Chapter 3 The True Face of the Horror I Peeped Today

In the process of publishing the serial novel "Dead Weapon" in the Sunday edition of "Chiqi" newspaper, I had the opportunity to meet many survivors of the former Manchurian Unit 731, the Japanese Army's germ warfare unit. The world's largest bacterial warfare force gathered outstanding doctors and scientists from all over Japan, conducted inhumane in vivo experiments on more than 3,000 prisoners of war, and produced a large number of bacterial weapons. Later, the U.S. Biochemical Corps obtained this technology and technical know-how, but the records about Unit 731 were completely destroyed at the end of the war and became a blank in the history of the war.The survivors also kept their mouths shut as if they had discussed it, unwilling to talk about the situation.

In the Khabarovsk Far East Military Court, Unit 731 was tried.The works written based on the records of this trial include "The Living Experiment of Three Thousand People" by Shimamura Joe (published by the original study in 1967), and "Military Trial of Bacterial Warfare" by Yamada Kiyosaburo (published by Toho Publishing House in 1974). ) and other elaborate creations. After I got in touch with the former members of the army, I got a glimpse of the terrifying truth of this capital team. Unit 731 is a demon unit produced by the Japanese Army.They have turned biology and medicine into weapons and carried out germ warfare, which is prohibited by international law.The team members kept their experiences strictly secret, and many of them lived incognito.

War is inherently cruel.For those who engage in germ warfare, which is considered inhumane and banned in wars, life after that must be very heavy.However, we must truly record the truth, and history must not leave a blank.After our desperate persuasion, these people finally opened their closed mouths. At the beginning, I wanted to write these materials into the novel "Dead Weapon", but the situation about the 731 capital team is an objective fact.I felt compelled to write down what I had heard, without embellishing and processing it like a novel. What exactly is Unit 731 for those who dedicate their youth, or the most fruitful period of their lives, to Unit 731?These people lived a heavy and harsh life after the war, and the pen that records these real situations is also very heavy.

While expressing my deep gratitude to the survivors of Unit 731 who assisted in this interview, I intend to cut to the chase. First, let us take an overview of the international environment in Manchuria and Japan before and after Unit 731 was born in Beiyin River, a suburb of Harbin in 1933. At that time, Japan won the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War one after another, and its capitalism and military power achieved rapid development.These victories did not come from Japan's own national power, but relied on the weakness of the late Qing Dynasty and the Russian domestic revolution. However, they pushed Japan's international status to the point where it stood shoulder to shoulder with European and American powers.

The national will proposed by the Meiji government is to change the backwardness brought about by the seclusion of the country and establish a big country standing side by side with European and American powers.This national will, aided by three lucky victories, inflated Japan's ambitions and expanded its territory in one fell swoop by taking advantage of the imperialist aggression of European and American powers in various parts of Asia since the end of the 19th century. Due to the aggression of European and American powers, China was being eaten away everywhere. After Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War, it drove the Russian forces out of Manchuria, thereby enhancing its advantages in Manchuria.

However, Japan quickly raised its head, and gradually had frictions with European and American powers, especially the relationship with the United States and Britain, which did not like Japan's dominance in Manchuria, became sinister. At that time, the Japanese military headquarters had a strong awareness that Manchuria was a territory bought by Japanese officers and soldiers in exchange for blood.This is linked to the crisis response created by the breakthrough of Japanese capitalism, which greedily expanded from the invasion of Manchuria to the invasion of mainland China. From the end of the Qing Dynasty (1900) to 1937 when the "KMT-Communist Cooperation" was realized, and before the whole of China entered into a united anti-Japanese situation, China was in a state of demons dancing wildly.The Japanese army took the opportunity to expand its power in Manchuria.Among these forces, bandits, horse thieves, and secret associations were rampant, and the Manchurian and Mongolian independence movements were mixed in, further aggravating the turmoil.

The extremely turbulent state in China greatly stimulated the ambitions of Japanese youth at that time.Instigated by the dream of "flying from the mainland", young people rushed to China.The ronin who could not make a living in Japan pretended to be worried about the country and entered the mainland.Junosuke Date, Yoshiko Matsumoto and Yoshiko Kawashima were all active in this period. On this soil, the Kwantung Army, Japan's dispatched military headquarters, launched the Liutiao Lake Incident on September 18, 1931. Under the pretext of self-defense, it ignored the government's policy of not expanding the war and occupied the entire Manchuria region. .Then, in July 1937, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which became the fuse of the Sino-Japanese War, was created.

Against this backdrop, Unit 731 decided to build its base in the Pingfang area on the outskirts of Harbin.