A newly released document by the Museum of Evidence of War Crimes provides in-depth insights into the heinous activities of the Japanese Unit 731 during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45).
The 69-page file, unveiled for the first time on Saturday, details information about 52 staff members of Unit 731. This includes their personal details, involvement in war crimes, transfers between Units 731 and 516, and their actions from Japan's defeat in August 1945 until their return home.
Researchers have discovered significant personnel movement between Unit 731 and Unit 516 based in Heilongjiang's Qiqihar City. According to Jin Chengmin, the museum's curator, \"Both units were central to Japan's biological and chemical warfare efforts and conducted joint poison gas experiments.\"
An example highlighted in the file shows a Unit 731 member who also served as a health officer in Unit 516, indicating a close collaboration that warrants further investigation.
The file also reveals that four members of Unit 731 received three-year \"medical training\" at a Japanese-controlled medical university in Harbin as military family students. This underscores the integrated nature of Japan’s military, political, and medical efforts in training soldiers and conducting systematic human experiments and germ warfare—clear evidence of organized group crimes under Japanese militarism.
Discovered in the National Archives of Japan, the document was returned to China in 2022 after extensive negotiations. Established in Harbin in 1935, Unit 731 was the epicenter of Japan's biological warfare operations in China and Southeast Asia during the war. The unit is notorious for conducting lethal human experiments, with over 3,000 people subjected to such inhumane practices, and more than 300,000 individuals across China killed by Japan's biological weapons.
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