TOKYO — In the first testimony of its kind, a former Japanese soldier told a Tokyo court Wednesday that he helped produce deadly germs and participated in biological experiments in China during World War II.
Yoshio Shinozuka, 77, said he participated in the mass production of cholera, dysentery and typhoid germs. He said he also assisted in the vivisection of Chinese civilians in the early 1940s.
"What I have done was something that nobody should have done as a human being. I cannot escape that responsibility," he said.
Though Shinozuka has spoken out publicly about his role, his testimony makes him the first member of the notorious Unit 731 to acknowledge before a court its role in Japan's biological warfare in northern China. He was called as a witness for nearly 180 Chinese suing the Japanese government for compensation and an apology for the deaths of family members allegedly killed by the unit's activities.
The trial at the Tokyo District Court is expected to continue for several more months.
Shinozuka said he was often told to help out departments that needed to boost germ production for upcoming deployments, including the 1939 Nomonhan attack near Mongolia and several other germ bombing attacks in southern China in the 1940s.
He said that just before the 1939 Nomonhan attack, he was responsible for transferring dysentery and typhoid germs from test tubes to bigger jars, packing them into barrels, sealing them and taking them to a night train for the attack.
Although some Japanese veterans have confessed to war crimes in recent years, the Japanese government has shied away from making apologies to China. Japanese textbooks still often present only brief, perfunctory accounts of Japan's aggression in East Asia from the mid-1930s to the war's end in 1945.
Shinozuka said one of his reasons for testifying was disappointment with the government's efforts to come clean about the war.
"I committed all these war crimes because I was ordered to do so," he said. "The government should try to learn about the victims. I really think it's time for Japan to face this issue with humanitarian consideration."