Page 42 - Unit 731

Yoshio Tamura (田村良雄) of the youth class of Unit 731 revealed what he witnessed:

One morning, a Chinese was planned to be the tester for dissection whether he was dead or alive. I put disinfectant on his body, head and neck. The face of that Chinese turned purple, and blood
dropped to the floor from the stretcher. Oki shouted, ‘Two camphor solutions!’ and pointed two fingers at me which he ordered me to inject [into the Chinese patient]. The Chinese, who was tied by
his legs and arms, suddenly opened his eyes wide after the injection of camphor. He looked as if he would like to see what was happening. He turned his head with tear-filled eyes. He looked at the
ceiling. Hososhima used his hand to touch the neck of the Chinese, and he put the scalpel on it. Blood came out from the man’s neck as his head turned left and right non-stop. Hososhima used the
back of the scalpel to touch his heart and shouted, ‘Two camphor solutions!’ followed by a final cut in the Chinese’s neck. The Chinese left his last word ‘gui zi!’ [‘evil!’]. Hososhima used scalpels to
cut from the upper stomach to the lower stomach, and from the lower stomach back to the chest of the Chinese. [He] used a chainsaw to cut his chest bones and finally showed all the viscera. After 20
minutes, the Chinese’s body was chopped and the flesh was displayed on the surgery table with blood… 2
Oral Narrative of Head of Military Police
Torao Yoshifusa, former Section Chief of the third section of the Kwantung Army Kempeitai, confessed after the war that he accompanied the commander-
in-chief of the Kwantung Army Kempeitai, Major General Hara Mamoru, to inspect Unit 731.
Yoshifusa Taro said:
… we walked about three metres along a corridor, and arrived at a dissecting room after turning left. As we were looking, three Japanese military surgeons immediately stood and saluted when they
saw Unit Chief Ishii. Ishii said, ‘resume working,’ they resumed what they were doing. A corpse was displayed on a dissection table at the centre of the space, still bleeding and each rib was clearly
visible. Its skull was open; the brain fell to the left side of the body. Its hands and legs were fragmented, scattered at the right corner of the room. That bloody odour filled the room; even we, wearing
face masks, felt nausea. Shirō Ishii sneered, ‘Working here requires courage, but some military surgeons became madmen!’ 3
Living Teenager Dissected
When Unit 731 staff conducted vivisection, they exercised the so-called ‘education and training’ policy that allowed trainee doctors to observe. Nakaichi
Kasuga, a military policeman of Unit 731, confessed an occasion when a Chinese teenager was dissected:

That Chinese teenager, not over 12 or 13 years old, was nude on an operating table. His body was wiped with alcohol instead of general anaesthesia. Holding a scalpel and approaching the teenager,
Employee K from Tanabe Class, whose members stood around the table, cut his chest in a Y-shape. Gore squelched from a haemostat, and white fat was revealed. K expertly took out each organ such
as intestines, pancreas, liver, kidney and stomach from the sleeping teenager and threw them into drums. Someone immediately picked up the organs from the drums and placed them into a large glass
container filled with formalin solution in advance and closed the container with a cover. Kōzō Okamoto, the leader of the dissection class, while dissecting the body and explaining to the class, was
putting bloody organs into specimen bottles. Afterward, the trainee doctors swarmed the body, and each tried to practise dissection. 4
Scalpel Used on Prisoners
Among the ethically controversial actions of Unit 731, military surgeons acted even more controversially: they used other Japanese members of Unit 731 as
vivisection material. In A History of the Crimes of Unit 731 of the Japanese Army, co-written by Xiao Han and Peilin Xin, Yoshio Tamura confessed:

