Page 131 - Unit 731 Testimony

In Xinjing, I became infected with plague. I don't know how or when it
happened, but I ran a high fever and collapsed. I was taken to the air corps
hospital at Harbin and treated. The hospital was in a small, separate

building from the hospital, and nobody was allowed in without
authorization. The doctors were all from Unit 731.
I was sent to Port Arthur, then from there to a hospital in Hiroshima,
then to a hospital here in Morioka, then later released. I was infected by the
very bacteria we had created, then cured by the serum we had made. I

became an unwilling test subject.
I received thirty-six yen a month for medical compensation and
continued outpatient treatment. At the time, a school principal was earning

eighteen yen a month. The whole family could live on the payments I
received. That was hush money. But as a trade-off, a kenpeitai officer
followed me every day, all day, watching everything I did.
In the hospitals at Hiroshima and Morioka, only the hospital heads
knew my sickness. They did not report it to the other doctors. The hospital

head at Morioka told me, "It would be best if you did not go back to Ping-
fang."
When I was twenty-one, I received an army physical exam and passed.

The stamp was put on my paper by the regimental commanding officer,
Murakami Yoichi. Below him was the recruiting officer. He came up to me,
slapped my face (a normal disciplining method in those days) and asked me
where I had been, what I had done, what my background was. I said
nothing. Murakami came over and told me, "You don't have to say
anything. Go into the navy."

So I went into the navy. During basic training near Yokosuka, we were
in bayonet practice when I coughed up blood. The plague was not all out of
my system. I was sent to the Yokosuka navy hospital, then to an air force
hospital. After that I was transferred to a Red Cross hospital. I studied
nursing there while I was being treated, and I learned environmental

hygiene. One day, I took a doctor's place on board a minesweeper and we
were hit by a torpedo. The ship sank, but I was saved and went to work in
the hospital as a hygiene specialist.
Once, in 1960, some of us war buddies had a reunion at a spa in Japan.

Among those who had been stationed in Harbin at the time, ninety percent
did not know of Unit 731. Thinking of that now, it was idiocy—using