The provincial archives of Jilin, northeast China, made public Thursday a batch of files which are strong evidence of the world's largest germ warfare experimental base built by Japanese troops in China during World War II.
The files were found while archivists were sorting out the documents left by Unit 731, part of Japan's Kwantung Army headquartered in Harbin, the provincial capital of Heilongjiang, in 1932. Unit 731 is notorious for manufacturing materials for germ warfare.
The files made public Thursday reveal that 277 people from China, Korea and the former Soviet Union, aged between 16 and 70, were sent to Unit 731 for germ experiments.
According to historical records available, Unit 731 experimented on thousands of prisoners of war and civilians from China, Korea, Mongolia, and the former Soviet Union.
(Xinhua News Agency09/07/2001)d
