Page 79 - MaterialsTrial-JapaneseArmy-1950

itself with problems pertaining to water purification and water supply for the Kwantung
Army, as well as the combating of epidemic diseases. It was known in the Kwantung Army
by the name of "Manshu Detachment 731," that is, the 731st Manchurian Detachment of the
Kwantung Army. This name was given the detachment because in addition to the functions it
nominally carried out it had other, secret, tasks. As research in the detachment was activized
and the significance and importance of its work grew, the need arose to increase the
detachment's personnel and expand its laboratories and territory.

In connection with this, a new decree was issued by the Emperor of Japan in 1940, .under
which the main part of the detachment was transferred to the vicinity of Pingfan Station
(approximately 30 kilometres south of Harbin). Here the detachment conducted its basic
research, experimental and production work. All the construction work in the vicinity of
Pingfan Station, where the detachment took up quarters, had been begun in 1939, and by the
time the detachment moved there the construction work was completed.

In 1940 there thus remained in the city of Harbin the divisions dealing with purely
antiepidemic work and medical treatment, while all the other divisions, which were engaged
in work connected with preparing bacteriological warfare, had been transferred to Pingfan
Station.

In addition, the emperor's decree of 1940 provided for increasing the personnel of the
detachment to 3,000, this number including the branches set up in various districts of
Manchuria by this same decree, as well as for the structural partitionment of the detachment
into divisions.

Everything that I have told about the history of the origin of Detachment 731 I know from
the documents of the detachment's General Division which I examined in 1941, and from the
words of Colonel Oota, former Chief of the detachment's General Division, from whom I
took over in 1941, as well as of Lieutenant Colonel Murakami Takashi of the Medical
Service, Chief of the detachment's 2nd Division. . . .

During one of my visits to General Ishii in the summer of 1941, after Germany had begun
war on the Soviet Union, General Ishii, referring in the presence of divisional chiefs
Lieutenant Colonel Murakami and Colonel Oota Akira, to the need for intensifying the
detachment's activity, read out to us an order of the Chief of the Japanese General Staff
insisting upon the speeding up of research work on plague bacteria as a means of
bacteriological warfare.

The order made special mention of the need for the mass breeding of fleas as plague
carriers. This order was written by hand in India ink. At present I do not remember exactly by
whom it was signed.

Once, during a talk with leading officials of the detachment in his office in the summer of
1941,General Ishii, speaking about the reasons that had prompted Japan's military circles to
form such a research body as Detachment 731, said that Japan did not possess sufficient
natural resources of metals and other raw materials required for the manufacture of weapons,
and hence she had to develop new types of weapons, the bacteriological weapon being

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