Page 74 - Unit 731 Testimony

I was to find what the Japanese had done, and when the Sturgess
docked in Yokohama, there was Dr. Naito. He came straight toward me. He
seemed to have had a photograph of me, and said that he was my

interpreter."
"Did you know at that time," Sanders was asked, "that he was a
member of Unit 731?"

"I didn't even know what 731 was."
Sanders installed himself in his office and started his job of meeting
with Japanese believed to be concerned with research into and/or actual

employment of biological warfare. And from there, with the dust of World
War II still hanging over Tokyo, a new contest started. Rather than making
offensive war against its enemies, Unit 731 now went on the defensive
against the occupation forces. The data gained from human experimentation
once again became ammunition: this time in the bargaining room, rather
than on the battlefield. The Japanese hoped to use their knowledge as a tool
for gaining freedom from prosecution as war criminals.

Sanders offered other memories of Naito, too: "He was a very humble,
shy person . . . very careful. He went home every night and came back the
next morning. If you're interested, I found out later that he didn't go home,

but went to the various Japanese headquarters." At those offices, Naito
conferred with others on what information should be given to Sanders, and
what should be withheld. Naito also kept the Japanese officials apprised of
the content and progress of his discussions with Sanders. Naito's purpose
was to get between Sanders and anyone connected with Unit 731 with
whom Sanders came into contact. For this reason, the American failed to
make any considerable amount of progress. Naito, the interpreter-cum-

information filter, was sometimes evasive, sometimes contradictory in this
game of cat-and-mouse.
At last, Sanders was up against a wall and told Naito that if things
continued the way they were going, the Communists would be coming into

the picture. "I said that," Sanders recounts in the interview, "because the
Japanese exhibited a deadly fear of the Communists, and they didn't want
them messing around. He appeared the next morning with a manuscript
which contained startling material. It was fundamentally dynamite. The
manuscript said, in essence, that the Japanese were involved in biological
warfare." The document, Sanders stated, gave the line of command of the