Unit 731: Firsthand Accounts of Japan's Wartime Human Experimentation Program

by Hal Gold

People were taken from prison into below-freezing temperatures. They were tied up, with their arms bared and soaked with water. Water was poured over the arms regularly; sometimes the ice that formed on them would be chipped away and water again poured over. The researcher would strike the limbs regularly with a club. When an arm made a sound like a wooden board’s being hit, this indicated that the limb was frozen through, and from there different methods of treatments were tested. Legs and feet were exposed to similar treatment. Temperatures in Manchuria can reach as low as minus twenty to thirty degrees Celsius. Some of the tests were conducted outdoors in these winter conditions. At times, electric fans were used to speed the freezing. At Pingfang, Yoshimura had his own large refrigerator lab that allowed him to freeze subjects all year round and reach even lower temperatures than out in the open—temperatures that reached as low as minus seventy degrees Celsius.