Unit 731. Hal Gold

       Introduction

      Some four decades following the end of World War II, details concerning the Imperial Japanese Army’s Unit 731, which researched and conducted biological warfare, began surfacing with startling impact. Information about this outfit, at whose hands an estimated three thousand Manchurians, Chinese, Russians, Koreans, Europeans, and Americans were killed, had remained largely hidden over the years, either by governmental control or a code of silence adhered to by its former members themselves. Then, newly revealed information stirred interest in an era which Japanese officialdom has been trying to wash away with the detergent of neglect. Japan has been told to leave the past behind and move ahead told to new ties of friendship and commerce with other countries. Yet while business ties develop, and amity is proclaimed to be spreading, old facts emerging as recent revelations increase their magnetic attraction and pull us into a reexamination of what happened then—and again incite us into debates of how and why.

      It can be argued that probably no school system anywhere teaches true history; only the degree of rearrangement varies. For the years during which the research units were active, the chasm between history and Japan’s official stance yawns wide. For years, Unit 731 “did not exist.” Requests and demands not just for monetary compensation but for mere recognition of history and apology have been brushed away, turned down because “compensation has been made at government levels.” Instead, Japan offers its dedication to “world peace” with statements that are as vague as they are eloquent.

      Information on Japan’s consumption of live human beings as biological test material has been surfacing for many years now. As with the comfort women issue, however, there has never been a jolt of sufficient voltage to rock the national government into acts of contrition or compensation. Rather, it has been local governments who have opened their eyes to history. The efforts of local governments, in conjunction with high degrees of volunteer activity in their areas, can be credited with bringing the Unit 731 Exhibition before the eyes of Japanese in sixty-one locations over the course of a year and a half. The exhibition, in whose final days this book was begun, was arranged by a central organizing committee in Tokyo, and each locality which wanted to plan a local exhibition had to raise its own funds and find its own venue. There was, of course, an admission fee to enter the exhibit, and so for the visitors it could be considered a self-financed course in the history omitted by orthodox education.

      The shock to the Japanese people was predictable. In spite of the occasional documentary coverage or newspaper article, Unit 731 was largely unknown and unthought of. It sat safely outside the scope of the consciousness of most Japanese. True, some attention was drawn to Unit 731 when the Japanese government was taken to court for not permitting factual accounts of it in school textbooks, but even those with some knowledge of the Ishii organization had their eyes opened at the exhibits.

      Several factors have conspired to keep Unit 731’s activities from receiving the attention they so richly deserve. The decades of concealment of the outfit’s history were partly the fruit of the Japanese central government’s reputed skill at inactivity, along with its priority on avoiding all manners of controversy, whether domestic or international. Evidence also failed to surface simply because there were no survivors among the victims of Unit 731; all were eliminated before the end of the war. Then, there was the combination order-threat by commanding general Ishii Shiro himself that former unit members were to “take the secret to the grave.” Obedience to the command was probably not at all difficult for those surviving Japanese members of the unit who could have borne witness but would have felt scalpels turned in their own hearts were their children to ask, “Daddy! How could you do something like that?”—and feel it even more acutely in their later years when the question would be prefaced with “Grandpa.”

      This last fact highlights an even more astonishing result of the exhibition. Surviving members of Unit 731 who had sworn to remain silent about their memories came out before the public to testify—to confess—and finally unburden their minds. After a half century of silence, they told. Some could tell all but their names, and retained that one secret before the public: an omission meaningful to them, but a minor exclusion for those of us more interested in their stories than in their identities. Others identified themselves openly. Some reached the point of weeping with equal openness, as they looked back through decades of silence to stir up ugly recollections.

      But those who are coming forward now, after some half-century of silence, are among the most forceful in pressing for the story to be told. Additionally, a limited number of members of the post-war generation—scientists, doctors, writers—are searching out the survivors, doing their own research, and informing the public through writings and lectures. Outrage and shame span the generations. Exhibition sites generally have a desk where visitors may write their impressions and comments. Attendees from elementary school on up have recorded the shock of the history lesson.

      There are several reasons why the code of silence has evaporated at this late hour. Whatever these motivations might be, however, we can be grateful that the grave did not get all the truth. One focus of this book will be the actual