Chapter 24 Unit 731 spread plague bacteria over Ningbo

On this day, grains fell over Ningbo and Jinhua.These grains are like seeds of evil, spreading deadly bacteria to the earth.This is another "masterpiece" of Unit 731 of the Japanese Bacterial Force. The origin of Unit 731 originated from the post office box number of the "Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Department" is "Manchurian Seventh Thirty One Unit", which is a bacterial unit established by the emperor's order.It is entrenched in a small town called Pingfang at that time, 20 kilometers southeast of Harbin. After 1927, the ambitions of the Japanese rulers to invade China became more and more exposed.They want to realize this ambition, but they don't have enough manpower, military force, and financial resources; especially industrial resources and industrial raw materials are inherently insufficient, and industrial productivity and technological level are still far from meeting the crazy requirements of external expansion.In order to resolve this contradiction, they have resorted to unscrupulous means, disregarding public international law and humanitarian principles, and using bacteria as a means of aggression and massacre.Because bacteria are different from steel and rare metals, and do not need gasoline, they are cheap weapons.

The Japanese rulers cultivated a group of "scientists" who could meet the needs of imperialist aggression.At that time, Shiro Ishii, the military doctor who served as the instructor of "Military Epidemic Prevention" at the Military Medical School, was a representative of this kind of "scientist".He was born in a landowner family in Kamo, Chiyodamura, Sanbu County, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from the Medical School of Kyoto University as a student dispatched by the Army and became a military doctor.He is a stubborn, cunning, ambitious man with no conscience.He once yelled at the students of the military medical school: "Is there anyone who works with me? Is there anyone who can die for me?" He used this to recruit subordinates who would serve as his minions.He also relied on his father-in-law Torasaburo Araki, president of Kyoto University (specialized in graduate chemistry), as his backer to select "experts" from the "Kyoto School" to participate in crime research.

On September 18, 1931, the Japanese army began to invade Northeast China, and in a blink of an eye, the Northeast fell.Ishii conveniently used the military police to arrest Chinese patriots as experimental "materials" to study the method of germ warfare. This is the most proud hand of the ogre king Ishii.He asked for huge funds to set up a large-scale secret research institute in the Northeast to manufacture bacterial weapons for use in aggression.Ishii's request was immediately granted.Therefore, on the fertile land beside the shady river (Sanchakou, Wuchang County), which was once filled with the happy singing of spring plowing and autumn harvest, farmers were driven out of their homes and displaced.It is here that a secret force emerges to carry out the germ warfare conspiracy.This is the predecessor of Unit 731, the so-called "Kamo Unit" (built in 1933).

Ishii's alias Chexiang Shaozuo became the commander of the army.His confidantes include Military Doctor Major Kawashima Kiyoshi, Military Doctor Captain Ota Sumori (alias Captain Date), Military Doctor Captain Ikari Tsuneshige, Military Doctor Lieutenant Hayakawa Kiyoshi, Military Doctor Lieutenant Eguchi Toyoyoshi, and Masuda Yoshiho Pharmaceutical Lieutenant (aviator, Shiro Ishii) son-in-law) etc.In addition, "scientists" such as Futaki, Ishimitsu, Kasahara, Yagisawa, and Technician Tanaka were also combined.Ishii took advantage of his fellow-townsmanship to recruit his family members, relatives, friends, and tenants to act as employees. For example, Takeo Ishii (alias Hosoya, brother of Shiro Ishii) was in charge of burning the bodies of the dead who died for experiments.Together they serve the evil plan to invade China.At that time there were about 100 troops in the army.On the Beiyin River, there is a continuous stream of blue cars, taking advantage of the dark night, to transport the anti-Japanese and national rescuers to the secret prison in the Kamo Army.

