HARBIN, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- New evidence from a former member of Japan's Unit 731 has been made public, shedding further light on the notorious biological experiments carried out by Japanese troops during their invasion of China.
The Exhibition Hall of Evidences of Crime Committed by Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army on Saturday released a 47-minute video featuring Hideo Sato, who was a member of the bubonic plague research squad of the Japanese germ-warfare unit during World War II.
In the footage, Sato details the unit's criminal operations, including the cultivation of plague bacteria, animal vivisection and human experimentation.
Japanese scholar Fuyuko Nishisato donated the video to the exhibition hall in 2019, according to the institution, which was built on the former site of the Unit 731 headquarters in Harbin, the capital city of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.
Sato said the squad vivisected plague-infected animals under the guise of "disinfection duties." He stated that his primary role involved verifying the lethality and mortality rates of the bacteria through animal testing, with the objective of "turning the plague into a weapon."
Sato also provided details of human experimentation, which he said was carried out in a special, heavily guarded, enclosed prison in the unit's core area.
Only experienced hands were allowed to conduct experiments on living people, according to Sato, and younger members like himself were not permitted to enter the facility. Jin Shicheng, a researcher for the exhibition hall, said the account is further evidence of Unit 731's rigid internal hierarchy and the high level of secrecy surrounding its atrocities.
Unit 731 was a top-secret biological and chemical warfare research base established as the nerve center for Japanese biological warfare in China and Southeast Asia during WWII.
At least 3,000 people were used in human experiments conducted by Unit 731, and more than 300,000 people in China were killed by Japan's biological weapons. ■
