Page 155 - Unit 731 Testimony

The purpose was robbery. Robbery was committed through use of
equipment with high killing power. Kill anyone who resists, and use force
to seize supplies, coal, and iron. And increase military power.

Shanxi Province had a population of thirty million. It was held by only
sixty to seventy thousand Japanese troops through control of the cities, lines
of communications, and railways. And in that way Japan stole its resources.
It was an aggressive invasion, but we were forcibly indoctrinated to believe.
That was the emperor system. The national anthem and the flag were

awesome.
There was a railway line between our region and Dalian that was
destroyed often by the Chinese. Japanese soldiers were stationed at places

along the way, but there were vast stretches that could not be watched
simulatneously. The People's Liberation Army used to come in and overturn
trains and tear the rails apart. To prevent recurrences of such incidents, the
Japanese army burned down the villages nearest to the damage. Or the
villagers would be questioned about the whereabouts of the People's
Liberation Army. Anyone who refused to answer was killed. This is how
the entire country was occupied and held.

The Manchurian Incident of 1931 and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident
of 1937 happened under the pretext that we were protecting China from
invasion by the U.S. and Great Britain. People were driven into a life in
which human qualities were lost. The soldier's outlet for frustrations was

the brothels of the comfort women. Any means was resorted to in order to
raise one's rank and keep up the authority of the country. And in the army
hospital, we practiced vivisection.
The battle line was being extended. We had to consider how to handle

men who were wounded at the front. About half the army doctors did not
know how to use a scalpel. Each method of treating sick and wounded
soldiers at the front had a bearing on military strength. If men were sent
behind the lines for treatment, it reduced the army's fighting strength
considerably. One function of the army hospital was training doctors.
Vivisection was used to practice for performing operations at the front lines.

I operated on living Chinese for whom I had no hatred whatsoever to gain
surgical ability in order to win the war.
The hospital I was assigned to was set up in an elementary school and
a high school. There were seventy to eighty hygiene specialists, ten nurses,