Depending on who you ask, bones that have sat for decades in a Tokyo burial ground could be either the remains of an early 20th century anatomy class or the unburied and unidentified victims of one of the country’s most notorious war crimes.
A group of activists, historians and other experts who want the government to investigate links to wartime human biological warfare experiments met over the weekend to mark the 35th anniversary of the experiments’ discovery, and renewed their calls for an independent commission to examine the evidence.
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The Japanese government has long avoided discussing wartime atrocities, such as the sexual abuse of Asian women known as “comfort women” and the forced labor of Koreans in Japanese mines and factories, often because of a lack of documented evidence. Japan has apologized for its aggression in Asia but has been repeatedly criticized by South Korea and China for retracting its apologies since the 2010s.
On July 22, 1989, 12 skulls and other skeletal remains, many of which had been mutilated, were unearthed during the construction of a Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare research facility on the site of the wartime Army Medical School. Because the school had close ties to bacteriological and biological warfare units, many suspected they were relics from a dark history that the Japanese government has never officially acknowledged.
Pink tape was draped over the site of a former medical university in Tokyo on February 21, 2011. Japan has begun excavation at the site of the university, which has ties to Unit 731, a wartime bacteriological and biological weapons unit. (AP Photo/Kouji Sasahara)
Headquartered in northeastern China, then under Japanese control, Unit 731 and several related units injected prisoners with diseases such as typhus and cholera, according to historians and former members. The units also performed unnecessary amputations and organ harvesting on living people to practice surgery, and froze prisoners to death in endurance tests. The Japanese government has only acknowledged the existence of Unit 731.
Historians say that Unit 731’s leaders were not tried in postwar courts because the U.S. was trying to obtain data on chemical warfare, but lower-ranking members were tried in Soviet courts. Some of the unit’s leaders became medical professors and pharmaceutical executives after the war.
A previous Ministry of Health investigation had not been able to link the remains to a unit, and a 2001 report based on interviews with 290 school officials concluded the remains were likely bodies used for medical education or bodies brought back from the war zone for analysis.
The report acknowledged that some of those interviewed had made a link to Unit 731. One said he had seen the heads in a barrel shipped from Manchuria, in northern China, where the unit was based. Two others said they had heard specimens from the unit were kept in school buildings but had never seen any. Others denied any link, saying some of the specimens may have been from before the war.
An anthropological analysis in 1992 determined that the bones came from at least 62 bodies, and possibly more than 100, mostly of adults from Asia outside of Japan. Holes and cuts in some of the skulls were found to have been inflicted after death, but no evidence was found linking the bones to Unit 731.
But activists say the government could do more to uncover the truth, such as by making the interviews public in full and carrying out DNA tests.
Kawamura Kazuyuki, a former Shinjuku Ward assemblyman who has dedicated much of his life to solving the mystery of the bones, recently used a freedom of information request to obtain 400 pages of investigative documents from the 2001 report, which he says show the government “cleverly excluded” key information from eyewitness testimony.
The newly released documents don’t provide conclusive evidence, but they do include graphic descriptions (the man who said he found the head in the barrel also says he helped dispose of it and then ran off to vomit) and comments from several witnesses who suggest further forensic testing may reveal a link to Unit 731.
“Our goal is to identify the remains and return them to the families,” Kawamura said. He said the remains are effectively the only evidence of what happened. “We just want to find the truth.”
Atsushi Akiyama of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said eyewitness testimony had already been analyzed and included in the 2001 report and the government’s position would not change. A key missing piece, he said, was documentary evidence such as labels on sample containers or official records.
Documents, especially those relating to Japan’s wartime atrocities, were carefully destroyed at the end of the war, so finding new evidence will be difficult.
Akiyama added that a lack of information about the bones would make DNA analysis difficult.
[ShimizuHideowhowassenttoUnit731asalabtechnicianatage14inApril1945andparticipatedintheonlineconferencefromhishomeinNaganosaidheremembersseeingheadsandbodypartsinformalinjarskeptinthespecimenroomattheunit’smainbuildingWhatshockedhimmostwerethedissectedabdomenscontainingfetusesTheywereexplainedtohimas”logs”atermreferringtoprisonersselectedfortheexperiments[1945年4月に14歳で実験技師として731部隊に派遣され、長野の自宅からオンラインで会議に参加した清水秀雄さんは、部隊本館の標本室に保管されていたホルマリン瓶に入った頭部や体の一部を見たのを覚えていると語った。最も衝撃を受けたのは、胎児の入った解剖された腹部だった。それらは「丸太」、つまり実験に選ばれた囚人を指す言葉だったと説明された。
A few days before Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945, Shimizu was ordered to collect the cremated remains of POWs in the pit and was given a pistol and a box of cyanide to kill himself with if he was captured on the return journey to Japan.[1945年8月15日の日本の降伏の数日前、清水は穴で焼かれた捕虜の遺骨を集めるよう命じられた。そして、日本への帰国の途中で捕まった場合に自殺するためのピストルと青酸カリの入った箱を渡された。
He was ordered never to tell anyone about his experiences in Unit 731, not to contact his colleagues, and not to seek government or medical employment.
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Shimizu said that while it is not clear from the photos whether the specimens seen in 731 were among the bones in Shinjuku, what he saw in Harbin must never happen again. When he sees his great-grandchildren, he will be reminded of the unborn children and lives lost that he saw, he said.
“I want young people to understand the horrors of war,” he said.