After the fall, the Northeast Volunteer Army fought indomitably under the command of the excellent leader, General Yang Jingyu, commander of the 11th Route Army of the Anti-Japanese Allied Army.Among them, several anti-Japanese and national salvation warriors who were detained in Unit 731 took advantage of the heavy rain in the summer of 1934 to overthrow the guards, escaped from the tiger's mouth, and returned to General Yang Jingyu safely.Immediately after this incident, Ishii prepared to relocate for fear of leaking his secrets and being attacked by the Chinese people.He falsely claimed that the Beiyinhe troops were on fire, but in fact he set the fire himself.Instead, they built several houses in Nangang Temple on the outskirts of Harbin, as part of the hospital, and continued their criminal activities.This so-called "Hospital South Building" is actually the beginning of the official relocation of Unit 731 in Pingfang Town.

In 1934, they manufactured the most important tool of bacterial weapons, mass-produced culture tanks, and based on the acquisition of the franchise rights of the Shofu Water Filter Manufacturing Company, they created the "sanitary water filter" that is indispensable for bacterial warfare .Soon, he and his subordinate technician Katsuya designed the necessary equipment for poisoning work - "toxicity measuring machine". On July 7, 1937, Japanese militarists invaded China's customs.At this time, the fascists in the Japanese military headquarters felt more and more necessary to use bacterial weapons as powerful weapons to invade China and the Soviet Union.Therefore, Ishii forcibly occupied 2 square kilometers of cultivated land centered on Zhenghuangqitun, about 4 kilometers north of Pingfang Station, as the construction site for the construction of the barracks. Built a "bacteria factory".The exterior works were completed in 1937 and entered the stage of interior works in 1938.In order to prevent the secrets of the troops from leaking out, Ishii envoyed his relative from the same hometown, Shigeru Suzuki, who is in the civil engineering and construction industry, to do everything. The more than 500 service personnel used were also recruited from his hometown of Chiba Prefecture.The "Seventh Building" and "Eighth Building" for experiments on living people include about 120 celibate cells, as well as special laboratories (freeze injury research laboratory and decompression laboratory for research on aviation hygiene), laboratory , autopsy room, specimen room and various killing equipment. The "third building" and "fifth building" are bacteria cultivation rooms, and the "fourth building" and "sixth building" are bacterial incubation rooms.The above projects and equipment have been completed successively.

From June 1938 to March 1939, the 731 troops all moved to Pingfang Town.In the so-called "Nandong" (Nangang, Harbin), only the "third department" and the backbone of the "diagnosis and treatment department" of the army were left, that is, the divisions for checking the source of disease, testing for toxicity, and checking for water quality, as well as the bacterial production team. Part of production class and medical treatment of infectious diseases.The unit in the bungalow is a belt conveyor production facility with a monthly production capacity of 500 kg of intestinal bacteria such as cholera and typhoid, 250 kg of plague bacteria, and 200 kg of anthrax bacteria. A comprehensive organization including institutions, institutions that study the use of bacteria, etc.

With the unit as the center and within a radius of eight kilometers, it is designated as a special area.With the "Border Ban Law" and the "Military Aircraft Protection Law" as amulets, from there to the streets outside, that is, on the streets of Shuangcheng Street, Lalin Street, Pingfang Street, and Acheng Street, there are often counterfeit Police and gendarmes closely monitor.In 23 villages in this land, 12,000 farmers have become slaves of Unit 731.440 poor and farm laborers were expelled from their villages, collectively detained in the "labor village" near the north of the team, and enslaved in the "self-supporting farm" near the team.For other peasants, 200 laborers and 80 carts are forced out every day for errands.The peasants are being beaten and scolded for them to cultivate and do heavy labor such as civil engineering and transportation. Their lives are extremely miserable.

