Page 65 - Unit 731 Testimony

"Last year, at the fifty-eighth meeting of the Japan Physiology Society
in the city of Tokushima, this member presented a lecture on the 'History of
My Research.' His talk included a description of ethnic comparisons of

adaptability to cold."
Yoshimura was reported as commenting with pride that "the English-
language Japan Journal of Physiology carried the report completed by me
and my late assistant in three issues between August 1950 and February
1952." The printed report covered tests on more than five hundred males

from the ages of eight through forty-eight. Test subjects included Mongols,
Chinese, Siberian tribesmen, and others. The tests were conducted by
placing coils on the subjects' fingers and immersing them in ice water.
Changes were measured in skin surface, and data analyzed according to age
and ethnic stock to determine a correlation between cold resistance and
race.

This experiment does not seem especially cruel, and Yoshimura has
criticized the press on numerous occasions for exaggerating the callousness
of his research. What has not been brought to public view, however, are the
frostbite tests which destroyed the limbs and then the lives of their subjects.

Eyewitness testimonies about having seen such tests and their victims with
blackened extremities provide evidence that he was engaged in destructive
work.
The journal of the Japan Physiology Society was even criticized by its

own members for publishing Yoshimura's report without censuring his
methods. Former students of Yoshimura have commented on his attitude at
class lectures, about how very cavalier he was about using and discarding
human beings for research. Students were constantly amazed that he never
seemed to consider anything he did to be wrong, and associates frequently
advised him to be more prudent about describing his methods. Apparently,
he never saw a need to heed their advice.

In celebration of his seventy-seventh birthday, considered auspicious
by Japanese, Yoshimura Hisato wrote a book of his reminiscences which
was published in 1984. In its pages, he mentions his association with Unit

731 several times, yet defends himself against accusations that his
experiments were cruel. He shows one photograph of a young Chinese in a
laboratory undergoing an apparently painless test, with hands placed in cold