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they were not allowed to lie, but they did not dare tell the truth to their family and friends. In this way, they were a group of lonely and evil medical experts
working in a division that killed hundreds while they themselves were living in peace. Is that the reason for his Avatamsaka Sutra-reciting habit, in order to
wash away his guilt and for salvation?
One of Kawakami’s handwritten letters mentioned two letters written to him by Isoroku Yamamoto (山本五十六), the officer later charged with
orchestrating the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is strange that the two made contact. In 1944, when Kawakami died in Tokyo, his funeral was arranged by Shirō
Ishii, which also indicates a close relationship between Kawakami and Ishii.

Veterans Tell the Truth
On a rainy night in August 1945, before the escape of Unit 731 staff, Shirō Ishii ordered all members to keep the records top secret—a secret that should go
to their graves. Ishii himself, however, failed to do so. Facing the prospect of trial by the US Army in Tokyo, he revealed the truth about Unit 731 along
with abundant documents in return for his escape from trial.
Ishii’s daughter, Harumi Ishii (石井春海), told The Times on 29 August 1982: ‘As far as I know, it was true that a deal was made. But it was the US
side which approached my father, not the other way around.… What I would like to emphatically say … is: Isn’t it important that not a single man under
my father’s command was ever tried as a war criminal?’ 13
There are many who hold the same view as Harumi Ishii. In fact, most members of Unit 731 believed Shirō Ishii saved their lives. Ishii’s daughter, his
subordinates, and even Ishii himself ignored the most important issue: they covered up the inhumane nature and unethical war crimes conducted by Unit
731. Members of Unit 731 spent the remainder of their lives in a peaceful, dignified way and indeed brought the story to their graves.
Some members, including Yoshio Shinozuka (篠塚良雄), Fukumatsu Okawa (大川福松), Toshimi Mizobuchi (溝渕俊美), and Sadao Koshi (越定男),
did not go with the majority and revealed the story to the public.

Yoshio Shinozuka
Yoshio Shinozuka was the member of Unit 731 who revealed the truth in the most honest and active way. He was only fifteen when he joined the Unit in
1939, and until he went back to Japan, when he was thirty-two years old, Shinozuka spent seventeen years in war. He said: ‘I was like a stranger at that
time’. Yoshio Shinozuka, formerly named Yoshio Tamura (田村良雄), was from Chiba prefecture like Shirō Ishii. When Unit 731 collapsed in 1945, he
joined the Liberation Army led by the Chinese Communist Party. In 1952, Shinozuka turned himself in to the Liberation Army, confessing he was a former
member of Unit 731 and was later confined in the Fushun War Criminals Management Centre.
In 1956, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress promulgated ‘About the decision for the management of war criminals of Japanese
invasion of China’. The Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China announced the release of 1,017 Japanese war criminals who had been
charged with lesser war crimes and had exhibited good behaviour. Yoshio Shinozuka was one of these and was set free on 28 July 1956. A number of those
released from Fushun War Criminals Management Centre established the Association of Returnees from China (中国帰還者連絡会) whose purpose is to
reveal war crimes by the Japanese Army in China and to encourage friendship between China and Japan. Shinozuka is a permanent member of the
Association. He was often at the peace gatherings held in Tokyo and Hiroshima in Japan, as well as in Harbin and Changde in China.
On 25 June 1998, Shinozuka was invited by the San Francisco-based Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia (世界抗日战
争史实维护联合会), of which the co-author of this book, Professor Yue-him Tam, was the Executive Vice-President, to give talks in the US and Canada.
However, Shinozuka was denied entry at the Chicago international airport and repatriated back to Japan because he was identified as a war criminal on the
confidential list newly established by the Department of Justice in the United States, for the following reason: ‘… participated in inhumane behaviour
during WWII’.
After fifty years, ironically, the country that once exempted members of Unit 731 from trial showed concern for human rights. The US seemed to forget
how it exempted Unit 731 from guilt. Those veterans who spoke the truth, and those who did not, are free to enter the US, and even Ryoichi Naitō, the key
figure in the trade between the US and Japan during the trials, is able to visit the US. Why were those brave enough to face and speak the truth in public,
such as Yoshio Shinozuka, rejected by the US? Is this because Shinozuka spoke out before the entire world instead of exclusively and privately to the US?
In 2005, Shinozuka, then age eighty-three, visited the site of Unit 731 where he demonstrated the use of the bacteria incubator. The following year, he
participated in the Second International Conference on War Crimes in Biological Warfare held at Chengde, China. As a former member of Unit 731,
Shinozuka had connections with many Chinese historians and family members of victims.
As time goes by, there are fewer eyewitnesses from Unit 731 willing to tell the truth. On 20 April 2014, Shinozuka, aged ninety-two, the last veteran of
Unit 731 willing to talk about the past, passed away at his home in Chiba, Japan.

Fukumatsu Okawa
In 2008, the Heilongjiang Broadcasting Television decided to produce the documentary Immortal Memory, commissioning Mr Chengmin Jin and his crews
to Japan to visit Fukumatsu Okawa (see Fig. 9).
Fukumatsu Okawa, formerly named Fukumatsu Murada, was born on 18 August 1920. He worked at the Beian Army Hospital and later transferred to
Unit 731, where he participated in ‘live human body dissections’. Due to his hard work, Okawa gained praise from Shirō Ishii and was awarded a military
sword. Following his interview with the television crew, Okawa offered to donate the sword to Harbin, and wrote the donation letter to the Harbin
Government. Unfortunately, the donation to Harbin failed, but his handwritten narrative reveals a gruesome truth:

I joined the Medical Division of Japanese Army in Showa 15 (1940). Later I was appointed a job in the Beian Army Hospital. After three months of training, I started working at the pathology
laboratory immediately. We used mice, guinea pigs, apes and other kinds of animals for experiments of typhoid fever, dysentery, plague and cholera to observe their reaction. At the same time, we did
regular check-ups for the soldiers on their sputum, stool and pee. For the controversial issue ‘comfort women’ [sexually enslaved civilian women and girls], there were 30 to 50 of them in different
divisions, and we did regular check-ups on syphilis for those women. The Beian Army Hospital was also responsible for daily experiments on human bodies and animals under the command of Shirō
Ishii. To use gluten to produce penicillin was the reason to join Unit 731 in 1944. At that time, I knew I entered no ordinary place. Why did I reach this conclusion? Because there were three rules for
us to obey: ‘do not see, do not speak and do not listen’. Under these three rules, I had to do research on different viruses, rickettsia and other things every day. Especially on frostbite, cholera and
plague experiments on human and used human bodies to make specimens. Those human beings used in experiments were called ‘maruta’. They had no names, just numbers. There were Russian,
Chinese, Korean and Japanese. These were people under criminal punishment. All their names were undisclosed and were secrets, too. I did not feel good at the beginning. I could not work well. After
several days, I was getting used to it. I did dissection on two to three, five at the most, human bodies each day. I observed the condition of the frostbite, syphilis, plague and cholera-infected humans,
and put the viruses into glass bottles. At the same time, I needed to work with several people from the Yoshida Division for blood cultivation and conducted enrichment medium with egg incubators.
My former name was Murada Fukumatsu. I changed and hid my identity when I returned to Japan. 14
Toshimi Mizobuchi
A Japanese gentleman, Masataka Mori (森正孝), donated some of his video interview footage of veterans of Unit 731 to the Unit 731 International