The "serum horses" (horses for blood serum) of Unit 731 ate oats, and farmers ate acorns to survive.Small children are constantly starving to death.A young man was beaten to death by the military police because he went to the mountains to collect firewood, saying that he did not have a permit. In May 1939, the Japanese imperialists provoked the Lake Hassan incident because they violated the border of Lake Hassan in the Soviet Union.Originally wanted to sneak into the territory of the Soviet Union, but unexpectedly met with a heroic counterattack and lost the battle.The Kwantung Army Commander at that time, Kenkichi Ueda, had sent Tonomiya Takeda, the staff officer of the first section of the headquarters, to Unit 731 in the name of inspection to discuss how to conduct bacterial warfare to save the war situation.Ishii sent "Ikari troops" to the front line of Lake Hassan, and spread about 22 kilograms of typhoid, cholera, paratyphoid, and dysentery on the Harha River and other water sources and the ground.At that time, although preventive measures were taken early in the Japanese invading army, there were still a large number of patients. As for the number of victims in the Soviet and Mongolian armies and among the nearby residents, it is not difficult to imagine.This spread of bacteria is the first large-scale activity of Unit 731.In the history of mankind, unprecedented, large-scale, inhumane germ warfare began to appear in this way.It can be said that Unit 731 took the military provocation of Lake Hassan as a turning point, from the preparation stage of research on germ warfare to the stage of implementation.In 1944, Shiro Ishii received the Japanese Army's highest technical merit award for his research on bacterial warfare.

The personnel of Unit 731 also increased suddenly between 1939 and 1940.Before the Lake Hassan incident, the number was about 500.In order to prevent the leakage of secrets, Ishii has always used the teacher-student relationship, kinship relationship and feudal affiliation relationship in the military medical school to maintain unity in the army and cover up criminal activities.Since the incident, he has recruited the so-called "youth team" and formed the "children's army" to strengthen his dictatorship (for example, he recruited about 70 young people under the age of 18 from Chiba County).In addition, they are more committed to seeking so-called reliable people from demobilized soldiers and personal relationships.By 1942, the number of troops had reached more than 2,000.On the other hand, after 1938, the core personnel of Unit 731 were placed in the occupied areas in various parts of China's customs.Such as the establishment of the North China Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Department, the Central China Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Department, and the South China Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Department.In Northeast China, since 1940, four branches were established in Mudanjiang, Linkou, Sunwu, and Hailar. In 1941, the Dalian Institute of Health was merged from the "South Manchuria Railway Co., Ltd." to the jurisdiction of Unit 731.As a result, a bacterial warfare network was formed in various parts of China, and by July 1940, the bacterial warfare began against mainland China.

In August 1940, in accordance with the decision of the Japanese Army Staff Headquarters and the Ministry of the Army to carry out bacterial attacks on cities along the Zhejiang-Jiangxi line, the Japanese Army Unit 731 jointly formed the Bacterial Warfare Action Unit-"Nara Unit", based on the former Kuomintang Central Aviation School in Jianqiao, Hangzhou As a base, bacterial attacks were carried out on Zhejiang and other places.Jingben’s diary records: The targets of this attack were Ningbo, Quzhou, Jinhua, Yushan, Wenzhou, Taizhou, and Lishui. As of October 7, six bacterial attacks were carried out, and bacteria were transported 26 times; the bacterial airdrop method used in Wenzhou was Appropriate, but parachutes must be used, Taizhou's airdrop method is not suitable; cholera bacteria seem to be less successful, plague may be successful.At that time, the Chinese local military and political authorities clearly reported that Quzhou, Ningbo, and Jinhua were attacked by the Japanese army's germ warfare, and carried out epidemic prevention work.On October 4, Japanese planes dropped grains and plague fleas in Quzhou County, on October 27 they dropped grains and plague fleas in Ningbo City, and on November 27 they dropped plague bacteria in Jinhua.Plague epidemics broke out in Quzhou and Ningbo one after another.More than 2,000 people died in urban and rural areas of Quzhou, and the infection spread to Yiwu County, 50 kilometers away, causing hundreds of deaths.An epidemic of plague broke out in Kaiming Street, Ningbo City. Although the epidemic prevention work was carried out immediately, 106 people died.There was no plague epidemic in Jinhua at that time, which showed that the effect of direct airdropping of plague bacteria liquid by the Japanese army was not ideal, and it proved that using fleas as a medium was ideal.Wenzhou and other places may have air-dropped cholera bacteria, but the effect was considered insignificant.However, in addition to the airdrops recorded in Imoto's diary, the "Nara Force" also went out in vehicles many times to spread bacteria in rivers and wells.