Page 152 - Unit 731 Testimony

victims, even killing the kenpeitai would not be satisfaction enough, and I
represent one of those kenpeitai.

When this Unit 731 Exhibition brought out testimonies like my own,
many people were cynical and asked why we were silent for so long. People
come to these exhibitions and say, "I was in the Youth Corps then," and "I
was doing this or that then." The pioneering group who went to develop
Manchuria sometimes tell how they cooperated with Unit 731 without
knowing, by providing rats for experiments, and they also say "We were

accessories to the crime." My younger brother told me there's no need to
talk about those days now. He told me to forget it, to be quiet about it. I
became chairman of our senior citizens club, and I was told the same thing
there. There's no use in talking about those things now. Forget it.

An honorary professor at Ibaraki University wrote in a newspaper
article, "'The Japanese army committed all sorts of cruelties in China and
Southeast Asia. Japanese children know nothing about it. Why? Because
the parents say nothing about it."

I also said nothing. These days, there are all sorts of moves toward
friendship with China and Asian nations— but without children's knowing
these things it is impossible to establish real friendship. It is the duty of
those who experienced war to tell these things to their children and
grandchildren, to tell of the real horrors of war.

When I read that statement, it strengthened my resolve to speak out.
Unit 731 is being written about in Japanese books now. People like Dr.
Yamaguchi are studying it from a medical point of view, asking how it
could have happened. But these are all peripheral issues. The main point is
that the objective of Unit 731's work was the development of

bacteriological weapons. The situation with Japan grew worse, and Ishii
and the army knew that Japan was losing and Russia would attack. The
Kwantung Army in Manchuria was emptied out, being dispatched to places
like the Philippines and Okinawa. Japanese living in Manchuria were
drafted to fill in the ranks, so there was no real Kwantung Army force in
Manchuria at the time. Most were not well-educated. Ishii's idea was that

when the Russians attacked, we would drop bacteriological weapons from
the air and spread disease. His plan was to accumulate three hundred
thousand rats, and fleas.