Page 45 - Unit 731 Testimony

other four branches of the unit at Harbin, Guangzhou, Beijing and Nanjing
were involved in the manufacture of germ warfare weapons. It would seem
strange if the branch in Singapore was not involved in similar activities."

More pointedly, he adds that it seemed odd to set up a laboratory for
research on a disease in a place in which there was no epidemic. And he
notes that the head of the lab, Naito, and other members had all come to
Singapore after working in Harbin, where biological warfare weapons were
manufactured.

In February 1995, a documentary on an Asahi Broadcasting Company
program interviewed a former member, Takayama Yoshiaki, of the
Singapore unit. His account of what he did in Singapore falls into the
pattern of Japan's methodology for creating plague as a weapon. He recalls,
"We raised fleas in oil cans. Then, the infected rats were put into mesh
enclosures, and lowered into the cans. The fleas would bite the rats, and the

fleas became infected."
The discovery of these facts regarding the Singapore unit throws light
upon the geographical extent of Japan's biological warfare ambitions.

Hiroshima

The charming island of Okunoshima lies just a few minutes by boat
from the port city of Hiroshima. In 1929, a factory on the island started
producing poison gas for chemical warfare. A small museum has been
established near the remains of the factory to remind people of what went

on here. The curator is a former worker in what was a highly secretive,
dangerous operation. Photos show the scars and disfigurements suffered by
the workers.
The island's history as a center for chemical warfare production dates
back to 1928, when the installation there engaged in production of mustard

gas on an experimental basis. Equipment was imported from France, and
workers were brought in from nearby rural communities on the Japanese
mainland.

With the expansion of the war in the latter part of the 1930s, the
Hiroshima plant increased production. Types of gases produced over the
factory's lifetime include yperite, lewisite, and cyanogen. So important—
and confidential—was the work done at the island that it actually