China to open Japanese army’s wartime ‘chemical warfare lab’ to public
The research lab where biological warfare was tested during the second Sino-Japanese war is being cleared in Harbin, Heilongjiang province
A core area of the research laboratory in which the Japanese army conducted lethal experiments on prisoners during the second Sino-Japanese war will be opened to the public next year in Heilongjiang.
The lab and prison in Harbin where people were kept for experiments by the notorious Unit 731, the covert biological and chemical warfare research unit, is being cleared, Xinhua reports.
The process will be completed by October, and that part of the lab will be opened to the public next year, the 70th anniversary of China’s victory in the war, which began in 1937.
Jin Chengmin, curator of the Unit 731 War Crimes Museum, told Xinhua that Japanese troops had produced bacteria in the lab – which he called direct evidence that the unit had conducted research on biological warfare and dissected human bodies.
The Unit 731 museum occupies 248,000 square metres in which more than 3,000 people were used for experimentation.
The area to be opened is the foundation of the Sifang Building, measuring 170 metres by 140 metres, and occupying 15,000 square metres. The building was bombed by the Japanese before they left in haste.