Page 54 - Unit 731 Testimony

the Army Medical College, where they were put upon the return flights to
the continent.

It is interesting to note that after the war, the U.S. military kept the
families in business. U.S. Army Unit 406 was established in Tokyo to
research viruses, and now, in place of the Japanese vehicles, American jeeps
became familiar sights in the villages as they came to collect their loads of
rats. Perhaps the rate of pay improved with the occupation army.

Producing fleas was slightly trickier. Han Xiao gives an account of flea
production in his book Crimes of Unit 731. He tells of how in around 1940,
the Suzuki Group construction company was putting a new wing on a
building at Pingfang, and Chinese laborers from outside were working at

one area in the huge compound. A strange rumor circulated among the
workers about men who raised fleas. It started soon after the Japanese
assembled a group of about ten prisoners all of whom were over fifty years
old, and told them to carry their belongings into one of the sheds that served
as living quarters.

"Don't worry," the Japanese soldiers reassured them, "you're all over
fifty years of age, so there's no need for you to work. Take it easy in here.
All you have to do is produce one hundred fleas a day—big ones—and
hand them over to us. This is your work."

The prisoners were dressed in heavily padded clothes, and they were
given four rules to obey: 1) Do not come into contact with other prisoners;
2) Never talk about this work to anyone; 3) Always sleep with your clothes
on; and 4) Do the required work every day.

After about a week, several Japanese dressed in white coveralls began
to come every day, and they made the men take off their heavily padded
pants and upper wear, turn them inside out, and pick out the fleas that had
reached the size of about a match head. These were put into aluminum
boxes, and the Japanese took them away. "The smaller fleas are not needed
yet," the Japanese advised the men, "but it is prohibited to kill them." The

men had to leave the small fleas in the padding until they grew, and in this
way some eight hundred to one thousand a day were collected.
The ten men had to go for water themselves and prepare their own
meals in their sheds. They were given preventive injections at regular

intervals. They were not permitted to remove their clothes or cut their hair
even in the hottest weather.