Page 178 - Unit 731 Testimony

And this is how intelligence was gathered, through this coming and going
of Manchurian agents.

I think that the Soviets were far superior to us at gathering intelligence.
They had non-rotating staff doing only intelligence work. The Manchurian
spies they sent were so well trained they never gave themselves away. And
the Soviets were better than us at code-breaking.

I was also involved with bacteriological tactics. I went in and out of
Unit 731 repeatedly, and I saw experiments carried out on humans. I used to
carry back bacteria from Unit 731, inject them into pigs and other domestic
animals, and release the animals into Soviet territory. And it was not only
animals. I used people also. We would inject people, wait two or three days,

take them up to Soviet border, and send them in. When we went up near the
border at night, the Soviets would shoot illuminating shells and then open
up with gunfire. That was dangerous work.
There were also what we called "Q" operations. We would fill balloons
with nitrogen and suspend containers of bacteria below them. They would

be released to drift over Soviet territory to disperse bacteria. We never
found out what effects this tactic had.
Why did the Japanese army research and develop bacteriological

weapons? It was a way to kill a large number of people at low cost. The
Geneva Convention's ban on biological warfare also caught the eyes of the
Japanese. Unit 731's research did not produce many weapons for actual war,
but mainly conducted research that was of no practical use, such as studying
what happens when pathogens are injected directly into a person, and
removing the organs of a healthy person for study.

These days, North Korea is receiving attention from the media. When I
was serving in China, Kim II Sung was fighting against Japan's setting up
the puppet state in Northeast China. We chased Kim for more than a year
and devised plans to capture him, but we never succeeded. When I hear his
name it brings back memories.

For fifty years, I said nothing about my experiences; I heard about the
Unit 731 Exhibition here and came to see it. That made me remember those
times and finally gave me the impetus to speak about what happened back
then.

When we lost the war, the Chinese who had been my subordinates
were friendly toward me. They said that Japan had been burned and razed