My Wartime Guilt of Vivisections carried out at Military Hospital during Japan's Invasion of China

1. Introduction

I am a member of Society of Returnees from China, the society for onetime war criminals. Because the actual conditions of aggressive war filled with cruelty, malignity, deception, craft and plot have not been told enough, we decided to confess the truth widely to people through testimonies, writings and broadcasts based on our repentance that we had once acted as assailants in China. It is painful to tell the shame of our own and also that of Japan, however, considering the present situation of Japan, I think it is crucial to let people know about the truth of the past war.

2. History of My Involvement in War

The first half of my life is nothing but the war history of Japan.
1916.10. I was born and grew up in downtown Tokyo as a son of a medical doctor. Since I was in an elementary school, I got an education under the Imperial Rescript on Education and received moral training with Kimigayo, the national anthem of Japan and Hinomaru, the national flag of Japan both having been authorized.
1923.9. The Great Kanto Earthquake occurred. I was threatened by the rumor thatgKorean people would make a surprise attack."
1929.4. I entered Tokyo First Municipal Junior High School (present Kudan High School). I received military training from an assigned military captain. I learned about 3.15 (in the previous year) and 4.16 Communist Incident and Sekika (becoming Communists) Incident.
1931.9. The Manchurian Incident broke out, which was followed by the Shanghai Incident and 5.15 Incident.
1934.4. I entered Jikei University School of Medicine. I learned about the Spanish Civil War and 2.26 Incident.
1937.7 The invasion upon the northern part of China began. The Nanking Massacre and the People's Front Incident happened.
1941.3. I graduated from the university and started working at Komagome Hospital. In October I applied for a short-term medical surgeon on active duty and joined army. I became the medical first lieutenant two months later. In December the Pacific War broke out.
1942.2. I was assigned to Roan Military Hospital in the Province of Shanxi in the northern part of China.
A: I performed vivisections over seven times and slaughtered 14 Chinese. Five vivisections were carried out as operation practices of divisional surgeons, one for the education of anatomy to new recruits and one as the operation practice as part of the group education of military surgeons in the medical section of the army of Taiyuan. This operation practices for the education of divisional surgeons had been planned to be carried out six times instead of two times a year by the secret order of the district army in the northern part of China, but this plan was not actually executed.
B: I sent typhoid and dysentery bacilli extracted from patients to the divisional section of preventing infectious disease and water supply. The section of water supply cultivated the bacteria and delivered them to military units, which propagated them at the time of offensive operations.
Inspected by Mr. Shiroh Ishii, a chief military surgeon of the first corps, we performed trial practices of disinfecting and exterminating fleas which had been broadcasted with plague bacilli stuck to them. Also, General Ishi gave us the lecture on the experiment of frostbite.
C: Just before the defeat, I was sent to a battalion in the southern part of the Province of Shanxi as a military surgeon of the corps and tested Korean comfort women for venereal disease. They were sent to give comfort to soldiers. During the time of offensive operations, I forced and abducted inhabitants to slave them as stretcher-bearers.
D: I treated many wounded soldiers and made them return to the front to strengthen the war potential (which is the sinful act of aggression.)
1945.4. I experienced the defeat at Taiyuan in the Province of Shanxi. I accepted the conscription from the Army of National Party and remained the field with armed forces, 3,000 technical experts and their families in order to join the battle against the People's Liberation Army. I founded a clinic for the treatment of overseas Japanese and sometimes I was dispatched to work as a military surgeon of the corps. I got married during this period and had two children. One more child was born afterwards.
1949.4. I was released from the People's Liberation Army and began working at the government hospital. The Korean War broke out.
1951.5. I was confined in the longtime prison camp in the Province of Hebei and was compelled to study, labor and confess my crime. My family was also sent there as a family party.
1952.12. I was taken into custody at a prison in Taiyuan in the Province of Shanxi as a war criminal with some 100 comrades only to be investigated over the crime. I repented my crime during this time and learned a lot about the war of aggression. I was infected with tuberculosis and spat blood. I got the treatment with expensive medicine prescribed. My family returned home the next summer with those whose crimes were light and who were admitted to have repented enough.
1956.6. My indictment was shelved and I was released. Right after I came back to Japan, I entered Tokyo Japanese Red Cross Hospital to take the medical treatment for my tuberculosis.
1957.3. The retraining began at the department of internal medicine in the third hospital of Jikei University School of Medicine.
1958.3. I have been working at the Nishiogikubo Clinic in Suginami Ward of Tokyo since then. I once worked at the National Health Insurance Hospital in the town of Sagamiko in Kanagawa Prefecture.
1982.7. A book of my confession, The Unerasable Memory, by Natsuko Yoshikai was published. It went through eight editions.

