Page 37 - Unit 731 Testimony

of pathogens. It is conceivable that more than one mother voiced, as a last
wish on the vivisection table, the wish to let her child live. No one ever did.
The researchers wanted their data.

Two modes of transportation were important to the unit's functioning.
The railroad, the lifeline of Japan's industrial venture in Manchuria, was one
indispensible part of the Ishii organization. Windowless cars of prisoners
were carried from point of capture or imprisonment to a railroad siding at
the Pingfang prison labs. One rare eyewitness account of an unloading told

of prisoners bound with hands behind them and laid head-to-foot on a
flatbed wagon for transfer from the freight car to the prison cells. After
unloading their cargo, trains would return empty. It was an almost invisible
way of shifting people out of circulation.

The other important artery was the airfield built off to one side of the
building complex within the unit grounds. Conscious as Ishii was of his
own prospects for personal advancement, he made frequent trips to Tokyo's
Army Medical College to present his work. The materials for presentation
included more than graphs and drawings; he also displayed human
specimens. The specimen jars themselves were made in Manchuria by a

European-trained Japanese, and specimens were regular passengers on the
flights from Pingfang to Tokyo. Some vessels contained extremities,
specimens of arms, legs, and feet. Other jars contained organs. Some were
heads. Still others were whole-body specimens. With this air connection
putting Ishii a couple of hours away from his Tokyo base, Pingfang became
a virtual specimen-supply annex to the Tokyo medical school. Return

flights to Pingfang, for their part, carried supplies, including cages of rats.
Doctors who knew the situation at the time have commented that this
Pingfang-Tokyo air corridor was run on a very regular basis. Through this
channel, the results of experiments came to Japan in the form of new
bacteria, as well as preserved specimens of human subjects who had died

from a range of artificially induced pathological conditions. These materials
were made available not just to the army hospital, but to researchers
throughout Japan. This gave universities the chance to study diseases not
then in Japan, such as plague, cholera, and epidemic hemorrhagic fever
(EHF). In this way, Unit 731 was performing the service of human

experimentation for the entire Japanese medical community—civilian and
military, public and confidential.