Page 162 - Unit 731 Testimony

Finally, the fleas were dumped on the port city of Ningbo. I heard that
sorghum, wheat, and rice polishings were mixed with the fleas. We were at
that former aviation school base for four months. I believe that was the first

of the big scale biological warfare attacks.
During the time that the Ningbo attack was being planned, a group of
us left Harbin by train for Hangzhou. It was a ten-day trip on a specially
scheduled run. There were forty of us, and about the same number of men
were coming by sea from Dalian by way of Shanghai. There were army

doctors and hygiene specialist noncoms. From the Ei-1644 unit, the so-
called Tama Unit in Nanjing, came a major general and several hygiene
specialists. This was a joint operation.

The year before, in 1939, the Kwantung Army and the Soviets had
clashed at Nomonhan. Japan used bacteria, and two of my friends who are
still living now were involved in that operation. According to them, typhoid
was thrown into a tributary of the Hailar River. I had stayed back at
Pingfang, and a lot of unit members, from headquarters staff to noncoms,
went to Nomonhan. The work load on those of us who stayed behind
increased, and we had to cover jobs outside our regular work. At that time, I

worked at cultivating typhoid bacteria.
As Professor Tsuneishi pointed out in his book, when these pathogens
are thrown into a river, their ability to infect is quickly lost, so I never heard
that we infected the Russian army. Ishii's Japanese-style thinking was

wrong by a longshot. Wherever we Japanese go, we eat raw food and drink
untreated water. But, the Chinese and the Russians do not drink water
without boiling it.

During the time I was stationed at Hangzhou, prisoners were brought
in by the kenpeitai and secret police and accused of being guerrillas or
soldiers posing as civilians. One day, when it was almost suppertime, we
heard there was going to be a dissection. I went outside to where it was
scheduled. There was a hole dug in the ground, and two Chinese men were

blindfolded and sitting on the ground by the hole. Then, two Japanese
soldiers decapitated them. Blood from the carotid artery shot up two meters
into the air, as if it were gushing from a hose. The heads rolled into the hole,
and the bodies were dissected right there on the spot. As soon as they were
killed, the chest cavity was opened and the heart was removed and placed