Japanese delegation visits Chinese WWII lab

Members of a Japanese medical delegation mourn for Unit 731 victims in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, May 4, 2014. [Xinhua photo]

A delegation of Japanese medical workers visited the old site of Unit 731 in Harbin in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on Sunday, during which they paid tribute to the Chinese victims of the Imperial Japanese Army's war crimes during World War II.

The Japanese army established Unit 731, a covert biological and chemical warfare lab, in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (now northeast China), to conduct lethal human trials of biological and chemical weapons.

Yoichi Kato, who headed the delegation, said the members of the delegation advocated medical professionals in Japan to include the Imperial Army's medical war crimes in their research, so that the Japanese medical circle would have a brighter future.

Kato said the delegation "absolutely opposed" Japan's budding militarism, let alone using chemical weapons.

Takeshi Yoshinaka, a member in the delegation, and dean of Kyoto Miniren Chuo Hospital said they visited the site for field research on Japan's former war crimes in the medical field. He said the delegation planned to submit a proposal to the Japan Medical Association next year to urge Japan to face up to history.

Yoshinaka said medical societies in Japan should not refuse to accept that the Imperial Japanese Army waged bio-chemical warfare in China, because a clear understanding of history helps one to face the future.

Unit 731, set up in 1932, consisted of more than 3,000 soldiers and military experts specializing in biological weapons. Evidence show they tested plague, typhoid, cholera, anthrax and other bio-chemical weapons on human bodies, and performed dissections on live humans.

More than 10,000 POWs and civilians from China, the Soviet Union, Korea and Mongolia were murdered by the troop.