THE names of 3,607 members of the Imperial Japanese Army’s clandestine Unit 731, known for conducting heinous live germ and chemical warfare experiments on thousands of Chinese victims, have been disclosed by the National Archives of Japan, a research professor said yesterday. The country’s national archives passed on the names of 3,607 people in response to a request by Katsuo Nishiyama, a professor at Shiga University of Medical Science, in a move that could reignite the public debate over Japanese atrocities committed in occupied China before and during the second world war. We will post them on the website so they can be utilised for research.”

The list dated January 1, 1945, includes the names and ranks as well as personal information such as addresses and family members of 52 surgeons, 49 engineers, 38 nurses and 1,117 combat medics, mainly those attached to the headquarters of the unit, officially known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army. Should the navy only be able to control the Tsushima Strait, the army would land in southern Korea and defend Japanese interests on the peninsula.
The names of 3,607 employees of Unit 731, a Japanese military medical experimentation unit associated with war crimes during World War II, are released. Prosecutors in the United States had kept their identities secret following the war in exchange for access to data gleaned from the project.