Hideo Shimizu arrives in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, Aug. 12, 2024. (Xinhua/Wang Song)
On August 13, Hideo Shimizu, the former Unit 731 Youth Corps member, visited the Exhibition Hall of Crime Evidence of Japanese Army Unit 731 Museum in Harbin, China, to apologize.
Amidst Japan's invasion of China during World War II, Unit 731 was established in Harbin as a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Japanese Army.
The former site of Unit 731 in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. (Xinhua/Wang Jianwei)
To develop Japan's biological warfare program, Unit 731 conducted vivisection experiments and brutal testing of bacteriological weapons on live humans, resulting in the death of an estimated 3,000 prisoners of war (PoWs), mostly Chinese, according to Japan's public broadcaster NHK.
In March 1945, 14-year-old Shimizu was sent to the headquarters of Unit 731 as a child soldier. On August 14, 1945, he fled back to Japan with the Japanese troops. During this period, Shimizu witnessed the heinous atrocities of Unit 731.
Hideo Shimizu waits for a flight to China at the Kansai International Airport in Osaka, Japan, Aug. 12, 2024. (Xinhua/Zhang Xiaoyu)
"I was taken to the specimen room. What shocked me was that there were all kinds of human specimens, including parts of human bodies," Shimizu recalled. "Some were split open so that babies could be seen inside, some were separate specimens of various organs such as hearts, stomachs, lungs, and even human heads that were sawed in half."
"When I saw the specimen of a human head split in half," he stressed, "I wondered why they would do such a cruel thing."
After the war, the Japanese government did very little to acknowledge Unit 731's atrocities, despite the large amount of evidence discovered at the site.
"Historical facts can't be covered up," said 94-year-old Shimizu before the visit. "I am determined to return to the site of the former Unit 731 to express my deepest apologies to the Chinese people who were harmed. I hope to arouse more reflection and vigilance to cherish the hard-won peace and avoid the recurrence of war tragedies."
Reporter: Xachary, Zhou Jing (intern)
Editor: Steven, Nina, James
