By Jin Shicheng
Recently, the Exhibition Hall of Evidences of Crime Committed by Unit 731 of Japanese Imperial Army released two sets of newly compiled historical evidence: the personal information registration files of the former Hailar Branch of Unit 731, and oral testimonies from former branch medic Tanizaki and others. Corroborating each other, the files and oral accounts further expose the criminal details of Unit 731's biological warfare, adding solid branch-level proof that Japan's biological warfare during its aggression against China was a systemic state crime.
The newly released personal information registration files are personal military service records filled out by military personnel who returned to Japan as individuals after the war. They document the basic information, enlistment trajectories, and post-war whereabouts of 156 branch members.
The files systematically reveal the covert recruitment operations of Unit 731: the Japanese military recruited personnel in the name of conventional infantry units such as Manchuria Units 97, 177, and 201, and then assigned them to the Hailar Branch after three months of specialized training at Unit 731 headquarters, with 48 personnel from Unit 97 alone. Carrying out biological warfare under the cover of conventional units exposes the Japanese military's deliberate scheme to conceal the criminal nature of its actions, and also confirms the fact that multiple Japanese military forces were deeply involved in executing biological warfare.
The files also disclose the post-war accountability of the personnel involved: among the 156 branch members, 145 were detained by the Soviet Union after the war, four of whom stood trial in Khabarovsk between April and September 1950. This finding supplements the historical trajectory of the Soviet Union's continued pursuit of accountability for Japanese biological warfare criminals following the 1949 Khabarovsk War Crimes Trials, providing new historical evidence to deepen research on the trials.
Echoing the files, the 70-minute oral testimony by Tanizaki and others reconstructs the internal division of labor for carrying out biological warfare within the Hailar Branch. It reveals the complete criminal chain from capturing and breeding wild rats to transporting them to Unit 731 headquarters, clearly illustrating how the Hailar Branch operated as an executive organ of biological warfare.
The testimony also explicitly confirms that the Hailar Branch, externally codenamed "Manchuria Unit 543," colluded with Unit 731, Unit 100, and Unit 516 to conduct large-scale human poison gas experiments within Chinese territory. Before its defeat, Japan buried massive quantities of poison gas shells in China, and these accounts provide vital oral evidence for furthering investigations into chemical weapons abandoned by Japan in China.
In recent years, archives of Unit 731 headquarters and its various branches have been successively made public, with crime sites, archival materials, and oral testimonies of former Japanese military personnel corroborating one another. The heinous crimes of Japan's biological warfare during its aggression against China are backed by irrefutable evidence, yet the Japanese government has persistently refused to squarely face up to and reflect upon its historical atrocities.
After the war, the United States granted immunity to Shiro Ishii and other key war criminals of Unit 731 in exchange for biological warfare experimental data, resulting in Japan's biological warfare crimes escaping thorough judicial reckoning at the Tokyo Trials. Subsequently, a large number of key Unit 731 members entered Japanese political, medical, and business circles, with their crimes unpunished for a long time.
For a long time, Japanese officials have adopted an attitude of evasion, obfuscation, and even denial toward Unit 731's historical atrocities against humanity. Taku Yamazoe, a member of the House of Councilors from the Japanese Communist Party, once presented historical evidences of the crimes of the Unit 731in the Diet, which, however, was brushed off by Japan's Defense Minister on the grounds of unverifiable authenticity—exposing an unmistakable intent to deny Japan’s history of aggression. The release of the new evidence regarding the Hailar Branch is a forceful rebuttal to historical nihilism.
To this day, the Japanese government has still not issued a formal apology or compensation for its biological warfare crimes, and progress in excavating and disposing of chemical weapons abandoned by Japan in China remains sluggish. Even more alarming to the international community is the incumbent Japanese government's continued regression in historical perception—not only deliberately downplaying its guilt of aggression, but also repeatedly breaching the constraints of its pacifist Constitution and accelerating military buildup.
History has long proven that whitewashing and evading the history of aggression is often the beginning of repeating the mistakes of war. The international community should bear in mind the painful lessons learnt from the World Anti-Fascist War, remain vigilant against trends toward the resurgence of Japanese militarism, and jointly safeguard the post-war international order and hard-won peace and stability.
(The authors are, respectively, the deputy curator and a research fellow at the Exhibition Hall of Evidences of Crime Committed by Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army)
Editor's Note: Originally published by people.com.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.