Depending on who you ask, bones that have sat in a Tokyo storage warehouse for decades could be leftovers from early 20th-century anatomy classes or they could be unburied and part of one of the country’s most notorious war crimes. Unidentified victim.
A group of activists, historians and other experts who want the government to investigate links to wartime human germ warfare experiments met over the weekend to mark the 35th anniversary of the discovery and renew their calls for an independent panel to examine the evidence.
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The Japanese government has long avoided discussing wartime atrocities, including the sexual abuse of Asian women known as “comfort women” and forced Korean laborers in Japanese mines and factories, often citing a lack of documented evidence. Japan has apologized for its aggressive behavior in Asia, but it has been repeatedly criticized by South Korea and China for backsliding since the 2010s.
On July 22, 1989, during the construction of the Ministry of Health Research Institute on the site of the wartime Army Medical College, approximately a dozen skulls, many bearing wounds, were unearthed, along with parts of other skeletons. The school’s close ties to germ and biological warfare units have led many to suspect they may be relics of a dark past that has never been officially acknowledged by the Japanese government.
A strip of pink tape marks the ground at the site of a medical school in Tokyo on February 21, 2011. Japan has begun excavation of the former school site related to Unit 731, a bacterial and biological force during World War II. war troops. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
Unit 731 and several related units, based in what was then Japanese-controlled northeastern China, injected prisoners of war with typhus, cholera and other diseases, according to historians and former unit members. They also say the unit performed unnecessary amputations and removal of organs on living people to practice surgeries and froze inmates to death in endurance tests. The Japanese government only recognizes the existence of Unit 731.
Historians say senior officers of Unit 731 were not tried in postwar tribunals as a result of U.S. attempts to obtain chemical warfare data, although lower-level officials were tried by Soviet tribunals. Some leaders of the sector became professors of medicine and pharmaceutical company executives after the war.
A previous Department of Health investigation said the bones could not be linked to the unit, concluding in a 2001 report that the remains were likely from cadavers used for medical education or brought back from war zones for analysis. bodies, the report is based on interviews with 290 people involved.
The report acknowledged that some of the interviewees had ties to Unit 731. Two others said they had heard specimens from the unit were stored in a school building but had not actually seen them. Others deny the connection, saying the specimens may include specimens from the pre-war period.
An anthropological analysis in 1992 found that the bones came from at least 62 and possibly more than 100 different bodies, mostly adults from parts of Asia outside Japan. The report said holes and cuts found on some skulls were made 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, including releasing full transcripts of interviews and conducting DNA tests.
Former Shinjuku Ward Assembly member Kazuyuki Kawamura, who has spent much of his career solving the bone mystery, recently used a freedom of information request to obtain 400 pages of research material from the 2001 report and said it showed the government ” Cleverly excluded” key information from witness accounts.
The newly released material contains no hard evidence, but it contains vivid descriptions – the man who described seeing a head in the bucket also described helping dispose of it and then running to vomit – as well as comments from several eyewitnesses who said they It is suggested that more forensic investigations may reveal links to Unit 731.
“Our goal is to identify the bones and return them to their families,” Kawamura said. The bones are virtually the only evidence of what happened, he said. “We just want to find the truth.”
Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare official Atsushi Akiyama said eyewitness accounts had been analyzed and included in the 2001 report and the government’s position remained unchanged. A key missing link, he said, is documentary evidence, such as labels on specimen containers or official records.
Documents, especially those dealing with Japan’s wartime atrocities, were carefully destroyed in the final days of the war, and finding new evidence would be difficult.
Akiyama added that the lack of information about the bones would make DNA analysis difficult.
[InApril194514-year-oldHideoShimizuwassenttoUnit731asalaboratorytechnicianandparticipatedinthemeetingviatheInternetfromhishomeinNaganoHeadandbodypartsstoredinformalinbottlesWhatshockedhimmostwasadissectedabdomenwithafetusinsideHewastoldthatthesewere”maruta”(logs)atermusedforprisonerschosenforexperiments[1945年4月，14歲的清水秀夫(HideoShimizu)被派往731部隊，擔任實驗室技術員，並在長野的家中透過網路參加了會議。到福馬林瓶中存放的頭部和身體部位。最讓他震驚的是一個被解剖的腹部，裡面有一個胎兒。他被告知這些是“maruta”（原木），這個術語用於指被選中進行實驗的囚犯。
[AfewdaysbeforeJapansurrenderedonAugust151945Shimizuwasorderedtocollectthebonesofprisoners’corpsesburnedinpitsHewasthengivenapistolandabagofcyanidetokillhimselfifhewasdiscoveredonhiswaybacktoJapan[1945年8月15日日本投降前幾天，清水奉命收集在坑中燒毀的囚犯屍體的骨頭。然後，他得到了一把手槍和一包氰化物，如果他在返回日本的途中被發現，可以自殺。
He was ordered not to tell anyone about his time in Unit 731, not to contact colleagues, and not to seek government or medical employment.
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Shimizu said he couldn’t tell from the photos whether any of the specimens he saw at 731 were Shinjuku bones, but that what he saw in Harbin should never be repeated. He said when he sees his great-grandchildren, they remind him of the fetuses he saw and the lives lost.
“I want young people to understand the tragedy of war,” he said.
