A newly unveiled 69-page document has brought to light further details about the horrific activities of Japan’s infamous Unit 731 during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-1945). Released on Saturday by the Museum of Evidence of War Crimes by Japanese Army Unit 731 in Harbin, northeastern China’s Heilongjiang Province, the document provides detailed personal information of 52 staff members of the unit.
The file includes names, household registrations, roles in committing war crimes, transfer records between Unit 731 and other units, and their activities from Japan’s defeat in August 1945 until their return to Japan. Researchers have found that there was personnel turnover between Unit 731 and Unit 516 in Qiqihar City, also in Heilongjiang Province.
“Both units were central to Japan’s biological and chemical warfare efforts and had conducted joint poison gas experiments multiple times,” said Jin Chengmin, curator of the museum, in an interview with China Media Group (CMG). He highlighted the close cooperation between the units, noting that one member mentioned in the file served as a health officer in Unit 516 before joining Unit 731. “Their collaboration is very close and deserves further study,” Jin added.
Additionally, the document reveals that four members of Unit 731 were sent to a medical university in Harbin, controlled by the Japanese army, for a three-year “medical training” as military family students. “This provides key information on Japan’s military, political, and medical cooperation in training young soldiers,” Jin explained. “It further proves that the implementation of human experiments and germ warfare was a top-down, organized, premeditated, and systematic group crime by Japanese militarism.”
The file was discovered at the National Archives of Japan and was returned to China in 2022 after extensive communications and negotiations.
Established in Harbin in 1935, Unit 731 was the nerve center of Japan’s biological warfare in China and Southeast Asia during the war. The unit conducted brutal experiments on living humans to test germ-releasing and chemical weapons. It is estimated that at least 3,000 people were subjected to human experiments, and more than 300,000 people across China were killed by Japan’s biological weapons.
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New document reveals further details of Japanese chemical warfare unit
cgtn.com
