Page 112 - Unit 731 Testimony

Introduction

The Unit 731 Exhibition started touring Japan in July 1993, and continued
through December 1994. During that period of approximately one and a
half years, it was presented at sixty-one locations. Some materials were

borrowed from China, where a permanent memorial museum has been
established. Actual photographs of the units are very rare, due to (alleged)
destruction or the fact that they remain hidden in private or official corners.
Much of the exhibition consisted of written, explanatory panels. This
paucity of photographic and other graphic material itself points to a
surprising result of the exhibit: organizers of the various local exhibitions

repeatedly noted that, despite the large amount of written material on
display, people took the time to read.
This eagerness and receptivity with which people attended the
exhibition, in turn, leads to another question, simultaneously encouraging
and troubling. Do the Japanese people, as is often asserted, really want to be

ignorant of their country's checkered past? Or is it just their textbook-
censoring leadership that wishes for them to remain so?
At the venues of the Unit 731 Exhibition, visitors were invited to write

their impressions and comments. One sixteen-year-old high school student
wrote that he had

read books and articles on Unit 731, but this was my first time hearing
talks by those who actually experienced it. In that sense, coming here
today was extremely good. From the time I was in elementary school, I
had heard stories from people who experienced bombing raids during
the Pacific War. But even though we hear from various sources about
our being victims of war, there is almost no talk about Japan's being an

assailant. It is important to tell the story from both sides; especially to
us in the generation that does not know war, the words of those who
did experience it are most valuable. That is why it would be good to
increase the places where these words could be heard.