Page 168 - Unit 731 Testimony

Every day, without fail, we would get hit. And that's where the spirit of
absolute obedience is born. It's like training a dog. Humans and animals are
the same. If you hit them, they learn to obey.

One day we were told that instead of using straw dummies for bayonet

practice we would use people. We were going to practice on five people
who had been brought in by the kenpeitai. We were told that they were
members of the anti-Japanese resistance movement, but when they brought
in the prisoners, they were seventeen or eighteen years old.
We were lined up in columns according to our unit, and the prisoners

were tied in place. We were ordered to fix our bayonets. The boy at the
front of the line was first. The commanding officer gave the orders:
Forward! Back! Forward! Thrust!

This was the first time I'd killed anyone. My legs were shaking. When
you thrust, it should be done fast. I was afraid, though, and I closed my
eyes, so I don't know where I stuck the person. About twenty-five of us in
turn, one after the other, stuck the prisoner. By that time, his shirt looked
like a beehive with flat holes instead of round ones. That's how we killed.
There was a concept in our education that one does not become an adult
until he has killed someone.

Before that boy's breathing stopped, I heard him crying, "Mama,
mama," and I realized that it's the same in China as in Japan.

That is how we killed five Chinese for bayonet practice. After it was
over, we threw the bodies into a pit and buried them. The location was at a
mountain with no farms or anything else around. I never went back
there again, and I have no idea what happened to the bodies after that.

And that was the education for the Youth Corps. One does not become
an adult without killing.
About four months after that, we were transferred to another camp.

The commander there asked us if we had ever killed anyone. We told him
that yes, we had done it in our training course. He scoffed, saying that
killing only one person didn't mean much. He said that there were two
prisoners there right then, and told us we had to kill them. It was
unavoidable, so we started by digging a hole. A prisoner of about forty
years old who looked like a farmer was brought out. The officer
commanded me, "Kill him!"