Page 177 - Unit 731 Testimony

duty would be too dangerous for women, and they transferred us to land
units. I worked in an army hospital for a year, and then received a transfer
to Harbin. Nobody knew anything about communicable diseases there, or

about a special unit. With no advance notice, we were transferred to the
south wing of the hospital. I now know how highly secret it was.

Intelligence officer (Ogura Yoshikuma)

I joined the army in my home prefecture of Kagoshima, and later was
sent to Tokyo. In preparation for the southward expansion of operations, I
was assigned to study Islam; at the time there was confusion between Islam
and Judaism. After that I was sent to Manchuria and assigned to a unit
directly under the control of General Staff Headquarters, Special Forces. In

other words, we were spies.
My first assignment was in Harbin, and after that I went to other areas.
During that time my work involved gathering information from the Soviet
Union and on biological warfare strategy.

Right after I reached Manchuria in 1939, the Nomonhan Incident
occurred. That was when Japan first employed bacteriological warfare,
dumping typhus germs into a river. The effect on the enemy was doubtful,
but there were casualties among the Japanese army itself.

I was stationed in a location called Dongning. The leadership there had
absolute authority in Manchuria. The place was situated between an old
Soviet army base and a Kwantung Army base. The people of the village had
been chased out, and only the church was left standing. The reason for
leaving the church was that the Soviets who used it might come there.

Usually, we did not carry guns and lived like ordinary civilians,
gathering information on the Soviets. In one year, I wore a uniform only
once. Even going in and out of Unit 731, I was in civilian clothes.

In order to gather information, we used Manchurians with some degree
of education and trained them for a short time, then sent them into the
Soviet Union to do intelligence work. Those people, however, would be
used by the Soviets for counterintelligence and sent back to Manchuria.