This dissection was strictly confidential. Sudō Yoshio was an employee of the First division, the Fourth department, who was infected with bubonic plague because of the production of plague
bacteria. In a dissection room of the special class, Hasoya the technician was conducting vivisection, and I was the assistant of Hasoya. Hasoya first dissected a Chinese. Immediately after this, Suzuki
ordered to dissect Sudō Yoshio, who was dying and was transferred to the dissection room. Naked Sudō Yoshio was moved to a dissection table by members of the special class. A few days
previously, Sudō had still been interested in talking about women, but now he was as thin as a rake, with many purple spots over his body. A large area of scratches on his chest were bleeding. He
painfully cried and breathed with difficulty.
I sanitised Sudō’s whole body with disinfectant. Because of the effect of the disinfectant, Sudō became conscious and opened his blank eyes to look around. Whenever he moved, a rope around his
neck tightened. After Suzuki carefully checked Sudō’s whole body, he ordered dissection to begin. I handed a scalpel to Hosoya, and Hosoya, reversing the scalpel, went towards Sudō and handed the
scalpel to Uno. Uno touched Sudō’s stomach skin, his hands slightly shaking. At this moment, Suzuki hysterically shouted, ‘Hurry up!’ Reversely gripping the scalpel, Uno pierced Sudō’s upper
stomach and sliced downwards. Blood flowed into a pool on the dissection table. Shouting ‘Brute!’ Sudō died with this last word. 5
Treated Like Animals: Oral Treatment, Injection and Infection Experiments
After the Second World War, Dr Norbert Fell of Fort Detrick, US Army, investigated Shirō Ishii, Tomosada Masuda, Junichi Kaneko, Ryōichi Naitō, and
others in Japan. On 20 June 1947, Fell submitted a ‘Brief Summary of New Information about Japanese BW Activities’, commonly known as the Fell
Report.
The Fell Report details human experiments with anthrax, bubonic plague, and cholera conducted by Unit 731 through various infection methods,
including oral medication and injection. It cites all data of human experiments conducted by Unit 731, which tested for the lowest infective dose and the
lethal dose of various bacteria. It includes the following:
Inserted rubber tubes into noses of three experimental subjects. These three people were all infected after inhaling 0.1 mg of bacteria.
The median lethal dose of Bacillus anthracis through subcutaneous injection was 10mg while it was 50 mg through oral intake. The death rate of those who received the subcutaneous injection was
66%, 90% for those who received the oral intake, and 100% for those who had open wounds. The median lethal dose of Yersinia pestis through subcutaneous injection was 10–6 mg while it was 0.1
3
mg through oral intake. The infection rate was 80% if breathing for ten seconds with 5 mg/m of the concentration. The incubation period of direct infection was generally three to five days, and one
would die three to seven days later following fever. 6
Yatarō Ueda had been an assistant participating in a comparative experiment of Yersinia pestis infection. In 1956, at a management station of war criminals
in Fushun, he said:

… at first, five experimental subjects were injected 0.1g Yersinia pestis, another five for 0.2 g, another five for 0.3 g, and the first comparison table was created based on observation results. Secondly,
five experiment subjects were embedded with 0.1 g, 0.2 g and 0.3 g Yersinia pestis respectively, and the second comparison table was created based on observation results. The third comparison table
was based on five experimental subjects who received oral intake of 0.1 g, 0.2 g and 0.3 g Yersinia pestis respectively. 7
That forty-five people were employed for one experiment on Yersinia pestis suggests that the number and scale of experiments conducted by Unit 731 were
quite high and large. These lives were ignored as human beings. To those military surgeons, maruta were ideal experiment material through which they
could obtain more accurate and more detailed data than they could achieve with other methods. This obviously violated the principle that medical research
should be for the benefit of humanity.
Victims Tied to Stakes: Bomb Experiments
To conduct large-scale human experiments in the field, Unit 731 set up the Chengzigou Experimental Field at its headquarters in Pingfang; the Anda
Special Experimental Field (now Anda city in Heilongjiang Province); and the Taolaizhao Experimental Field (in what is currently Fuyu city in Jilin
Province). Memoirs of veterans of Unit 731, the Arvo Thompson Report, the Thomas Inglis Report, and the Fell Report also record that Unit 731 tested
germ bombs on human bodies in the field.
Unit 731 conducted both field and laboratory experiments with Yersinia pestis as an agent of germ warfare. In his report, Fell notes: