Translated with AI
Among the archival materials handed over by Russia to the Central Archives of China this month are those that reveal the crimes of the infamous Japanese Unit 731 during World War II. The most prominent figure in these materials is Major General Kiyoshi Kawashima, who oversaw the development of deadly bacteria. His confessions during the Khabarovsk war crimes trial in 1949 provide detailed evidence of how the Japanese army developed, tested, and used biological weapons against China.
The atrocities of Japanese Unit 731 are among the darkest chapters in the history of World War II. Much has been written and said about these war crimes, but the confessions of General Kiyoshi Kawashima stand apart. At his trial, he testified that this unit, operating in Harbin in northeastern China, had developed an entire system for the extermination of human test subjects. Kawashima was a military bacteriologist. From 1941 to 1943, he oversaw several units of Unit 731 responsible for the creation and testing of biological weapons, including the 4th Section.
Fu Yuanyuan, a researcher at the Central Archives of China, said: "The Fourth Section of the Japanese Unit 731 was mainly responsible for producing bacteria that cause plague, anthrax, typhoid fever, and cholera."
At his trial in Khabarovsk, Soviet Union, Kiyoshi Kawashima testified that the equipment used in Unit 731 was capable of producing up to 300 kilograms of plague bacteria, 800 to 900 kilograms of anthrax bacteria, and up to 1,000 kilograms of cholera bacteria per month. The defendant described in detail how the new biological weapons were tested on living people held in Unit 731's dungeons.
Fu Yuanyuan, a researcher at the Central Archives of China, said: "General Kawashima admitted that the infection experiments were conducted in separate chambers. The subjects were provided with nothing but a straw mat."
According to testimony from a Japanese military bacteriologist, hundreds of people were sent to the chambers annually for experiments during his tenure. None survived. Kawashima himself gave a comprehensive description of Unit 731: a death factory.
Fu Yuanyuan, a researcher at the Central Archives of China, said: "According to Kawashima, even if someone managed to survive the first bacterial infection, it could hardly be called luck. They were soon subjected to repeated experiments, infected with other types of bacteria, and so on until their death."
Kawashima's interrogation records contain information that after the death of the test subjects, their organs were harvested. They were needed as so-called "specimens," clearly demonstrating the effects of bacteria on the human body. In 2024, another former Unit 731 employee, Hideo Shimizu, returned to Harbin for the first time in over 80 years. Standing by the ruins of the former "death factory," he showed the location of its main facilities and recalled important episodes.
Former Japanese Unit 731 soldier Hideo Shimizu: "I remember one day accidentally peeking into the room where the 'specimens' were being stored. Inside, I saw the bodies of pregnant women with their fetuses still in their wombs, as well as human hands, gastrointestinal organs, brains, and almost every other type of human tissue imaginable."
In 1949, General Kawashima gave similar testimony not only about the work of laboratories on the territory of Unit 731 in Harbin, but also about the conduct of large-scale field experiments.
Fu Yuanyuan, a researcher at the Central Archives of China, said: "Kawashima reported that in the city of Anda, 100 kilometers from Harbin, 10 to 15 people were tied to poles and bacteria were sprayed on them from above. Up to 100 subjects were used in these ongoing experiments. Japanese soldiers observed the events from safe shelters."
Kawashima had direct access to Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii, the commander of Unit 731. From him, he received information about the vast territory of China where biological weapons had been deployed: from Ningbo to Changde, along the Zhejiang-Jiangxi railway, and elsewhere. Xiong Jingzhi, a 78-year-old resident of Chengde, still cherishes memories of her family, who suffered during live human testing.
Changde resident Xiong Jinzhi: "My father told me that my grandmother died of the plague. She developed a fever and her lymph nodes swelled dramatically. Around the same time, my grandfather's brother also died painfully. Our family, having lost our breadwinners, fell into poverty. We had to sell street snacks day and night to survive. I still harbor hatred for those who caused this."
Chen Zhiyuan, Director of the Hunan University's Center for Wartime Bacteriological Crimes Research: "This diary, found in the library of the Japanese Defense Agency, belongs to a staff officer. It records that a Type-97 aircraft took off on November 4, reached Changde, and then flew at an altitude of less than 1,000 meters. It sprayed bacteria over the city. By the end of November, an outbreak of plague had begun among the local population. The epidemic spread very quickly. This is concrete, irrefutable evidence."
A research report published in China in 2010 claimed that repeated Japanese biological attacks in China killed approximately 650,000 people. Because many classified documents on the test results were destroyed toward the end of the war, the true death toll remains unknown. However, the historical truth is emerging, including through the release of interrogation transcripts of Kiyoshi Kawashima and his accomplices. Their confessions confirm that the actions of Unit 731 of the Japanese Army were aimed at the mass extermination of Chinese civilians. This is irrefutable historical evidence.
(Photo: VCG)
