Page 33 - Unit 731 Testimony

necessary, probably built with recollections of the escape at Zhongma. Even
walls between cells were thirty to forty centimeters thick. Central heating
and cooling systems, and a well-planned diet, protected the health of the

prisoners to ensure that the data they produced was valid. Poor living
conditions or the presence of other disease germs could confuse results.
In all the gruesome professionalism that built the legacy of Unit 731,
there was one touch of sardonic humor. As the massive Pingfang
installation was under construction, local people began to ask what it was.

The glib answer supplied was that the Japanese were building a lumber
mill. Regarding this reply, one of the researchers joked privately, "And the
people are the logs." From then on, the Japanese term for log, maruta, was
used to speak of the prisoners whose last days were spent being torn apart
or gassed by Japanese researchers. It is surprising how few Japanese realize
the origin of this term, though the word itself never fails to come up when

Unit 731 is discussed. The expression smacks of a racial attitude not even
up to the level of disdain.
Pingfang was equipped for disposing of its consumed human lab
materials with three large incinerators—calling them crematoria would

bestow undue dignity upon them. A former member who assisted in the
burning commented, "The bodies always burned up fast because all the
organs were gone; the bodies were empty."
Ueda Yataro was a researcher working under a leader of one of the

teams into which researchers and assistants were organized. He later woke
up to the aberrant thinking which led him and others to participate in the
activities of Unit 731. He recorded his experiences, disjointedly, in pages of
handwritten notes. The following is an excerpt about one of the research
projects that he worked on. His "material" was in a cell with four other
maruta.

He was already too weak to stand. The heavy leg irons bit at his legs.
When he moved, they made a dull, clanking sound. His fellow

cellmates sat around him, and watched him. Nobody spoke. The water
in the toilet was running with an ominous sound.
In the corridor outside the cell, the guards stood with their pistols

strapped on. The commander of the guards was there also. The man's
screams of death had no effect on them. This was an everyday
occurrence. There was nothing special.