Page 184 - Unit 731 Testimony

a camp together with Chinese who were also considered war criminals,
such as those who had served under Pu Yi or his brother. Among these
approximately one hundred prisoners was the transportation minister of the

puppet state of Manzhouguo.
I spent another six years in China. Finally, after seventeen years, I
came back to Japan. I had joined the service at twenty-two years of age and
returned home at thirty-nine.

We were born and raised in a society of emperorism. A person's
absolute responsibility above the army and government was to the emperor.
The emperor was a living deity. The emperor's command was supreme and
controlled the entire country. We were told how we must serve the emperor,

how we should behave toward our parents, how we should behave toward
our teachers, and how we should behave toward our siblings. We were
taught that Japan is a sacred country, that the people of Japan are a superior
race, that the people of China, Korea, Southeast Asia, and Russia were all
inferior races, and the superior race must govern them. And, by doing so,
we would bring them happiness. This was the cause to which Japan must
devote itself. In addition, shrines were built all over the country, and we all

professed loyalty to the country and the emperor. This was our prewar
education.
The purpose of the war, to put it bluntly, was to gain natural resources
and create a market in the occupied lands for Japanese goods. The eight

hundred thousand troops of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria were all self-
sufficient from the land. With certain, limited exceptions, even arms were
produced there. In order to form an army close to the border, seventy
thousand Chinese were forced into service to help us hold our positions.
This information could not be allowed to be released, so later these Chinese
were all killed in mass executions and buried. In later years, with the
building boom in Manchuria, bones have been unearthed at construction

sites.
Soon after we went into the service, we were given training to get our
courage up. We were ordered to watch beheadings. Chinese were made to

sit by a hole in the ground, and the seasoned soldiers would cut their heads
off. Blood spurted up from the neck into the air, and the bodies would roll
into the holes.