Page 180 - Unit 731 Testimony

When death was confirmed, the officers went to the pillbox, checking
for residual gas with litmus paper, and pulled out the bodies. A maruta who
happened to survive was put through the test once again. There were no

survivors. A tent was set up nearby where the dead were dissected.
One maruta was a sixty-eight-year-old man. Back at Unit 731, he had
been injected with plague germs but did not die. He was put through the
phosgene gas test and survived. An army doctor injected air into his veins,
and he still did not die. The doctor then used an extra-heavy needle, and

again injected air into the vein, but the man still survived. Finally, the
doctors killed him by hanging him by the neck from a tree.
I remember the voices of surprise from the doctors when they

dissected him. His internal organs were comparable to those of a young
man.
One time, I saw a technician at Unit 731, a field-grade officer, carrying
out tests aimed at combating frostbite. [The Mainichi article reported that
the name of the technician was given, though it was not revealed in the

article.] Five White Russian women were used in the test at the time.
The technician placed the women's hands into a freezing apparatus and
lowered its temperature to minus ten degrees Celsius, then slowly reduced

the temperature to minus seventy degrees. The condition of the frostbite
was then studied.
The result of the test was that the flesh fell from the women's hands,
and the bones were exposed. One of the women had given birth in prison,
and the baby was also used in a frostbite test.

A little later, I went to look into the women's cells, and they were all
empty. I assume that they died.

Army major and technician attached to Unit 516

(Anonymous)

[At the time of the interview, this man was a professor emeritus at a
national university.]

In 1943, I attended a poison gas test conducted jointly by Units 731
and 516. It was held at the Unit 731 test facilities, east of Harbin. A glass-
walled chamber about three meters square and two meters high was used.