2011-02-22 (China Military News cited from independent.co.uk and written by David McNeill) — Scientists have begun digging for corpses at the site of a former Tokyo medical college allegedly used to conduct bio-warfare trials, reopening one of the darkest chapters of Japan’s wartime past.
Activists campaigning for the excavation say that dozens of bodies were buried under the site at the end of the Second World War in an effort to cover up biological tests on prisoners, some dissected while still alive. “They dug a hole 10 metres deep and for a month after Japan’s surrender they threw bodies into it,” recalled Toyo Ishii, 88, a former nurse who began speaking out about what she saw after retiring. “The bodies included those of people who had been used in experiments to test the effects of germs.”
Ms Ishii says she and others helped dump bodies and body parts, and were told to ignore questions about what took place there. An apartment building was built on top of the grave “so it would not be dug up again”.
“One of the [former medical school] staff who knew the facts lived in the building to keep guard,” she said.
The facility was reportedly linked to Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army, then the most elaborate biological warfare programme ever created.
A centre south of Harbin in China turned typhoid, anthrax, smallpox, cholera and dysentery into mass-produced killers. Live prisoners were dissected to determine the effects of pathogens on the human body.
Yoshio Shinozuka, who was 16 when he was dispatched by Tokyo to help the Unit 731 scientists, remembers the first time he assisted in an experiment on one of the prisoners who were dubbed murata, or logs. “I knew the Chinese individual we dissected alive,” he recalls. “At the vivisection I could not meet his eyes because of the hate in them. He was infected with plague germs and… his face and body became totally black. Still alive, he was brought on a stretcher to the autopsy room, where I was ordered to wash the body. I used a rubber hose and a deck brush to wash him… The man’s organs were excised one by one.”
The results harvested from these experiments were, by 1940, being used to spread typhoid, cholera and plague across China. Soldiers dumped pathogens in rivers and water supplies. Fleas were cultivated to carry the plague, then dumped over Chinese villages. The effectiveness of the experiments is widely disputed, but some historians put the casualty count in the six-figure range.
Bloody Japs
I will not go as far as making derogatory comments as other have done on this site about Japan and the United States of America for their involvement for covering up the crimes against humanity during and after World War II. I am married to a Chinese citizen. I have read the history of the crimes that Japanese Imperial Troops had done against the people of China. I am ashamed of the US officials who have assisted in the cover up of war crimes then and now that the Japanese inflicted on the Chinese populous. I agree with China, Japan should pay compensation to the Chinese for which they have hurt. Just like the Germans have paid to the Jews and the state of Israel for the last 60 yrs. Because of the US involvement dealing with Unit 731 given amnesty to these war criminals there has been no justice for the victims. This is not right and yet again the pass history has caused problems and more pain for the living member of the victims. Japan should be held accountable for her action during World War II just like all belligerents have been punished.