Harbin Unit 731 Headquarters, a Reminder of that Hellish Japanese Invasion

Even though I’ve working as a journalist for two decades, I’ve never been to the site of Japan’s notorious Unit 731 headquarters, in Harbin, Heilongjiang province even when I had the opportunity to conduct interviews there.

I have to confess that I dreaded visiting the site and thought that I wouldn’t know how to conquer the depressions and conflicting emotions if I came face-to-face with the suffering of people under the Japanese invasion, and the reminder of the humiliations in those dark days that could trigger my anger towards Japanese militarism.

The Japanese army’s Unit 731, a top-secret biological and chemical warfare research unit, did human experiments during World War II but disguised itself as an epidemic disease prevention operation of the Kwantung Army in China‘s Northeast, while it was subjecting Chinese in the area to all kinds of extremely brutal experiments.

Many Chinese got to know about Unit 731 through a film, Man Behind the Sun, a documentary that detailed the cruel experiments of Unit 731 on Chinese and Soviet prisoners towards the end of WWII. Singaporean Chinese-language news portal zaobao.com memorized a frostbite experiment in the movie where a Chinese woman’s arms were bound and water was poured on them by Japanese soldiers as temperatures got as low as minus 20 C, with her arms covered by ice after half a day. Then she was taken back to prison and ordered to put her arms in warm water until the ice melted and her arms hang down, when suddenly a soldier tugged at the arms and the flesh came off, leaving the bones. People in the audience screamed in terror.

I remember another historical film about the Japanese invasion from my childhood. I was in my first year at primary school and even though I can’t remember the name, one scene with a killing made me burst into tears and my teacher had to cover my eyes. After that, any movie about the war would give me nightmares for a long time. Once, when my grandfather came to visit us from Shandong province we happened to see such a play on our new TV set and he turned away to hide his sadness and told us to turn off it. The play reminded him of his younger brother’s tragic death as a slave laborer during the war.

These TV movies and plays are more like torture than a just reminder of national humiliation and I always had complicated feelings to them for a long time. But, by now I’ve seen the films on Unit 731, which were really beyond my imagination. Compared with the truth they depict, I prefer to watch some tame Japan-related films and TV plays that are not so realistic.

Films like Men Behind the Sun 2: Laboratory of the Devil, had an imaginary plot line where a Japanese doctor was sent to work at Unit 731 and saw the bloody facts, so he shot the guards and freed the prisoners. This angered the head of Unit 731 who killed him and his lover. These films all have depicted what Chinese people wish had happened – a Japanese soldier who feels his guilt about the invasion and the deaths.

In reality, Japanese soldiers set up a monument for the animals used by Unit 731 rather than tens of thousands of people killed in the experiments.

So, the question of how to produce a true Japanese war film became a real headache for Chinese directors and they found themselves in a dilemma – to depict the facts and reveal the truth and make people feel bad or not. This also reflects the helplessness people feel when it comes to history, especially when the invaders refuse to acknowledge their crimes and try to cover it up and not compensate the victims. So, the Chinese started campaigns to boycott Japanese products and refused to visit Japan, or even destroyed the Japanese brands that Chinese bought.

But the war had left far more than that, for example, chemical weapons left behind by retreating Japanese troops at the end of WW II in Heilongjiang. The mustard gas that they used during their invasion of China (1937-45) was stored in metal barrels, some of which were found on August 4, 2003 at a construction site in Qiqihar. One of the workers mistakenly broke open a barrel that let out an oily substance. Unaware of the contents, two workers later cut up the other four barrels and sold them to a scrap dealer. Then things got worse when the soil the substance had seeped into was moved to other locations as part of the construction work. The result -- more than 40 people injured by the mustard gas, and one dead.

Scientists from Japan and China who later examined the contents confirmed that the five barrels had been left by the Japanese army and contained mustard gas.

The danger and fear have not disappeared, since the remaining bombs buried underground could blow up at any time. Members of Unit 731 got promotions for their medical findings rather than imprisonment by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East after WW II.

China will commemorate its 70th anniversary of the victory in the Anti-Fascist War but Japan’s attitude towards the truth of the invasion makes the victory paradoxical. Where’s the victory, a frequent visit to the site of Unit 731 and nightmares, taking revenge on Japanese invaders with TV dramas, destroying someone’s Japanese car? Already 70 years have passed, but our hearts are still full of anger and we have by no means been victorious.

So, if you feel confused and don’t know how to view the exhibits at the site of Unit 731, you will begin to understand that we have a long way to go before reaching a true victory.