Page 72 - Unit 731 Testimony

installation was built for the purpose of research and development, it
obviously had the structural strength to withstand attack.

Pingfang, the center at Dalian, and other units were destroyed, but
other facilities remain standing to this day. The staunch building in Nanjing
that served as home to Unit 1644, sometimes called the Tama Unit, is now
used is a hospital. People can visit the rooms on the second floor where rats
and fleas were once raised. They can visit the third floor, where infected
maruta were dissected, admission was permitted only to authorized persons

wearing protective clothing and masks, and disinfection at the doorway was
required. They can visit the fourth floor, which was a prison.
Skeleton crews stayed behind in China to carry out the destruction,

while the major part of the staff and their families, feeling the Soviets'
breath upon their necks, cleared out. The South Manchuria Railway was
efficient to the end. A special train carried unit members from Harbin and
Pingfang, then traveled south, through the Korean peninsula. After crossing
to Japan by sea, they took another special train north through Kanazawa,
where some members reportedly used the Noma Shrine for a hideout. The
special train continued on to Niigata Prefecture, at which point the members

split up and used regular public transportation.
In Manchuria, Ishii boarded the train for one leg of the journey, during
which he set forth his rules that members were not to take jobs in public
offices, were not to contact each other from then on, and were to "take this

secret to the grave." He took films and records with him, and returned to
Japan by plane.
At Pingfang today, remnants of the fortress still remain, preserved as a
monument to human inhumanity. The massive double stacks of the boiler

room stand like a morbid tombstone, and seem to hang on to existence just
as thousands of captives there must have hung on until the end, hoping that
something, somehow would save them—or part of them—from destruction.
The Pingfang fortress of the medical inquisition is clinging to life, keeping
the memory of screams, cries, and death agonies from disappearing
completely.

American Occupation
As the end of the war brought Allied forces and civilian personnel to
Japan by air and sea, a new chapter was about to begin for Unit 731. The