Page 146 - Unit 731 Testimony

K-SAN: We started a new activity in our association. When people see the
Unit 731 Exhibition, they think that the unit itself was evil and criticize it.
That also contains some error. Our work now should be to leave the truth

of history to the people of the future. We want to cooperate with people
like Professor Tsuneishi and with groups researching this period. If
scholars are going to make judgments, they need research materials, and
we have the materials to offer. To make a flat judgment of equating Unit
731 with evil is unwise. So we decided to join with scholars and conduct
academic surveys and research.

I first met Ishii Shiro in 1958, on August 17. He said that Unit
731 was an organization that was formed to save Japan, and that when
the outfit's time came, it would be announced openly to the world.
"You former unit members had no way to apologize," he said, and he
bowed his head deeply. Unit 731 conducted research that was unique

in the world, and it should be left to the world. On the other hand,
there are various ways of thinking in our group. Ishii ordered his men
to take the secret to the grave with them, didn't he?
T-SAN: Right. That's what we were told.
K-SAN: I had left for the battlefront, and I didn't hear it myself, so I was in a
state of innocence. But I found out much later, in 1958, from Ishii
directly. I thought it was time to be released from any obligation of

silence. We were free from the muzzling order. Our Memorial Service
Association had been formed three years earlier. But is anyone really
living in hiding from his past as a member of 731? T-san, you were in the
unit for only three or four months. Did you feel it was wrong to come out
and reveal it?

T-SAN: No, I didn't feel that.
Y-SAN: There is still a problem of being told that it's wrong for any of us to
talk about what we're carrying inside. It was only in 1991 that I made
contact with three former Unit 731 men. After the war, I came home a
soldier, wearing my army uniform. Then I received one thousand yen.
Others, I heard, received three hundred and five hundred yen. That was
hush money.
K-SAN: That was not hush money. The money was brought by an army

officer. There were still Unit 731 members in Manchuria. That was
salary, not hush money.