Audio evidence of Japan's germ war atrocities archived in China museum

CHANGCHUN - Audio evidence of human experiments and germ war crimes by Japan's notorious Unit 731 and Unit 100 has officially been archived at a museum in Changchun, capital of northeast China's Jilin Province.

"By reminding people of the cruelty of germ warfare, we hope that people can draw lessons from history and cherish peace," said Wang Zhiqiang, curator of the Museum of the Imperial Palace of "Manchukuo."

The 22-hour audio recording of the Khabarovsk War Crimes Trials, collected from Russian archives by a working group led by Wang's museum, features testimonies and confessions of members of the Japanese Kwantung Army at a Soviet Union tribunal nearly 70 years ago.

The recording archived by the museum is the second copy of the original file. The recording was first revealed in 2017 by Japan's public broadcaster NHK in a documentary titled "The Truth of Harbin Unit 731," which triggered heated discussions, both in China and Japan.

The recording will be used for exhibitions and academic research, according to the museum.

In 1949, 12 members of the Japanese Kwantung Army were tried as war criminals in the Russian Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk for manufacturing and using biological weapons and carrying out inhuman medical experiments during WWII.

All accused were found guilty and sentenced to terms ranging between two and twenty-five years in a labor camp. In 1956, those who were still serving their sentences were released and repatriated to Japan.