Page 38 - Unit 731

After the conversation, Yutaka Mio bowed deeply again (see Fig. 12).

I listened to the apology from the abuser of my family and myself, and I thought of my relatives who participated in anti-Japanese activities and suffered under pressure and died. I kept calm and
restrained my emotions. I coughed and spoke slowly, ‘you arrested my father and cousin, tortured them and sent them to Unit 731. They died from human experimentation. Your guilt is serious. There
is hatred between us. Your guilt is inevitable. It will be recorded in the history of imperialist aggressive actions by Imperial Japanese Army. With the surrender of Japan, you were kept in the Fushun
War Criminals Management Centre and you deserved this. Within more than 10 years of that sentence, you admitted your aggressive action and regretted your crime. You were specially amnestied by
the Chinese government. Now you transformed from a war criminal to a new person, and regained the right to become a new man. And you came back to China and apologised to the Dalian city
government. Today you apologised to the victims, which means you accept your new life. In Chinese society, we have a saying “it is never too late to mend”. Now you accepted the fact of your war
crime, and it is forgivable. But you have to keep your word and become a person who is beneficial to Sino-Japanese friendship. Do not be duplicitous’.
Yutaka Mio listened to my words. He kept his head down, wept and bowed. The meeting lasted for more than ten minutes.
In 1995, Yibing Wang sued the Japanese Government in Tokyo for the first time. On 16 August, Yutaka Mio apologised to Yibing Wang again. This time
Yutaka Mio knelt in front of Yibing Wang, and Wang finally shook hands with Mio. Within one month, Mio had apologised to Yibing Wang twice—in
Tokyo and Harbin. There was a sentence on a Japanese review of the event saying ‘handshake over hatred’, and I wondered about the hatred between
Yibing Wang and Yutaka Mio. What did they feel? How can one handshake compensate for national disaster?
On 22 September 1999, the Tokyo District Court announced the result of the Unit 731 case:
… the court decided that during 15 years of war against the Chinese, the aggressive action of the Japanese army was against humanity and the fact of aggressive action was proved by a variety of
evidence and materials. The oral narratives given by victims and witnesses were true and reliable. The Japanese government should sincerely apologise to the Chinese civilians. Relationship between
Japan and China is basic to the two nations. No matter happened in the past or will happen in the future, in order to maintain the friendship between the two countries, the Japanese government must
understand its importance. 4
Lastly, Judge Go Ito said: ‘… personal suffering due to war should be settled at the national level, and a government has no right to give response’. Yibing
Wang’s appeal was ultimately rejected.
After the rejection, Yibing Wang was depressed. He visited the Unit 731 Museum and took some soil from the ruins. He bought the soil back to
Shenyang in a bag, put it into a cremation box, and considers it his father’s ashes. The box is in the cemetery of martyrs in Shenyang today.
On 29 July 2004, Yibing Wang sued the Japanese Government in Tokyo once again and failed. In 2005, the case was sent to the Supreme Court of
Japan. The Court rejected Wang’s appeal by reason of ‘the right to claims against Japan has been given up by the Japan-China Joint Communiqué’. From
1995 to 2013, Yibing Wang went to Japan five times, but any apology and reparation from the Japanese Government are yet to come.
I asked Yibing Wang, ‘When would you think of your father?’ Wang thought for a while, no one made a sound in the room among the five or six
people present. He finally said, ‘After my father was arrested by the Japanese, all these years, I missed my father. After the surrender of Japan, I missed
him even more. Why didn’t he come back?’ Yibing Wang sighed and continued, ‘I have lived to this age, and my children and grandsons are grown up, I
don’t want to think of it, don’t want to think of anything.’ I saw him use his shaking left hand to wipe away tears, then he was silent.
I asked Yibing Wang, ‘How is your life now?’ Yibing Wang said, ‘I am quite good. Now I am retired from a copper wire factory at Shenyang, and my
salary increased a while ago. Each month I receive a pension of more than 2,400 Chinese yuan. I had a hematencephalon and myocardial infarction and
stayed at the hospital for a while. Now I am fine.’
When the meeting was about to end, Yibing Wang signed his name on my notebook and we took a few photos together (see Fig. 13).
As I was about to say goodbye, I felt very sad. The rain had stopped and the sky was misty. On the way home, although I was with my colleagues, I felt
lonely. We boarded the train to the next station, Changchun, where we would meet with Fengqin Li, the next family member of a victim of a special
transfer.

