to receive injections or have blood samples drawn. The window and opening of each cell were located near the floor so that prisoners could extend their arms while in a reclining position; as the tests progressed, victims became unable to stand. Each cell had a flush toilet to maintain cleanliness, a wooden floor, and concrete walls heavier than necessary, probably built with recollections of the escape at Zhongma. Even walls between cells were thirty to forty centimeters thick. Central heating and cooling systems, and a well-planned diet, protected the health of the prisoners to ensure that the data they produced was valid. Poor living conditions or the presence of other disease germs could confuse results.
In all the gruesome professionalism that built the legacy of Unit 731, there was one touch of sardonic humor. As the massive Pingfang installation was under construction, local people began to ask what it was. The glib answer supplied was that the Japanese were building a lumber mill. Regarding this reply, one of the researchers joked privately, “And the people are the logs.” From then on, the Japanese term for log, maruta, was used to speak of the prisoners whose last days were spent being tom apart or gassed by Japanese researchers. It is surprising how few Japanese realize the origin of this term, though the word itself never fails to come up when Unit 731 is discussed. The expression smacks of a racial attitude not even up to the level of disdain.
Pingfang was equipped for disposing of its consumed human lab materials with three large incinerators—calling them crematoria would bestow undue dignity upon them. A former member who assisted in the burning commented, “The bodies always burned up fast because all the organs were gone; the bodies were empty.”
Ueda Yataro was a researcher working under a leader of one of the teams into which researchers and assistants were organized. He later woke up to the aberrant thinking which led him and others to participate in the activities of Unit 731. He recorded his experiences, disjointedly, in pages of handwritten notes. The following is an excerpt about one of the research projects that he worked on. His “material” was in a cell with four other maruta.
He was already too weak to stand. The heavy leg irons bit at his legs. When he moved, they made a dull, clanking sound. His fellow cellmates sat around him, and watched him. Nobody spoke. The water in the toilet was running with an ominous sound.
In the corridor outside the cell, the guards stood with their pistols strapped on. The commander of the guards was there also. The man’s screams of death had no effect on them. This was an everyday occurrence. There was nothing special.
To these guards, the people in here have already lost all rights. Their names have been exchanged for just a number written across the front of their shirts and the name maruta. They are referred to only as “Maruta Number X.” They are counted not as one person or two persons but “one log, two logs.” We are not concerned with where they are from, how they came here.
The man looked like a farmer, covered with grime. He was wasting away, and his cheekbones protruded. His eyes glared out from the dirt and the tattered cotton clothes he was wrapped in.
The team leader was fully pleased with yesterday’s results. We never had such a typical change in blood picture and rate of infection, and I was eagerly looking forward to see what changes would be present in today’s blood sample. With high hopes, I came to the Number 7 cell block with the armed guards at my side. The maruta I was working on was on the verge of death. It would be disastrous if he died. Then I would not be able to get a blood sample, and we would not obtain the important results of the tests we had been working on.
I called his number. No answer came. I motioned through the window at the other four prisoners to bring him over. They sat there without moving. I screamed abusively at them to hurry up and bring him over to the window. One of the guards pulled out a gun, aimed it at them, and screamed in Chinese. Resigned, they gently lifted up the other man and brought him over to the window. More important to me than the man’s death was the blood flowing in the human guinea pig’s body at the moment just before his death.
His hand was purplish and turning cold. He put his arm through the opening. I was elated. Filled with a sense of victory and holding down my inexpressible excitement, thinking forward to how the team leader would be waiting for these results, I reached for the hypodermic.
I inserted the needle into the vein. It made a dull sound. I pulled the red-black blood into the hypodermic. Three cubic centimeters … five cubic centimeters … His face became paler. Before, he’d been moaning; now he could not even moan. His throat was making a tiny rasping sound like an insect. With resentment and anger in his eyes, he stared at me without even blinking. But that did not matter. I obtained a blood sample of ten cubic centimeters. For people in laboratory work, this is ecstasy, and one’s calling to his profession. Showing compassion for a person’s death pains was of no value to me.
At the lab, I processed the blood sample quickly and then went back to look into the cell. His face occasionally twitched. His breath became shallower, and he went into his death throes.
The other four men in the cell, who had the same fate waiting for them, could not contain their anger. They took water and poured it into the mouth of the dead man.
This way, an irreplaceable life is trifled with to take the place of a guinea pig, and the result is one sheet of graph paper.
Four or five soldiers, with drawn guns, opened the door to the cell. It made a heavy sound. They dragged the dead man out into the corridor and loaded him onto a hand cart. The other four men, knowing what their fate would be tomorrow, could not hold down the anger in their eyes as they watched their dead companion leave.
The hand cart disappeared in the direction of the dissection room with the tall chimney looming above.
Human experimentation gave researchers their first chance to actually examine the organs of a living person at will to see the progress of a disease. Vivisection was a new experience for the doctors of Japan. One former unit member explained that “the results of the effects of infection cannot be obtained accurately once the person dies because putrefactive bacteria set in. Putrefactive bacteria are stronger than plague germs. So, for obtaining accurate results, it is important whether the subject is alive or not.”
The research methods in Manchuria allowed doctors to induce diseases and examine their effects on organs at the first stages. Researchers worked with interpreters to ask about emerging symptoms, and took subjects out of cells at what they judged to be the time for optimum results. Anesthesia was optional. According to a former unit member: “As soon as the symptoms were observed, the prisoner was taken from his cell and into the dissection room. He was stripped and placed on the table, screaming, trying to fight back. He was strapped down, still screaming frightfully. One of the doctors stuffed a towel into his mouth, then with one quick slice of the scalpel he was opened up.”
Even with the intestines and organs exposed, a person does not die immediately. It is the same physical situation as ordinary surgery under anesthesia in which a person is operated on and restored. Witnesses at vivisections report that the victim usually lets out a horrible scream when the cut is made, and that the voice stops soon after that. The researchers then conduct their examination of the organs, remove the ones that they want for study, then discard what is left of the body. Somewhere in the process, the victim dies, through blood loss or removal of vital organs.
A very brief video testimony was provided by Kurumizawa Masakuni. He was advanced in age and weak at the time of the interview, and only photographs of him appeared on screen. His voice was almost inaudible. He spoke of the time he was working on a woman victim who had awakened from anesthesia while being vivisected. The woman interviewing him asked what happened.
“She opened her eyes.”
“And
