A chilling 38-minute video testimony from a former member of Japan’s notorious Unit 731 has been made public by the Exhibition Hall of Evidences of Crime Committed by Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army in Harbin, China. The footage, recorded in 1997 by Japanese scholar Fuyuko Nishisato and donated to the exhibition hall in 2019, features Tsuruo Nishijima, who served in the unit’s meteorological squad beginning in October 1938.
The testimony provides unprecedented insight into the systematic nature of Japan’s biological warfare program during World War II. Contrary to conventional meteorological operations, Nishijima’s squad played an active role in human experimentation by measuring wind direction and speed to optimize the dispersal of bacterial agents during field tests.
Nishijima confirmed the meteorological squad’s mandatory presence at all field experiments, including particularly disturbing ‘rainfall experiments’ where aircraft released bacterial cultures at extremely low altitudes. At testing sites in Anda city, Heilongjiang Province, aircraft descended to approximately 50 meters above ground level to spray biological agents on human subjects—referred to as ‘maruta’ or logs—who were tethered to wooden stakes. Each experiment involved approximately 30 victims spaced five meters apart.
The testimony further reveals that after exposure, victims were transported in sealed trucks back to Unit 731 facilities where their symptoms and disease progression were meticulously documented over several days. Nishijima also described a fatal incident where a Japanese military doctor died after removing protective gear and becoming infected during an experiment, demonstrating the extreme virulence of the deployed biological agents.
Additionally, the footage details the meteorological squad’s involvement in frostbite experiments conducted in temperatures ranging from -20°C to -35°C. Human subjects were forced to expose their bodies for five to ten minutes while researchers observed physiological responses, ostensibly to study warfare needs in frigid environments.
Researchers at the exhibition hall emphasize that this perpetrator perspective testimony reconstructs the complete criminal chain of Unit 731 and provides irrefutable evidence that Japan’s biological warfare program represented a systematic, inhumane operation that constitutes an undeniable historical truth. Unit 731, established in Harbin as Japan’s primary biological and chemical warfare research base, conducted experiments that claimed at least 3,000 direct victims and resulted in over 300,000 deaths throughout China from deployed biological weapons.