A set of declassified archives detailing the Soviet Union's interrogations of Unit 731, the notorious biological warfare force of the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II, was released on Saturday, adding more irrefutable evidence to Japan's wartime crimes against China.
The archives, released on the 12th National Memorial Day for Nanjing Massacre Victims by China's National Archives Administration, were provided by Russia in September. They include interrogation records of Unit 731 members, investigation reports on their crimes, and internal correspondence spanning from May 1939 to December 1950, according to the administration.
The archives primarily focus on the Khabarovsk war crimes trials, which were the hearings of 12 members of Unit 731 charged with preparing and implementing biological warfare and conducting human experimentation during World War II. These trials, held from Dec 25 to 30, 1949, in the Russian city of Khabarovsk, resulted in convictions of the criminals for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
The archives revealed that the cultivation of pathogenic bacteria by Unit 731 of the invading Japanese army was not for the production of vaccines, but for the mass destruction of human life.
The forensic conclusion reached by Soviet Union's experts in medicine, microbiology and parasitology through comprehensive analysis stated that "the (cultivation) process concluded with the production of live, active, toxic bacteria, which were then deliberately used to infect large populations. In contrast, when manufacturing vaccines, these toxic bacteria must be killed."
Moreover, the archives showed that Unit 731 conducted three bacteriological warfare operations outside Northeast China. These included air-dropping fleas carrying plague bacteria in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, in 1940, and in Changde, Hunan province, in 1941, and contaminating reservoirs, rivers, ponds and fields with deadly bacteria along the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Railway in 1942.
Kawashima Kiyoshi, a major general and former chief of the production division in Japan's Unit 731, admitted in his testimony that in central China, Unit 731's expeditionary force collaborated with Unit 1644, a Nanjing-based satellite unit of Unit 731, to carry out military sabotage missions ordered by the headquarters.
"They used plague, cholera and typhoid bacteria to infect Chinese military sites and transportation lines. Civilians in these areas were also forced into the bacteriological warfare," the testimony said.
Kiyoshi acknowledged that the special cultivation of bacteria by Unit 731 and the Japanese military's use of deadly pathogens against Chinese troops and civilians clearly violated international treaties and obligations prohibiting the use of such weapons in warfare.
"I now realized that the methods we used, which involved experimenting on living humans and causing their deaths by infecting them with deadly bacteria, were cruel, inhumane, and criminal acts against humanity," he confessed in one statement.
Zhou Zhenfan, an official responsible for archives management at the China Central Archives, said, "These archives provide comprehensive details on the Japanese army's biological war crimes, including pre-trial investigation documents, medical assessments, witness testimonies, indictments, verdicts, and post-trial correspondence between the Soviet Union and other countries."
"They complement and corroborate China's existing archives on the crimes of Unit 731, forming a complete chain of evidence that once again confirms Japan's biological warfare as an organized, premeditated, and systematic state crime," he added.
"The horrific Nanjing Massacre, the appalling human experiments conducted by Unit 731 and numerous other crimes and atrocities committed by the Japanese army against the Chinese people and people in other countries are beyond description," Zhao Cong, director of the Department of International Exchange and Cooperation of National Archives Administration of China, said.
As this year marks the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) and the World Anti-Fascist War, preventing the resurgence of Japanese militarism is a shared commitment of the international community, Zhao said.
"The release of these archives once again provides indisputable evidence of the crimes committed by the Japanese army, and they hold significant value in restoring historical truth and promoting a correct understanding of World War II history," she added.