Page 165 - Unit 731 Testimony

We got to Changchun, and that's when I learned that that's where the
headquarters of the Kwantung Army was located. We were interviewed, and
four of us who were from the same area were ordered to Harbin.

When I got there, I had another surprise. On the station platform there
was a statue of Ito Hirobumi, the former Japanese resident general of Korea
who was killed by the Korean An Chang Gun. People paid respects to the
statue. That surprise has stayed with me until today.

[Ito was one of the founders of the new Japanese government after the Meiji
Restoration of 1868. In the aftermath of her victory in the 1904-05 war with

Russia, Japan occupied the Korean peninsula, and Ito took up the post of
resident general in 1906. He thus became a symbol of oppression and was
assassinated at Harbin Station in 1909. An Chang Gun was executed by the
Japanese, and he became a hero to the Korean people. There is a memorial
hall dedicated to him on the outskirts of Seoul.]

At one time I had the job of cleaning the human specimen room. There

were medical charts of the maruta used in the plague attacks at Anda, and I
started reading through them. Some would die in two days, some in five or
seven, sometimes in ten days or more. It was clearly written that these were
charts of people used in experiments that exposed them to attacks by
plague-carrying fleas. The records showed that every month between forty
and sixty people were killed in these plague tests. I was working diligently
at raising those fleas, as I had been instructed to do. Because of my

education in emperor-ism and militarism, I never thought that what I was
doing was wrong.
Ten years ago, I moved to Hiroshima. I went to Peace Park and saw the
message engraved there: "Sleep in peace. This mistake will never be

repeated." I came to think that the mistake never to be repeated is not just
the atomic bomb. The cruel and extremely inhuman behavior of Unit 731
must also never be repeated.

Professor emeritus at Osaka University

(Nakagawa Yonezo)