HARBIN, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Recent research has shed fresh light on the atrocities committed by invading Japanese troops in China during World War II, as the right-wing forces in Japan attempt to glorify the war and tamper with the historical memory of younger generations.
Bones unearthed at the former site of a Japanese army medical school show cut marks, drill marks and evidence of brain surgery, according to Wang Meng, a professor at the School of History of Wuhan University in central China's Hubei Province.
In Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, the gene of Vibrio cholerae enterotoxin was detected in the skull remains of 41 victims unearthed at Jiuhua Mountain.
"These findings provide solid evidence that the Japanese invaders conducted cruel human experiments," Wang told a symposium on the bacteriological and chemical warfare crimes committed by Japanese forces.
The symposium, held from Monday to Wednesday in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, gathered dozens of scholars from across the country.
This year marks the 81st anniversary of the end of WWII and of victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
As the longest and largest fight against foreign aggression for the Chinese people in modern times, the 14-year war left 35 million casualties among the Chinese military and civilian population -- before Japan ultimately surrendered in 1945.
Jin Shicheng, a researcher at the Exhibition Hall of Evidence of Crimes Committed by Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army in Harbin, Heilongjiang's capital, examined archival records on Unit 516, a team of which was tasked with follow-up work after the surrender of Japan.
According to Jin, the roughly 70-member team was responsible for transporting, burying and abandoning chemical weapons before the main force withdrew. Their records could provide clues to the specific locations.
Chinese researchers also tested soil samples collected from the former site of Unit 731, which confirmed that the unit had carried out research there on the weaponization of Bacillus anthracis.
During World War II, the Japanese invading forces established a germ warfare network across multiple Asian countries, with the Harbin-located Unit 731 serving as a top-secret base for germ weapons and human experimentation.
At least 3,000 people from China, the Soviet Union and other countries and regions were subjected to human experimentation conducted by Unit 731, said Jin.
On Dec. 13 last year, the National Archives Administration of China published a batch of declassified Russian-provided archives on Soviet interrogations of Japanese germ warfare war criminals in Russia's far east city Khabarovsk. The archives include trial records of Unit 731 members, investigation reports on the unit's crimes, and internal official correspondence of Soviet authorities, covering the period running from May 11, 1939 to Dec. 25, 1950.
Gong Wenjing, director of the international research center for Unit 731 issues at the Harbin Academy of Social Sciences, noted that cross-comparing archives from China, the United States, Japan and Russia has made the evidence chain of the Japanese army's bacteriological warfare system more complete.
Scars left by the war have yet to fully heal, and dangerous remnants from the war continue to threaten communities. To date, chemical weapons left behind by invading Japanese forces have been found at more than 200 sites across 18 provinces in China, and a large number of toxic bombs are believed to remain undiscovered.
"Wartime victims of toxic gas attacks, as well as postwar victims of accidental poisoning, all bear witness to this dark chapter," said Wang Xuan from the biochemical weapons archives research center in Yiwu, east China's Zhejiang Province. For over 20 years, she has led college volunteers in compiling a victim investigation database to uncover the truth.
Through the internet and visual media, alternative narratives have emerged that glorify the war and invasion, revealing a new form of Japanese militarism today, said Tao Fuwen, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Shanghai International Studies University.
"The germ warfare and chemical warfare carried out by the Japanese invaders during their invasion of China were the darkest and most covert aspects of the crimes against humanity committed by Japanese militarism," said Wu Huaizhong, vice director of the Institute of Japanese Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
More than 80 years later, the tendency to deny Japan's history of aggression and glorify its war crimes has not abated. It is now deeply intertwined with Japan's political shift to the right and its remilitarization.
"These facts remind us that efforts to expose historical truths and warn against Japan's remilitarization are far from over. Safeguarding justice and defending peace still have a long way to go," Wu said. ■
