Page 126 - Unit 731 Testimony

were taken to a Special Service Organization building under the command
of an army officer. The first time we were mustered was to hear an address
by the unit leader, Ishii. We were the first-year class members of the Youth

Corps. The corps was divided into four classes—first-year through fourth-
year—of about twenty boys each.
Then we moved to Pingfang and were put through a tough study
program. From 8:00 A.M. on, we had courses in such subjects as general
education, foreign language, and hygiene. In the afternoon, we assisted the

unit members. We worked and studied all the time and had only about three
hours' sleep a night. There was a library with extensive stacks of books and
foreign language material, and six library specialists to help us.

Before we came to Pingfang, we studied the water filtering device
developed by Ishii. We did this at a brick building outside of Harbin and
near the medical examination section. We went to Pingfang before the
facilities were completed. We were treated well. We were poor, but there in
the countryside we had good things to eat that we had never seen before.
We had about two years of education under the army, up until July 1939.
Next, I was assigned to a team researching bacteria propagation. The others

in my class were each assigned to different teams and we didn't see each
other very much after that.
We used to go from Pingfang into Harbin to study Chinese. Sometimes
we would go to the Unit 731 secret liaison office. I met the boss many

times. He treated us with affection. Once when he came into the toilet to
bring me toilet paper, he reminded me to "study hard."
I used to call my cap a "chapeaux." I was scolded by the boss several
times for that. He would bark at me, "Call it boshi!" The army especially

disliked foreign terms for nomenclature. [The term was a holdover from the
days when the French army was the model for the Japanese army.]
Once, when a few of us boys were walking in the corridor, the boss
came up to us and said, "In one year this place used the total tax revenues of

Northeast China. That's how important your work is. So work hard." But we
were treated with importance only as consumable equipment for war
purposes.
At Unit 200, a Unit 731 subunit, we bought three hundred thousand

rats for test purposes. I remember the man in charge, Lieutenant Takahashi.