like lab rats. Toward the end of 1932, Ishii applied to the army to be sent to Manchuria to expand his research facilities. Then, the following year, Ishii’s aggressive push for biological warfare research resulted in a grant of land and a building in Tokyo for his research. Coincidentally, this was the year in which Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, which had judged it in the wrong for its aggression against China. This severance of ties would be instrumental in freeing Japan’s hands from any remaining constraints on the way she behaved in Asia.
The Japanese maintained control in Manchuria in a variety of ways. Emperor Pu Yi’s police force, obedient to the commands of its Japanese puppeteers, was one law enforcement arm. In addition, there was a special police force which engaged in intelligence work but was also skilled in gaining confessions from suspected spies. Finally, perhaps the most terrifying group in the service of the Japanese Empire belonged to the elite group of military police known as the kenpeitai.
Substantial though Japanese capacity to maintain “public order” was, there was no lack of work for it. Opportunities to detain people constantly manifested themselves. The powers-that-were in Manchuria decreed anti-Japanese activity a cause for arrest, and the oppressive nature of the Japanese occupation created patriots who formed underground groups to oppose it. Groups and individuals kept up the anti-Japanese struggle long after official resistance had stopped, giving the Japanese an excuse to use them as research materials through all the years that the experiments continued. Some members of the resistance were captured and interrogated by the kenpeitai, then sent to the experimental labs.
Members of the kenpeitai were under orders of the army, and were specially selected for their rigid, oppressive, and unyielding personalities. They were given such jobs as catching spies and interrogating suspects, and were authorized to use torture if they were so inclined. The kenpeitai spoke with daggers. They knew how to stare down a person, and how to use the voice to intimidate a suspect. People from an earlier era sometimes mentioned the fearsome way that these protectors of Japanese aims could shake a person with words, but even their descriptions failed to do justice to the reality. This is neither romanticizing nor exaggeration. Among the testimonies recorded in this book are those of former kenpeitai officers. One man, eighty years old, came out and told his audience, “I am a war criminal.” For more than thirty minutes, that voice penetrated. In this case, it was turned against himself and the deeds he performed “for the country, for the emperor.” Even at the age of eighty, that former kenpeitai officer was able to give an idea of what it must really have felt like to be stopped by himself or one of his comrades back in those dark days.
The kenpeitai served as a human materials procurement arm for Unit 731 and its associated outfits. A former kenpeitai officer from Dalian, Miou Yutaka, tells how the prisoners were handled: “We were the Special Handling forces of the kenpeitai, in charge of taking prisoners for the experiments of 731. We knew the prisoners would be used in experiments and not come back.
“We tied them with ropes around their waists, and their hands behind the backs. They couldn’t move. We took them by train in a closed car, then the Unit 731 truck would meet us at the station. It was a strange truck—black with no windows. A strange-looking vehicle.”
The gloomy, sealed freight cars to which Miou referred ran over the tracks of the South Manchuria Railway. They represented a much different side to the efficient railroad from the one that had impressed Terry the travel writer.
2
A New Type of Warfare
The Fortress/Bacteria Factory
The Manchurian city of Harbin was a railroad hub, and a multicultural, multiracial center of commerce, art, and music. It had been developed by the Russians just a few years before the Russo-Japanese War broke out. White Russians who had fled their country settled in Harbin. They were not well off, but at least they were not living in Russia, which seemed more important. Many of the women were beautiful, and a lack of other employment opportunities made them turn to prostitution. The racial and cultural mix made Harbin a fascinating city.
In 1932, a few months after Japanese troops moved into Harbin, Ishii and his associates followed them. Meanwhile, the Japanese faced numerically superior Soviet troops along the Soviet-Manchurian border. An armed clash was expected, and Ishii planned to use his specialty to overcome his side’s disadvantage.
Ishii’s operations started out in Harbin with a few hundred men, but too many eyes in an urban center were not what he and his confederates wanted. To maintain their facade of respectability, they had the Harbin facility concentrate on the socially accepted area of vaccines and other “proper” medical research. Meanwhile, for the work they wanted kept completely quiet, they soon found another place about one hundred kilometers to the south. The ever-dependable and expanding South Manchuria Railway provided a means of transporting equipment and, more important, human lab materials.
The Japanese descended upon a poor neighborhood near an area known as Beiyinhe. There were about three hundred homes and shops there, with an extensive area of open land nearby to the south. Japanese troops came in and told the village headman that everyone had to clear out in three days; then Ishii and the army moved in. A large building of about one hundred rooms was kept for quarters while the facilities were being set up, and everything else was put to the torch. An area of five hundred square meters was designated a restricted military zone, and brick buildings started going up. The tract of land to the south was also forcibly appropriated and made into a Japanese military airport.
Chinese laborers were recruited and driven hard at wages low even by local standards. Their Japanese overseers argued that low pay was sufficient because the cost of living was low. But with large families the general rule in China, the pay for construction workers was barely enough to feed the mouths that depended on them.
With typical Japanese efficiency, the construction—comprising several hundred rooms—was finished in less than one year. Everything was veiled in secrecy. During construction, the laborers were under constant watch by Japanese guards, and their movements were limited. The number of laborers varied each day according to the work to be done. There were two sections to the complex. One contained offices, living quarters, dining areas, warehouses, and a parking lot. The other section contained the heart of the organization. In sequence as it concerned the victims, there were prisons, laboratories, and crematoria. There was also an area for munitions storage.
The area containing the lab was especially restricted to Chinese workers, but at times they had to enter to carry in materials or large boxes. In such cases, precautions bordering on the comical were taken to assure that the Chinese would see nothing. They were ordered to get under huge willow baskets that covered their bodies. They would then pick up their loads, be led in by Japanese guards, deposit their burdens, and be led out of the restricted area. Then they could come out from under the baskets.
The new facility was astounding to look at. It became known as Zhongma Fortress. (The character for fortress has also been translated as “castle,” and it does, in fact, have that meaning in Japanese. In the original Chinese, however, it is applied to an entirely walled-in fortress city, a protection against enemy attacks. This is surely what the Japanese facility must have looked like to the outsiders.) A three-meter-high wall was topped with barbed wire and high-voltage electric wire. A twenty-four-hour guard was posted outside. Twin iron doors swung open to a drawbridge. The road in front of the facility was declared off-limits to the citizens, and people had to take a long way around to get to their destinations. Trains passing by on rails about a kilometer away were required to have their shades drawn.
One rumor told of a young boy who was curious about the Fortress and went out to have a look. His body was found the next day; he had been killed by gunfire. But even walls
