Page 120 - Unit 731 Testimony

With plague being carried by rats and fleas, the risk of an epidemic is
high if three conditions are present: the variety of fleas that carry plague
represents a high percentage of the total fleas present on rats; the plague

germ is present in those fleas; and the rats carrying the plague-infected fleas
are near areas of human activity.
When the rats are put to sleep with chloroform as they were at the
Singapore unit, the fleas also are put to sleep. They can then be brushed off
onto paper, and the percentage of the plague-carrying variety can be

determined. So we went to the harbor and searched the holes that the rats
would crawl into. We found that the variety of rat was different and we
concluded that there was no chance of plague breaking out.

Back in 1939, at the Nomonhan Incident, the daily variation in
temperature was extreme. Japanese soldiers were wearing fur-lined
clothing. Gas gangrene bacteria were present on the fur, and if a soldier
were hit by a bullet, it would carry the germs into the wound. Gas gangrene
takes its name from the fact that when it enters the body it generates a foul-
smelling gas. The cause of death of soldiers who died from gas gangrene
was not listed as infection but as wounds received in action.

This is a disease that was never seen in Japan. For this reason every
day during the battle at Nomonhan, one of the researchers, Ishikawa Tachio,
dissected about fifty bodies a day of Japanese soldiers who died from this
infection, and he made specimens of about one hundred of them. Whenever

lab specimens of humans are mentioned in connection with Unit 731, it is
immediately assumed that they were maruta. But this was not always the
case. There were also specimens made from Japanese casualties.

Lecture, "Unit 731 and Comfort Women"

(Nishino Rumiko)

[Nishino Rumiko, who delivered the following lecture, is one of the most
active writers and lecturers in Japan on the "comfort women" issue. She
has authored numerous books and articles on the subject, and has also
involved herself with the story of Unit 731, interviewing numerous former