Page 89 - Unit 731 Testimony

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Unit 731 in Modern Times

It is impossible to exaggerate the secrecy enveloping information about
Unit 731 in the postwar era. As recently as June 26, 1995, the Japan Times

reported that "a woman in Sendai . . . has recently discovered a résumé
written by her late father showing that he worked for the secret Japanese
army which researched germ warfare in China during World War II." The
story of Unit 731 was not even handed down from parents to children (at
least among the unit's erstwhile members).

It should therefore be unsurprising that the history of Unit 731 has
remained at the farthest periphery of Japan's collective consciousness since
the end of the war. Yet, as in the case of the frostbite specialist Dr.
Yoshimura, former upper-level members of the unit, together with their
cooperating medical researchers in Japan, made great—and quiet—use of

their data to further their careers in Japanese academia, science, industry,
and politics. Still, the postwar history of Unit 731 is not confined to the
stories of those former members who used their experience for their own
personal gain. Like an invisible yet undeniably present ghost, the defunct
outfit has continued to stalk Japan—and the world—in other ways, as well.

The Teikoku Bank Incident

In January 1948, a man walked into a branch of the Teikoku Bank
("Teigin," short for Teikoku Ginko) in Tokyo and identified himself as an
official of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. He advised the bank manager

that there was an epidemic in the area, and that all employees were
requested to drink a preventive medicine that he had brought with him. It
was good medicine, he reassured the banker, and his ministry had received
it from GHQ (General Headquarters, Douglas MacArthur's office) itself.
The manager dutifully gathered all employees of the bank for instructions.

The so-called representative inserted a pipette into the liquid contents
of a bottle he had brought and drew some off into a teacup. He