Page 34 - Unit 731

Research Center. Among these videos, the interview with Toshimi Mizobuchi in September 2004 is extremely valuable.
Toshimi Mizobuchi joined the Hayashiguchi Division of Unit 731 on 1 April 1943. In March 1945, he was transferred to the headquarters of Unit 731.
Before the retreat of Unit 731 after the end of the Second World War, he was appointed to head the ‘Unit 731 Destruction Division’. When Masataka Mori
asked him the purpose of the establishment of Unit 731, Mizobuchi replied:

I think the purpose of Unit 731 was to attack by using bacteria and to protect us from similar attacks by our enemies. Because biological and chemical warfare were banned under the International
Convention, many countries in the world were secretly doing certain research. The existence of Unit 731 has been the biggest secret of our country [Japan]. From my point of view, our Unit was
established under the protection of the entire country [Japan]. 15
Toshimi Mizobuchi commented on Shirō Ishii’s merits: ‘Ishii had three doctoral degrees: medicine, pathology and engineering. His research dissections on
the Ishii-style water filters allowed him to obtain doctoral degrees in pathology and engineering. The foresighted-Ishii introduced preventive healthcare to
the army’.
Mizobuchi’s narrative confirms the motive and method of destruction of Unit 731: on 9 August, Unit 731 established ‘Unit 731 Destruction
Headquarters’. General Division Head Sumimasa Ota (太田澄) was appointed Head Commander. The Division started destroying the special prison block
7 and block 8, killed the imprisoned ‘testers’, and burned all the research documents and experimental equipment.
On 9, 10, 11, and 12 August, around 2,000 members of Unit 731 were divided into three batches and took the dedicated railway to leave the pingfang.
The train passed through Changchun, Siping, Tonghua, Pyongyang, Gyeongseong, Yongsan, and finally arrived in Busan. In the afternoon of 24 August,
Shirō Ishii arrived in Busan. The members of Unit 731 eventually went back to Japan from Sengi, Hagi, Susa, Hakata, and other places.
On 12 August, Unit 731 worked with Ishihara sappers to put bombs around the site and bombed the Sifanglou; on 13 August, they bombed the boiler
room of Dynamics Division; and on 14 August, at 2 p.m., Shirō Ishii flew back to the headquarters in Harbin by plane. He made an order—‘the train will
arrive in two hours. All staff in the headquarters must get on the train and leave’.
According to the oral narrative of Toshimi Mizobuchi: ‘Unit 731 continued putting fuel on each building and set them afire. Once it was on fire, there
would be surprisingly massive sounds of explosion. When people saw from the train, without any order (to do so), they saluted the burning site. I think it
was similar to when ancient people saw the fall of a castle town’.

Sadao Koshi
Sadao Koshi, from the Transportation Division of Unit 731, was a driver for Shirō Ishii. He also transported ‘humans’ a few times. ‘Human’ in this context
here means ‘human beings for experimentation’.
In 1994, Koshi accepted an interview request from scholar Masataka Mori:
… although this is banned by the International Regulation, things happened two months before the defeat [of Japan] were too impressive to me. Me and Sergeant Nakayama were on the way to collect
marutas, about 40 pieces, which means 40 people, all white Russian. Every time [we transported them] to the fixed destination, which was Sifanglou. [We] translated to the marutas: ‘now we are
going to give you vaccination. Come down one by one.’ Then we killed all 40 people one by one by potassium cyanide. Why did we kill them all? Because there were too many experimentees, and we
could not send them back to the consulate. Since they were useless, we killed them all. 16
Koshi continued:
At Anda testing ground, [we] tied the legs and hands of the ‘experimentees’ on the cross, placed an iron-made plate on their chest, and these 40 people were placed in a circle. Inside the circle, we put
about 25 grams of bombs. The bombs sometimes carried virus for plague, sometime cholera or anthrax. Observers retreated 4,000 meters away from the circle. They set a timer for the bombing and
observed the ‘experimentees’ being infected. 17
In the book written by Sadao Koshi, he wrote:
In February 1944, at Anda testing ground, one experimentee escaped before the bombing. When me and Nakayama noticed, he was out from the cross. He started to help the others to get out from the
cross. When we went towards the crowd, all 40 people escaped and ran away in all different directions. Because they all had fetters on their legs, they were not able to run far. We used our car to hit
them one by one. Human lives are so fragile. Just one hit and they are gone. 18
In 1983, Sadao Koshi published Hinomaru ha akai namida ni (Bloody Tears on Hinomaru) exposing the events at Anda testing ground of Unit 731.
In 1994, Koshi revealed in an interview:

I am so tired now. After the book was published, I was blamed by multiple telephone calls, and more than 1,000 letters were sent to my home. [The threat was like] ‘Why do you reveal the truth? I will
kill your family.’ At 2 and 3 a.m., I was blamed every moment. I was really about to go crazy. I put a cotton blanket on the telephone and put it inside the closet eventually. I almost did not get out of
the door. Because of the book, I was completely turned into a victim. 19
From this oral narrative, we understand most of the veterans who chose to reveal the truth were lower ranking employees of Unit 731. Due to their status in
the Unit, they were not able to get to the core secrets of the Unit. Their exposed information can hardly be compared with the rich information of Unit 731
given to the US by high-ranking core members who supplied the US with important data and statistics as well as experiment reports.
Core members in the Unit supposedly sworn to keep secrecy, did not keep secrets for the country. When their lives were threatened by trial, they chose
to abandon the Bushidō spirit and pride of militarism in exchange for their pardon. After the investigation by the US, these members never spoke again
about the truth publicly. Even so, could they really spend the rest of their life in peace?

Leading by the Elites: Crimes by Doctors of Medicine
It is clear that, as represented by Unit 731, Japanese Army Hospitals, Field Hospitals, and the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Departments
committed various organised medical crimes, such as bacterial warfare, human experimentation, frostbite experiments, and live body dissection. As these
war crimes have been covered up and denied in the mainstream in Japanese society, they therefore have remained unresolved, creating challenging issues
and strained relationships between China and Japan.
Most army surgeons in Unit 731 were alumni of famous Japanese universities. They were elites who held doctoral degrees in bacteriology, serology,
epidemiology, cryptozoology, entomology, and botany. First division head Shirō Ishii graduated from the Department of Medicine Kyoto Imperial
University, and second division head Masaji Kitano, as well as being the head of general division Kawashima Kiyoshi (川島清), held doctoral degrees
from Tokyo Imperial University. These elite men became core members of the management and decision makers for the initiation of human
experimentation and biological warfare.
As medical experts and elites, doctors should serve their country with conscience, observe international medical regulations and medical ethics, and