Page 97 - Unit 731 Testimony

believe that the bones were remains from Unit 731's human experiments,
and some people in Japan wanted an investigation.

The citizens' group pressed the ward head to expedite identification of
the bones. The ward head, in turn, asked the assistance of medical and
scientific institutions within the ward, including the National Science
Museum; all refused for reasons which the involved citizens interpret as
government pressure.

Some two years after the discovery, Dr. Sakura Hajime, an
anthropologist, retired from the National Science Museum and joined
Sapporo Gakuin University, where he received permission to go ahead with
the identification of the bones. On April 22, 1992, he announced his

findings. The Asahi newspaper carried an article on his results the following
day: the bones dated back "from several tens of, to one hundred years"
earlier. Other discoveries in the course of the investigation included the
facts that: the bones were from more than one hundred people; the ratio of
males to females was three to one; skulls made up the major part of the
remains; and the bones were "nearly all Mongoloid in origin, but of several
groups, and it is highly possible that Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese are

represented."