Page 145 - Unit 731 Testimony

member of the unit, and in polite terms of address that one would
normally direct to a person of importance, "What are your thoughts on
the matter? Will they attack, or not?"

I answered, "They will."
"And when will it be?"

"After the harvest," I answered.

The educational officer was Lieutenant Colonel Nishi. He was in
charge of another branch unit. He felt differently. "That's not correct,"
he said. "According to my information, they will not attack."
Ishii listened, then ordered Nishi to go to his unit, near the
Russian border, and investigate. He never returned. He was captured

by the Russians, put on trial at Khabarovsk, and sentenced to twenty-
five years at hard labor.
Then it happened. The Soviets came into the war against Japan on

August 9. Our unit had military men, civilians, and family members.
We were issued small bottles of potassium cyanide to take if we were
captured. Ishii was asked what steps were to be taken with the
families.
"Let them commit suicide too," was the answer. Major General

Kikuike spoke up against that, saying that "we're military men. We're
ready to die at any time. But it isn't right for us to kill family members.
The unit should take care of getting the families back to the mainland."

The Examination and Treatment Unit was inside the Pingfang
compound. Those who could not kill themselves could go there and
have it done for them. [In the end, the families were evacuated.]
Y-SAN: I was on security patrol at Togo Village after the families left. The
Manchurians would come to steal things, and I was on guard. I also had
to burn the remaining corpses. The team leader led us into the cells, and
we pulled the corpses out and incinerated them. Then we disposed of the
bones. There was a place where animal bones from meals were thrown,

and we loaded the maruta bones into a truck and threw them into the
same garbage dump. Those maruta had been killed by gas. When our
team got to the cell blocks, the bodies were already pulled outside. We
had to pour fuel oil on the bodies to keep them burning, because they
kept piling up.