从中国中部的一个村庄到一个美军基地，再到一个有争议的日本神社，一部纪录片试图将一幅更完整的日本军队731部队及其战犯如何逃脱的画面拼凑在一起。这部52分钟的电影，731美国如何利用日本的生物武器犯罪，包括对日本士兵、中国幸存者、活动家和学者的采访，讲述20世纪发生的一些最残忍的暴行。”几乎不知道西部的731部队。这是人类近代史上一个可悲的篇章，”导演保罗·约翰逊说。他在这部电影上工作了三年，现在这部电影正在亚马逊和维梅奥上播出。”他说：“我相信这句老话：如果我们不想重蹈我们犯下的可怕错误的覆辙，我们必须从了解它们开始。”1933年，日本帝国军在中国东北部建立了臭名昭著的731部队，目的是研制用于武器的疾病，包括瘟疫、龟头、炭疽和斑疹伤寒。1945年日本战败时，部分摧毁了哈尔滨总部。根据这部影片，中国囚犯被绑在木桩上，附近爆炸了装有瘟疫和炭疽的炸弹；其他实验包括强迫囚犯喝受霍乱污染的牛奶或直接将致命疾病注射到他们的身体中。甚至连小孩都被带去吃充满炭疽的巧克力。731分队最常见的实验之一是在没有麻醉剂的情况下活体解剖患病的身体。这些被称为“马鲁塔”或“圆木”的人，大多是中国人和一些俄罗斯人，甚至是盟军战俘。每年，有400至600名新囚犯被带到731部队。据731单元的博物馆称，13年来，至少有5000人死于那里的酷刑，该博物馆是在这些遗迹上建造的。日本人袭击的痛苦一直存在于幸存者的身体和记忆中。在中国中部的常山，一些老年人仍然记得，他们小时候曾接触过露天喷洒的东西；感染留下了，但伤口从未愈合。据太平洋暴行教育所收集的数据，据估计，有一百万名中国人死于这种生物战，最近在旧金山组织了这部电影的放映。对无辜平民的测试是世界历史上一个黑暗的篇章。对旧金山人的实验简直太可怕了。”Brian Peters说。他们（日军）一直在用它对付那些无力还击的无力防御的平民。这从根本上说是不光彩的，而且这有点奇怪，因为日本人总是追求荣誉，”他说。彼得斯在影片中印象最深的是一个在部队工作的日本老兵在临终前认罪的场景。”他仍然有他的仪式用剑，他正试图通过把他的剑归还给博物馆（中国731单元博物馆）来弥补一些不足。一些日本人打破了他们的政府和社会共识，试图压制这种局面，但现在为时已晚。几乎所有人都走了，受害者和犯罪者，”他说。根据这部记录片，作为对日本关于生物武器影响的调查结果的交换，美国不仅对731部队的领导人给予豁免权，而且把他们列入了美国的工资单。”大部分的数据仍然是机密的，但我们知道日本对生物武器影响的调查结果去了哪里——马里兰州的德特里克堡，那里仍然是美国生物武器工作的总部，”约翰逊说。影片显示，德特里克堡科学主管埃德温·希尔（Edwin Hill）在1947年的一份报告中写道：“由于人类实验的顾虑，这些信息（731单元数据）无法在我们自己的实验室中获得。”世界在变化，与中国的关系比以往任何时候都重要。约翰逊说：“我们需要把它弄好。”正确的一部分意味着我们需要了解他们的历史。”联系作者：liazhu@chinadailyusa.com

From a village in Central China to a US military base, to a controversial Japanese shrine, a documentary film attempts to piece together a more complete picture of the Japanese Army's Unit 731 and how its war criminals walked free.

The 52-minute film, 731-How America Exploited Japan's Biological Weapons Crimes, contains interviews with remorseful Japanese soldiers, Chinese survivors, and activists and scholars to recount some of the cruelest atrocities committed in the 20th century.

"There's almost no knowledge of Unit 731 in the West. This is a sad chapter in recent human history," said Paul Johnson, the director. He worked for three years on the film, which is now streaming on Amazon and Vimeo.

"I believe the old saying: If we are going to not repeat the terrible mistakes that we made, we need to start by knowing about them," he said.

The notorious Unit 731 was set up by the Japanese Imperial Army in 1933 in Northeast China to develop diseases for use as weapons, including plague, glanders, anthrax and typhus. The Japanese partly destroyed the headquarters in Harbin when they were defeated in 1945.

According to the film, bombs laced with plagues and anthrax were exploded near Chinese prisoners who were tied to stakes; other experiments include forcing prisoners to drink cholera-contaminated milk or injecting deadly diseases directly into their bodies. Even small children were taken and fed with chocolate filled with anthrax.

One of the most common experiments at Unit 731 was dissecting diseased bodies alive without anesthetics. The subjects, called marutas, or logs, were mostly Chinese and some Russians, and even Allied prisoners of war.

Every year, 400 to 600 new prisoners were taken to Unit 731. At least 5,000 people died from the tortures they underwent there during the 13 years, according to the Unit 731 museum, which was built on the relics.

The pain from the Japanese attack lives on in the bodies and memories of the survivors. In Central China's Changshan, some older people still remember they were exposed to something sprayed in the open fields when they were children; the infection left, but the wounds never heal.

Half a million Chinese people are estimated to have been killed by this method of biological warfare, according to data gathered by Pacific Atrocities Education, which recently organized a screening of the film in San Francisco.

"The test performed on innocent civilians is a dark chapter in world history. Experimentation on people was just horrible," said Brian Peters, a San Francisco resident.

"They (the Japanese Army) kept using it on defenseless civilians who couldn't fight back. That's fundamentally dishonorable, and it's kind of strange, as the Japanese are always about honor," he said.

What impressed Peters the most in the film is the scene of an old Japanese soldier, who worked at the unit, recognizing the crimes on his deathbed.

"He still has his ceremonial sword and he is trying to make tiny bit of amends by giving his sword back to the museum (the Unit 731 museum in China)," he said.

"Some individual Japanese have broken out of their government and societal consensus to try to suppress this, but it's so late now. Almost everyone is gone, the victims and the perpetrators," he said.

In exchange for the Japanese findings about the effects of biological weapons, the US not only gave immunity to the leaders of Unit 731 but put them on the American payroll, according to the documentary.

"Most of the data is still classified, but we know where the Japanese findings about the effects of biological weapons went — to Fort Detrick in Maryland, which continues to be the headquarters for American biological weapons work," said Johnson.

The film shows that Edwin Hill, a Fort Detrick science chief, wrote in a 1947 report that "such information (Unit 731 data) could not be obtained in our own laboratories because of scruples attached to human experimentation".

"The world is changing, the relationship with China is more important than ever. And we need to get it right," Johnson said. "Part of getting it right means we need to understand what happened in their history."

Contact the writer at liazhu@chinadailyusa.com

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