Unit 731. Hal Gold
a commercial and industrial base since 1904. It was also one of the best-run railways in the world. Terry’s Guide to the Japanese Empire, a travel guide published in 1933, reports that
Manchuria … with vast riches and a promising future, is rapidly being developed and modernized by the capable and progressive Japanese. A great factor in this development is the South Manchurian [sic] Railway, originally constructed by the Chinese Eastern Railway Company as a link in the trans-Siberian route, but acquired by Japan from Russia at the close of the Japan-Russia [sic] War. Under the present able Japanese management the rapidly spreading system has become one of the great highways of the world, and it is as modern, as safe, and as dependable as the best American railway. Fast express trains, commodious sleeping cars and luxurious dining cars are features of the line, the employees of which speak English and Russian.
Apart from the transport services that it provided, the South Manchuria Railway also published English-language pamphlets for the major cities of Manchuria. They included maps, points of interest to tourists, and some historical background. The pamphlet for Mukden printed in 1933 contains an account of local history:
Manchurian Incident and North Barracks
At 10:30 p.m. on the 18th of Sept. 1931, the Manchurian Incident was started by the insolent explosion of the railway track at Liu-tiao kou between Mukden and Wen-kuan-tun stations of the South Manchuria Railway, which was executed by the Chinese regular soldiers. After the explosion, the Chinese soldiers attempted to flee themselves in the direction of the North Barracks, but just then they were found by the Japanese railway guards under Lieutenant Kawamoto, who were patrolling the place on duty. Suddenly the both sides exchanged the bullets and the Japanese made a fierce pursuit after them. On the next moment, the Chinese force of some three companies appeared from the thickly growed Kaolian [sorghum] field near the North Barracks, against which the Japanese opposed bravely and desperately, meantime dispatching the urgent report to their commander. The skirmish developed speedily and the Japanese troop was compelled to make a violent attack upon the North Barracks … After several hours of fierce battle, the barracks fell completely into the hand of the Japanese forces.
On the other hand, the Japanese regiment in Mukden rose in concert with the railway guards in the midnight of the same day and succeeded in occupying the walled town.
This “incident”—a pitched battle, actually—was no more than a Japanese ruse, used to justify occupying Mukden and moving on to a complete takeover of Manchuria. The real reasons behind the Japanese advance were a pair of developments in the region that had sounded warning bells to Japanese intent on retaining control of the area. First, China was showing trends toward unification under Nationalist leader Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek). Also, the Soviets were flexing their muscles and applying pressure from the north. The Kwantung Army made a move to strengthen its hold on Manchuria, with its wealth of coal, iron, an array of other ores, and oil.
Three days after the explosion at Mukden, supporting troops came in from Japan’s colony of Korea, and in three months Japan had completely occupied Manchuria. Jiang was concentrating on establishing his influence over the rest of China at the time, and ordered a policy of nonresistance, leaving it for the ineffectual League of Nations to cope with Japan’s invasion. Japan thereupon established a Manchuria-wide government, concocting an ironical euphemism by declaring the three eastern provinces an “independent” nation called Manzhouguo (Manchukuo). Henry Pu Yi, who had been emperor of the Manchu dynasty until 1912, when it abdicated its control of China, was pulled out of retirement to lead the new “nation.” The Japanese gave him the title of “chief executive” to lend an illusion of historical legitimacy to the government.
With Japanese military control over Manchuria complete, the stage was set for the procurement of human specimens for the labs of Unit 731 and its associated organizations.
The Stage Is Set
As Japan continued expanding the breadth and depth of its power on the Asian mainland, Ishii Shiro’s career also continued to advance apace. In 1932, an Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory was set up within the army hospital in Tokyo, with Ishii in charge. The title of the laboratory was as euphemistic as Manzhouguo’s “independence” and the “Great East Asian Coprosperity Sphere” banner under which Japan conquered neighboring countries. Prevention of disease in the Japanese military was still an objective of the research, but the center of gravity had shifted to development of bacteriological and chemical methods of warfare. This laboratory was Ishii’s first major step in that direction.
Meanwhile, Japanese ascendancy in Manchuria was bringing the Japanese medical community closer to unprecedented opportunities for research. Ishii’s goal of turning bacteria and gas into weapons of the Imperial Japanese Army would require comprehensive research, and animal research had serious limits in producing usable data. Growing control by Japan over Manchuria would provide research materials in the form of people, who could be plucked from the streets like lab rats. Toward the end of 1932, Ishii applied to the army to be sent to Manchuria to expand his research facilities. Then, the following year, Ishii’s aggressive push for biological warfare research resulted in a grant of land and a building in Tokyo for his research. Coincidentally, this was the year in which Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, which had judged it in the wrong for its aggression against China. This severance of ties would be instrumental in freeing Japan’s hands from any remaining constraints on the way she behaved in Asia.
The Japanese maintained control in Manchuria in a variety of ways. Emperor Pu Yi’s police force, obedient to the commands of its Japanese puppeteers, was one law enforcement arm. In addition, there was a special police force which engaged in intelligence work but was also skilled in gaining confessions from suspected spies. Finally, perhaps the most terrifying group in the service of the Japanese Empire belonged to the elite group of military police known as the kenpeitai.
Substantial though Japanese capacity to maintain “public order” was, there was no lack of work for it. Opportunities to detain people constantly manifested themselves. The powers-that-were in Manchuria decreed anti-Japanese activity a cause for arrest, and the oppressive nature of the Japanese occupation created patriots who formed underground groups to oppose it. Groups and individuals kept up the anti-Japanese struggle long after official resistance had stopped, giving the Japanese an excuse to use them as research materials through all the years that the experiments continued. Some members of the resistance were captured and interrogated by the kenpeitai, then sent to the experimental labs.
Members of the kenpeitai were under orders of the army, and were specially selected for their rigid, oppressive, and unyielding personalities. They were given such jobs as catching spies and interrogating suspects, and were authorized to use torture if they were so inclined. The kenpeitai spoke with daggers. They knew how to stare down a person, and how to use the voice to intimidate a suspect. People from an earlier era sometimes mentioned the fearsome way that these protectors of Japanese aims could shake a person with words, but even their descriptions failed to do justice to the reality. This is neither romanticizing nor exaggeration. Among the testimonies recorded in this book are those of former kenpeitai officers. One man, eighty years old, came out and told his audience, “I am a war criminal.” For more than thirty minutes, that voice penetrated. In this case, it was turned against himself and the deeds he performed “for the country, for the emperor.” Even at the age of eighty, that former kenpeitai officer was able to give an idea of what it must really have felt like to be stopped by himself or one of his comrades back in those dark days.
The kenpeitai served as a human materials procurement arm for Unit 731 and its associated outfits. A former kenpeitai officer from Dalian, Miou Yutaka, tells how the prisoners were handled: “We were the Special Handling forces of the kenpeitai, in charge of taking prisoners for the experiments of 731. We knew the prisoners would be used in experiments and not come back.
“We tied them with ropes around their waists, and their hands behind the backs. They couldn’t move. We took them by train in a closed car, then the Unit 731 truck would meet us at the station. It was a strange truck—black with no windows. A strange-looking vehicle.”
The gloomy,