The terrifying truth after decades: Written confessions of a member of Unit 731 published for the first time

On 27 December, the Museum of Evidence of Japanese Army Crimes in China released for the first time extremely valuable historical material entitled Written confessions of Kata Tsunenori, commander of the Japanese Unit 731 branch in Chailar. The documents reveal in detail the workings of this infamous unit and provide direct evidence of extensive crimes of bacteriological warfare and inhumane experiments on humans.

The published material details the organisational structure of Unit 731, its key tasks, command system, specific content of bacteriological experiments, and plans for bacteriological warfare against the Soviet Union. At the same time, it describes the functioning of the unit's local branches, further revealing the systematic nature and extent of the crimes committed by the Japanese army during its aggression against China.

Kata Tsunenori's written confessions are stored at the regional department of the Transbaikal Territory of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. After their declassification at the request of the Pushkin Scientific Library, facsimiles of the documents were donated to the Museum of Evidence of Crimes of Unit 731 in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, in February this year. These are statements written by Kato Tsunenori himself after his arrest in the Soviet Union in February 1948.

The set of documents consists of three parts: the personal file of the arrested person, a personal data registration form, and a detailed description of the crimes. The material is preserved in both Russian and Japanese versions, with the Japanese part representing an authentic handwritten confession and the Russian part its official translation. The publication of these documents represents another significant step towards the historical revelation of the truth about the crimes of Unit 731 and the preservation of the memory of the victims.

CMG