Victim of the Second World War in a Peaceful Period: Fengqin Li

On 12 April 2015, we took the train D8095 from Shenyang to Changchun. There were few people in the compartment, and despite the sound of the train,
the atmosphere was quiet. I have visited Changchun numerous times, and as an historian, I often think of its history before arriving there.
Eighty years ago, Changchun—renamed Shinkyo by the Japanese—was the capital of the puppet state Manchukuo, and Aisin Gioro Henry Puyi ruled
as puppet emperor of Manchukuo for twelve years. The city, once the centre of power of Imperial Japan, is the provincial capital of Jilin, and it is well-
known internationally as the home of First Auto Works (FAW) Group Corporation. Among its many well-preserved historic buildings, the most famous is
the ‘Manchukuo old eight part’ including the Military Department (Sheriff’s Department), Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Ministry of
Transportation, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Education, Department of State and Department of Livelihood.
At 6.30 p.m., bilingual announcements reminded us to disembark the train. We arrived at the new Changchun West Station.
On the morning of 13 April, three of us visited the Museum of the Imperial Palace of the Manchu State, and that afternoon, we went to the home of
Fengqin Li.
I have known Fengqin Li since 2009. In November, she and I visited Japan and submitted the ‘application of family members of victims of special
transfer’ to the Japan Parliamentarians’ Union, expressing anger over human experimentation during the Second World War.
As a scholar and a victim, we also supported the suit against the Japanese Government by the victims of biochemical warfare. I had previously
introduced Li to a reporter from Harbin Daily for an interview, and she appeared on the news a few times. Today, as a researcher, I felt different seeing her
again (see Fig. 14).
Li lives on the first floor of a three-bedroom apartment of about 100 square metres, usually with her son. At her home, Li made dumplings and prepared
fruit for us. After lunch, she told me she has two sons and two daughters, and each of them have one child. The family are living a relatively comfortable
life. Then we talked about Li’s father, Pengge Li (see Fig. 15).

My father Pengge Li, also named Fuchang Li, was born on July 12, 1917 in Xiongyuecheng sutun, Geping of Liaoning Province [now Liming Village at Xiongyue, Yingkou city]. He graduated from
the Department of Communications in Fengtian Railway Campus. Li married Guilan Su in 1937, and one year later my brother Zhigui Li was born. Li worked at Mudanjiang railway station and lived
in the dormitory at the Jinling Street, Mudanjiang. In the summer of 1941, my father was arrested by the Mudanjiang Kempeitai and sent to Harbin Kempeitai, and later died in Unit 731 at the age of
25. I was born half-a-year later and I never met my father. [See Fig. 16.]
In 1958, my brother Zhigui Li applied to the Chinese Communist Party and needed to undergo a family background investigation. Someone claimed that my father died of an unknown cause, so
my brother did not get into the Party. In 1975, Zhigui Li applied to the Party again, Yingkou city again checked his family background. Investigators found that Pengge Li had worked at Mudanjiang
railway station and concluded that ‘Pengge Li was a good man’. So, Zhigui Li finally joined the Chinese Communist Party. Because of his application, I knew there was someone who knew about my
father’s past in the Mudanjiang railway station, and therefore I started to check my brother’s application materials.
The application included a detailed narrative of Naijia Zhou, a colleague of Pengge Li, written on 1 September 1975:
I graduated from the Fengtian Railway Campus in spring 1938. I worked at the Hengdaohezi station of Harbin–Suifenhe Railway for one year. In spring 1939, I was transferred to Mudanjiang station
as captain. In 1941, two captains were transferred to the station, one of them was Pengge Li and another one was Sun [name forgotten]. Pengge Li was a good man. He did not talk much and maybe
was not keen on making friends. In winter 1941, around the new year, when I was still captain, I heard that Pengge Li was arrested by the Japanese and his condition was unknown. In March 1942, I
was transferred to station assistant in Mudanjiang. One day, an older Chinese woman came to the station, and I found that she was the mother of Pengge Li. She cried hard and asked if I knew where
her son was who had not come home for a long time. His salary was stopped, and it was hard to maintain the family. She asked me for help. So, I asked Teiichi Hayashi [a Japanese man], the station