New evidence further exposes crimes of Japan's Unit 731

A museum dedicated to documenting the crimes of Japan's notorious Unit 731 has released newly declassified archival material, adding fresh evidence to the unit's large-scale biological warfare crimes during Japan's invasion of China.

The original document is preserved at a regional branch of the Russian Federal Security Service and was declassified upon application by the Pushkin Scientific Library. In February this year, a photocopied version was donated to the Exhibition Hall of Evidences of Crime Committed by Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

The materials consist of a handwritten confession completed by Kato Tsunenori in February 1948 after his arrest by Soviet forces, along with detainee files and personal registration forms. The archive contains both Japanese and Russian texts, with the Japanese portion being Kato's original handwritten statement and the Russian portion a translated version.

The confession provides detailed accounts of Unit 731's organizational structure, core missions, leadership system, experimental activities, plans for biological warfare against the Soviet Union and the operations of its regional branches. It clearly establishes the criminal nature of Unit 731's engagement in biological warfare sabotage and live human experimentation.

Together with previously transferred and declassified Soviet interrogation records of Unit 731 members, the newly released material forms a complete chain of evidence, supplementing details of the pretrial investigations of the Khabarovsk War Crimes Trials. It further confirms that the atrocities committed by Unit 731 constituted systematic, organized and state-backed crimes carried out by Japan from top to bottom.

The confession confirms the objective existence of Unit 731 and restores a clear picture of its organizational system and division of functions, underscoring the rigor and scale of its criminal operations.

The document also mentions that in January 1945, the Japanese Kwantung Army's frostbite research department conducted live human experiments near Hailar, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and in July 1945, their chemical unit conducted live human poison gas experiments in Qiqihar in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

According to the document, Unit 731 once detonated artillery shells loaded with anthrax bacteria in open areas near Harbin to "calculate the number of infected people and horses," explicitly using living humans as experimental subjects.

The confession also reveals detailed technical information on the breeding of fleas used in biological warfare, which were then placed on plague-infected rats to carry the bacteria and were intended for use in the spread of biological warfare agents, the document said.