Page 57 - Unit 731 Testimony

prevention within the army and to advance sanitation in Manchuria.
After the incubation period, a high fever develops, and internal
bleeding is present. The death rate is from fifteen to twenty percent.

After Japanese troops moved into Manchuria in the 1930s, there were

outbreaks of disease which mystified researchers. It was apparently a local
disease which existed around the border area between China and the Soviet
Union. Japanese activity in building railroads close to the Soviet border in
1938 had exposed Japanese army personnel to the illness. In 1941, Japanese
and Soviet researchers found out almost simultaneously that the agent was a
virus; previously, rickettsia bacteria had been suspect. Japanese researchers
took advantage of this discovery to earmark the virus as a potential military

asset.
After Kitano presented his findings at the convention referred to in the
Asahi article, he returned to Manchuria and worked on developing the

disease into a weapon. In 1944, he published the findings of his research
team in various periodicals, including the prestigious Nihon Byori
Gakkaishi (Japan Journal of Pathology). In the project, research team
members went into areas infested with the disease and collected rats. Ticks
which were found on the bodies of the rats were removed, and
approximately two hundred of these were ground and mixed into a saline
solution. This mixture was then injected, according to the report, into the
bodies of monkeys, which were then observed for symptoms of the disease.

If the disease manifested in a subject, its blood would be drawn and injected
into another subject. The second subject would then be closely observed for
development of symptoms. When they appeared, that subject would be
dissected, its organs removed, and parts of these ground fine. Then, a saline
solution of the organ extract would be injected into another subject, and that

subject observed for symptoms. This process was repeated continuously
until the pathogen was successfully isolated.
The contents outlined above appeared in an abstract in the medical
journal. A medical doctor or researcher reading the manner in which the
disease develops, and particularly the fever characteristics, should be able

to recognize the subjects not as monkeys but humans. Most obvious is the
account of body temperature: the "monkeys" recorded temperatures of up to
40.2 degrees Celsius. Even the sickest monkey's body temperature will
never reach that point. Rather, the fever reported was in the range of where