VOA: Ex-soldier of Japanese biological warfare units breaks silence on war crimes

2024-10-29 20:40:48, Kosova & Bota CNA

VOA: Ex-soldier of Japanese biological warfare units breaks silence on war

Japan remains divided over how to deal with its violent past, while parts of the country's World War II history still cause debate. Now a person with direct ties to that part of history is breaking decades of silence, at great personal cost. He spoke in the Japanese city of Ida with VOA correspondent Bill Gallo.

In a quiet area in the Japanese Alps, about three hours' drive from Tokyo, Hideo Shimizu has been keeping a secret, in a small tree-covered house.

But Shimizu has decided not to be silent any longer.

At the age of 94, he shares his story with an American journalist for the first time, to talk about one of the most horrific and little-known crimes of the war… in which he was personally involved.

Shimizu was only 14 years old in 1945 when he joined Unit 731 of the Japanese Army. Still a child, Shimizu did not understand what he had entered. It was a secret germ warfare unit that tortured prisoners in the name of science.

" I thought it was research aimed at helping people not get sick, but it was just the opposite ," he told VOA.

His job was to take care of the lab rats.

" I really had no idea at the time that they operated on people to kill them ," says Mr. Shimizu.

The unit was only a small part of Japan's occupation of China – although post-war investigations suggest it was perhaps the most brutal part of it.

This is all that remains of the former Unit 731 headquarters in Harbin, China, where horrific human experiments took place.

In some of these buildings, sick prisoners were locked up with healthy ones to see how quickly the deadly plague would spread. And children were forced into gas chambers so doctors could measure the time it took them to die.

These images still haunt Shimizu 80 years later.

" What is done is done. But even though I didn't deal with [the prisoners], I still feel guilty — just because I was a part of it ," he tells VOA.

Lord Shimizu is already facing the atrocities of his past. He recently returned to China for the first time, to visit the site where Unit 731 inflicted its casualties.

" If they could feel my pity, my heart would feel a little better ," he says.

Mr. Shimizu's sentiment was well received in China, seen as a belated acknowledgment of Japanese atrocities.

But in Japan, including in the nearby city of Iida, Shimizu has stirred up the waters. Some of the darkest parts of Japan's past are still being debated – and many others are shrouded in silence.

It's a complicated situation for officials who run the city's museum, which aims to preserve the wartime experiences of local residents.

In a small alcove, several objects related to Unit 731 are displayed. But there is also a statement that "research is ongoing" and that society has "some different opinions" about this unit.

" People have many different views. So we try to maintain a certain balance with this kind of exhibition ," says Takeshi Goto, a city official.

The museum refused to include the testimony of members of Unit 731, including Mr. Shimizu. Some of the testimony, they said, was too inappropriate for children.

But local peace activist Hideaki Hara says that's because the government prefers not to draw attention to things like Unit 731.

" The local government in Iida and other cities generally align with the central government... This makes them reluctant to accept Japan's role as the perpetrator in these events ," says Mr. Hara.

In recent decades, some conservative politicians who want to restore Japan's national power have tried to rewrite the ugliest parts of its history, says Tokyo professor Jeff Kingston.

" They want to create a more embellished, sanitized, wartime past that they think would be more palatable to young Japanese and help cultivate pride in the nation ," says Professor Kingston.

Japan is not the only one that helped hide the story. After Japan's surrender in World War II, the United States granted immunity to many of Unit 731's top scientists in exchange for their research work, which American officials said they wanted to keep out of the hands of the Soviets.

" The United States was complicit in the camouflage of the history of Unit 731. Their experiments in biological warfare, chemical warfare, experiments with living beings - all this was considered useful and would give the United States a great advantage ", says Professor Kingston.

At his mountain home, Mr. Shimizu followed military orders to maintain silence. For decades, he told no one about his past, even as many of his former associates rose in society.

" My superiors became university professors, presidents of pharmaceutical companies, members of the new army. Can you believe it? As for me, I couldn't even work in the hospital ," says Mr. Shimizu.

These days, he is busy planning speeches and giving interviews to journalists – mostly from China. But the price has been high. Angry nationalists regularly attack him online.

Even his family is already gone – especially since his trip to China.