3. Vivisections I Carried Out

Firstly, I joined in the execution of vivisection which was held as an operation practice of military surgeons on two Chinese in custody in March, 1942. We murdered them cruelly.
A: On and after the second time I kept participating in the execution of the same kind of vivisection which was performed on two Chinese at almost each time and then murdered them. We once in a while extracted the cerebral cortices, gathered them in one or two bottles with alchohol and sent them to pharmaceutical companies in Japan.
B: At the time of teaching hygiene to new recruits, we asked military policemen to send us one Chinese to be a victim for stimulating the recruits' learning of the anatomy. He was vivisected and murdered by us all.
C: Under the direction of military surgeon section of the first corps, we, as the members of the group education for military surgeons in military and field hospitals, practiced removing bullets and other operations at the Taiyuan prison by victimizing four detained Chinese who had already been shooted at the belly. All of them died.

4. How I Dared to Commit the Crime

It was due to the education of despising other races, the deceitful propaganda incorporated in the education of militarism, and threatening and compulsion under the control of the Emperor system, all of which I received in Japan since I had been a child.

5. The Process of My Repentance

The education I received at the prison camp, that is, study, labor and repentance on my crimes.
A: The humane treatment by the Chinese leaders whoghate the crime not the person."
B: I noticed during the process of repentance that I had been roped by the national power into attacking the Chinese just like a mad dog. I did all of them as I had been ordered.
C: I was able to feel the grief of the suffering Chinese people. I was specially stumpted when an old mother of the Chinese I had vivisected inquired me closely about the incident.
D: I observed the development of a people's commune of China and was impressed by the spirit of service of the Chinese people.

6. Problems of the War of Aggression

The war system is what is promoted in a gradual and unnoted manner by the national power. It is too late to change the conditions when everything is brought to light, and before anyone notices what is happening, war breaks out.
A: Any atrocious crime is forgiven when it is committed at the time of war andgfor the sake of the state." Moreover it is admired as the brave and honorable act.
B: The man who committed the atrocious crime doesn't have a sense of guilty. Moreover the crimes committed on one's duty in order to build up the invading army are often overlooked. Even if he is taken into custody as a captive and a war criminal, he resigns himself to it as hislot. The problem of comfort women (the group rape by the army) proceeded just because it was the time of the war of invasion.
C: The brutal acts were done under the deception, intimidation and compulsion put forth by the national power under the Emperor system. Soldiers didn't have the freedom to judge themselves nor the possibility to reject or flee.
D: Invaders seldom recollect the crimes and repent of them even after the defeat. To begin with there is no place to confess, and so they have no understanding about the authority structure which once forced them to commit crimes.
E: People never speak about the fact that the state was an invader. Are they ashamed? Are they afraid to say a word? The answer is neither of them. They do not feel guilty because they recognize they just obeyed the orders mostly given by the Emperor and that they were right to do that in order to win. What makes the matters worse, their memories are almost all faded away, since everything was done in the daily routine.

7. The Significance of Repenting Crimes Committed during the War of Aggression