China releases Unit 731 commander's testimony
- By Chen Xia
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 24, 2014
A Chinese research institute recently released the testimony of the commander of Unit 731, a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit that undertook lethal human experimentation during World War II.
This is also the first time a senior Unit 731 officer's testimony was made public, Chinanews.com reported on Monday.
The testimony, compiled by a Harbin-based institute, was given by Masaji Kitano to the U.S. army after the war. He explained how the unit had been founded and organized, as well as what biological weapons it had studied and used.
According to Kitano's testimony, Unit 731 was responsible for epidemic prevention, vaccine production, epidemics study, as well as epidemics and water purification education, but his predecessor Shiro Ishii had required the division to conduct experiments beyond the scope.
Although Kitano criticized the studies on biological weapons in his testimony, the unit's testing reached its peak during his reign.
Unit 731 was based in Pingfang District of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (now northeast China). Between 3,000 and 12,000 men, women and children died there during the human experiments conducted by Unit 731 in the Pingfang camp.
There were also victims from several other medical testing sites. Almost 70 percent of the victims who died in the Pingfang camp were Chinese, including both civilian and military, with the remaining victims mostly Russian.
Kitano succeeded Ishii as commander of Unit 731 in 1942. After Japan had surrendered to the Allied Forces in 1945, he was questioned by the U.S. military but escaped punishment. He then returned to Japan and worked as the chief director of Green Cross, a Japanese pharmaceutical company run by another former senior officer of Unit 731.
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