Video sheds new light on Japan's wartime atrocities

A museum in Northeast China has released a 38-minute video recording of a former member of Unit 731, the Japanese Imperial Army's notorious germ-warfare unit during World War II, offering rare firsthand testimony about the group's human experiments and battlefield operations.

The video of Tsuruo Nishijima's oral testimony was released by the Exhibition Hall of Evidences of Crimes Committed by Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army, a museum in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province, on the eve of China's National Memorial Day for Nanjing Massacre Victims, on Saturday.

The video was recorded in 1997 by Japanese scholar Fuyuko Nishisato and donated to the museum in 2019.

"The testimony of Nishijima provides an insider's perspective on their atrocities, confirming the crimes against humanity committed by the Japanese Army during the invasion of China," said Jin Shicheng, director of the museum's education and publicity department, in an interview with China Central Television.

Unit 731 was a top-secret biological and chemical weapon research base established in 1933 as the nerve center of Japan's germ warfare in China and Southeast Asia. It conducted experiments on at least 3,000 people, while more than 300,000 people across China were killed by Japan's biological weapons.

In his testimony recorded in the video, Nishijima describes his involvement in experiments intended to test and improve the dispersal of bacterial agents. He joined Unit 731's meteorological unit in October 1938, and helped measure wind patterns to support germ-weapons field tests and participated in frostbite experiments on human subjects.

He recounted what were known as "shower experiments", in which planes flew at extremely low altitude to spray bacterial solutions over rows of test subjects. The victims, including Chinese, Korean, Mongolian and Soviet prisoners of war, were tied to stakes as aircraft released clouds of pathogens.

"Inhaling the solution meant certain death," he said in the video. "People held their breath and closed their eyes, but they were forced at gunpoint to open their mouths and look up."

After the experiments, they were transported back in refrigerated trucks for continuous observation and data recording, according to Nishijima.

There were instances of Japanese military doctors dying from infections despite wearing multiple masks, highlighting the high pathogenicity and lethality of the bacteria used.

Unit 731 also set up a dedicated frostbite laboratory where frostbite and defrosting experiments could be conducted in all seasons. It developed over 50 types of bacteria, including typhoid, cholera, plague, anthrax and glanders, testing their effects through human experiments to select the most suitable for warfare.

The testimony also describes Unit 731's operational role on the battlefield. Nishijima said he participated in the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign of 1941, where Unit 731 deployed a small team of 30 to 40 members carrying bacteria solutions and infected fleas.

"Their task was to spread bacteria in civilian areas during Japanese troop withdrawals," he said in the video.

"The Japanese medical and academic communities at the time supported and participated in Unit 731's crimes, making it a large-scale, organized group crime from top to bottom in Japan," said Jin from the museum.