Page 31 - Unit 731 Testimony

choice but to go on without them, leaving them to sure death while Li and
his fellow prisoners seized their chance.

They ran out into the compound, and fortune smiled upon them with a
heavy downpour that knocked out the electric power, deactivating the
searchlights and electric fence. The escapees came to the wall and made a
human ladder. Placing himself at the bottom, Li urged the others up and
over. He was the only one left, and as the others ran as well as they could
with their leg shackles, there were shots and one final shout from Li. At

least, it was a more merciful death than his other option at the hands of the
Japanese researchers.
Some ten of the escapees were gunned down. About twenty made it to

the outside, but most of them either were killed or recaptured, or died from
exposure, whose effects were compounded by the blood drawings. A few of
the men came to a village and sought help from one of the residents. That
person was interviewed in 1984 about the incident for a written account on
the resistance movement. He recalls:

That night I heard footsteps behind the house, then someone
banging on the door. Outside there were seven men wearing leg
shackles. My brother grabbed an axe to defend us, but when he heard

their story he put down the axe, we took the men to a cave on the east
side of the house, and we started breaking off the shackles. We were
still working on them when the Japanese came to the edge of the
village tracking down the escapees. So we thought of a way to free the
men faster. First, we broke off a shackle from just one leg, so they
could at least run while holding the other shackle. And then, they left

the village.

Later, they managed to meet up with the other remaining escapees and
all eventually teamed up with resistance fighters. But the secret of the
Fortress was out. The Japanese had managed to keep things quiet for five
years, but at last the time had come for a move.

Pingfang

The new site was closer to the city of Harbin, just a short hop away on
the South Manchuria Railway. The Chinese called the location Pingfang;
the Japanese reading of the same characters is Heibo. Between 1936 and