On September 18, the film "Evil Unbound" premiered worldwide, recounting the heinous human experiments carried out by an infamous Japanese unit out of a secret biological warfare research facility in Harbin, northeastern China's Heilongjiang Province, during the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

Despite extensive evidence documenting Unit 731's crimes, China's bid to have the archives inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register has been stuck in limbo for six years. An investigative video released Saturday by Yuyuan Tantian, a social media account affiliated with China Media Group, pointed to Japan's interference – backed by government resources and right-wing groups – as a key reason behind the delay.

The report noted that China's submissions on "comfort women" archives have faced similar obstacles. China first applied in 2014, failed in 2015, and tried again in 2017, only to find Japan filing a nearly identical application. Such duplicate submissions are rare in UNESCO's history, forcing the process into a protracted dialogue stage and endless postponement. A comparison of the two applications showed stark contrasts: China presented evidence condemning Japan's wartime atrocities, while Japan claimed its troops maintained "discipline" and argued that the "comfort women" system was "voluntary."

According to Yuyuan Tantian, right-wing scholar Shirou Takahashi is the one who devised the tactic of using overlapping submissions to derail China's efforts, and Japan's 2017 filing was spearheaded by activist Yumiko Yamamoto, described by Japanese media as a housewife.

Why did a housewife do that? The investigation found that the turning point came in 2015, when China's Nanjing Massacre archives were successfully listed in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. In the same year, then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared that Japan's future generations should not have to "keep apologizing." Within weeks, two groups – the "Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women" and the "Alliance for Truth about Nanjing Massacre" – submitted statements urging the government to block China's applications. Yamamoto was part of the former.

The investigative video further found that behind the "Comfort Women Truth National Movement" stood Hideaki Kase, a nationalist historian long seen as an ideologue of Japan's right wing. His father, a former Japanese UN ambassador, attended Japan's 1945 signing ceremony of the Instrument of Surrender but later called the war "just" and rejected calls for apologies – a stance Kase carried forward.

The investigation also highlighted the role of Japan's Foreign Ministry. It allegedly invested heavily to cultivate pro-Japan voices worldwide, including Chinese participants in a Japanese government-funded program. Before the final UNESCO decisions, the ministry had also held press briefings hinting that Japan might withdraw from the organization if China's submissions were approved, applying political pressure on the UN body.

These coordinated efforts dragged the "comfort women" archives into protracted dialogue, and in 2021 UNESCO revised its rules so that any single member state could indefinitely block an application by lodging an objection. Critics say the change gave aggressor nations veto power over victims' attempts to preserve historical truth.

In the video, Yuyuan Tantian interviewed Su Zhiliang, director of China's Research Center on Comfort Women and a participant in the 2017 bid. Now nearly 70, Su had just returned from South Korea, where he discussed plans for a joint application, as UNESCO requires multinational submissions from civil society groups. "Japan spares no effort, lobbying evaluation members and discrediting China–Korea joint applications," he said.

"As long as Japanese diplomats are stationed in a country with voting members, their embassies will find ways to push for opposition. We must continue collecting evidence. This is a large-scale effort, and the battle over historical understanding is still ongoing," Su told Yuyuan Tantian.

Over the past three decades, China has identified 358 survivors of the "comfort women" sexual slavery system on the Chinese mainland; today, only seven remain alive. Looking at archives of these women, Su said, "We must speak for them. Seeing their aging faces, we cannot turn away and remain silent."