New evidence of Japanese germ warfare unit made public in NE China

HARBIN, June 6 (Xinhua) -- A roster of Unit 731, a Japanese germ warfare army during World War II, has been on display at Heilongjiang International University, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, shedding new light on the development of the notorious army and its atrocities.

The original document of the roster is kept in the National Archives of Japan. It was discovered by Seiya Matsuno, a researcher at the International Peace Research Institute of Meiji Gakuin University in Japan and a distinguished professor at Heilongjiang International University, who obtained a photocopy and brought it to China.

According to the professor, the roster was produced in August 1940, when Unit 731 was reorganized from the Epidemic Prevention Department of the Kwantung Army into the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army.

The file shows that Unit 731 was mainly composed of medical and health personnel, with 455 at the management level, said Jin Chengmin, curator of the Museum of Evidence of War Crimes by the Japanese Army Unit 731, a co-host of the exhibition.

Also, it's closely related to the germ warfare waged by Japan in China's Zhejiang Province in 1940, serving as hard evidence of the crimes committed by the Japanese Kwantung Army during its invasion of China, Jin added.

Unit 731 was a top-secret biological and chemical warfare research base established in Harbin as the nerve center for Japanese biological warfare in China and Southeast Asia during WWII.

At least 3,000 people were used for human experiments by Unit 731, and more than 300,000 people in China were killed by Japan's biological weapons.