Page 44 - Unit 731

In 1983, Professor Takao Matsumura of Keio University discovered a report of human experimentation with poison gas. ‘The Harm to Skin Incurred by
Yellow Paintball and General Clinical Observation’ consists of forty-seven pages with three maps and was written by Lt-Col. Ikeda Naeo of the Kamo
16
Division. Kamo Division was the preliminary name of Unit 731. It recorded experiments conducted from 7–10 September 1940 at Mudanjiang on twenty
people placed in simulated shelters, trenches, and sitting rooms. Test subjects were attacked with mustard gas in order to observe reactions and collect data.
The aforementioned report recorded:
The gun shot 1,800 mustard bombs on area one and 3,200 on area two. Area three was shot with 4,800 mustard bombs. There were five testers at area one. Their numbers were 287, 280, 296, 294 and
376. Area two contained six testers, and their numbers were 256, 464, 468, 490, 499 and 513. Area three had nine testers whose numbers were 303, 485, 486, 372, 358, 259, 449, 375 and 265. 17
Following the attacks, observation was done after four hours, twelve hours, twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours, and seventy-two hours. The symptoms of
the testers, their skin, eyes, and condition of respiratory and digestive organs, were well-recorded in a detailed list. This was the method used by Unit 731
on marutas: victims known by three-digits instead of names.
The Struggle of Marutas

Although their victims were only numbers to the staff of Unit 731, stories of their resistance were recorded in the novel The Devil’s Feast, written by
Seiichi Morimura. The following is an excerpt:
It was early June in 1945, on a sunny morning. There were two Russian ‘marutas’ kept in the No.7 prison. One of them said he did not feel well and lay down on the floor. Another informed the guard
that ‘the person in this room looks unusual’, and he was with the sick cellmate with handcuffs on his hands. The members of Unit 731 saw this as an unusual condition in the prison so they went
entered the cell. The Russian lying on the floor suddenly sprang up and knocked the guard down. The two Russians opened their handcuffs, took the keys and opened the other cells one by one, while
yelling ‘Run outside, run!’ The entrance of the special prison, however, was blocked by a metal door, and the rest of Unit 731 staff were inside the prison with guns. Some marutas who were not able
to escape, including Russian and Chinese, were walking the corridors and kept yelling and shouting.
Members of Unit 731 yelled at the prisoners: ‘Go back to the cells or we will shoot you. Go back quickly. Don’t shout’. One Russian shouted to the members of Unit 731: ‘You are threatening us
with guns. But we are not afraid … Japanese are cowards. Release us now. We’d rather be killed by you now than used as experimental objects like guinea pigs’.
This Russian held up his fist, hit the fences and kept yelling loudly. One Chinese in black clothes yelled at the staff of Unit 731 and beat his chest strongly at the same time. The confident shouts
and angry faces made the members of Unit 731 angry. One of them shot a Russian to death. The rebellion by marutas was suppressed. 18
One of the eyewitnesses on staff at Unit 731 recalled:
When I remember the words of that Russian, it was a wish from the deepest part of a heart of a man whose freedom was taken away. But at that time, I could not understand his emotion. I was thinking
marutas are not human. How can we be looked down on by them? How can they rebel? Before his death, the powerful attitude of his protest against the guns left an impressive image on us. The
Russian was knocked down by a bullet, and we used bullets to shut their mouths up. But spiritually we were all lost in front of the marutas who had no freedom and no weapons. At that time, we
understood in our hearts that justice was not on our side. 19

Human Experimentation with Anthrax and Glanders
In November 2011, I visited the Science, Technology and Business Division of the Library of Congress to search for Unit 731 material. With the assistance
of Ms Tomoko Y. Steen, I received two reports on human experimentation written by a member of Unit 731: ‘Report A of Human Experimentation by
Anthrax’ and ‘Report G of Human Experimentation by Glanders’. These two reports are the core information of the secret deal between the US Army and
Unit 731 in the early period after the end of the Second World War (see Fig. 23).
30 Cases of Human Experimentation with Anthrax: Report ‘A’

‘A’ refers to anthrax, the abbreviation used by Unit 731. The report is 406 pages in English, with ‘Dugway Proving Ground Technical Library, May 6,
1960’ on the cover.
Pages 292 to 311 concern changes to adrenal glands. In this section, microfilms No. M325 and No. M54, both marked ‘Detrick’, are indicated. Fort
Detrick, Fredericksburg, Maryland, is where the US Army conducted secret research on bacterial warfare. It proves Report ‘A’ was kept at the Detrick base
and that the army conducted human experimentation with anthrax (see Fig. 24).
Structure of Report ‘A’
Report ‘A’ consists of two parts: a sixteen-page introduction including the details of the listed cases, and a micro investigation.
Report ‘A’ records thirty cases divided into three based on the source of infection: the first is skin infection, of which there is recorded one case; the
second type is nine cases of oral infection; and the third is twenty cases of nasal respiratory infection. Report ‘A’ was originally written in Japanese before
being translated by the US Army into English after the report was received from Unit 731.
The thirty case subjects were all adult males. Their information has been summarised into the following list: