising the most active means of bacteriological warfare
and methods of disseminating them for the purpose of infecting human beings.
Preparing to conduct bacteriological warfare, the Japanese High Command took measures
to increase the potentialities of bacteria production. It was for this purpose that, in 1944,
Detachment 731 began to receive from Japan new equipment which, as former Chief of the
detachment's 4th Division, Oota Kiyoshi, told me, was more perfect than the old, and enabled
the work of cultivating bacteria to be conducted on the conveyer system.
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