“My patients,” Dr. Kimura had called them, but he knew that the comforts lavished upon these men were akin to those lavished by Kobe cattlemen on their well-fattened herds. In hushed tones, the program was referred to as “Unit 731.”
Most of Unit 731’s “patients” were Chinese but there were Russians and Koreans as well. There were even a few dozen English and American prisoners of war. Although all would eventually meet horrible deaths, the method of their murder varied greatly. Some were staked to the ground in gridlike patterns, then “bombed” with a broad spectrum of disease agents, ranging from plague-infected fleas to anthrax. Kimura and his crew would then calculate the effective killing distance of the pathogens from the epicenter of the blast.
In the occupied villages nearby, children were spared the bacterial bombs; instead Kimura’s men handed out chocolates that had been filled with anthrax and cookies smeared with plague.
The scale of experimentation had grown so large that bodies could not be buried fast enough, or deep enough. Indeed, the decay of so much accumulated flesh had produced emissions of methane gas in such quantity that in some places the ground ballooned upward almost a full story. Kimura and Ishii had noted, with more annoyance than concern, how attempts to disguise the burial ground as ordinary farmland were doomed to failure. “The farmers said that the ground was poisoned. All the plants died and not even pigs would go there.”
But the toxic earth wasn’t the only horror-show detail for the locals to ponder and Kimura to smile about. The Ping Fan facility itself was foreboding—140 acres—surrounded by a five-meter-deep moat and a series of high brick walls, either electrified or bristling with barbed wire, and, in each of the camp’s four corners, a machine-gun-equipped watchtower. He’d ordered commuter train crews to draw the curtains on all passenger car windows as their trains neared the Ping Fan station: “Those foolhardy enough to risk a peek will see the complex from a far less comfortable vantage point.”
A continual source of pride for Kimura was the realization that, by comparison to the German death camps, the efficiency of Unit 731’s commanders was absolute. Not even rumors escape.
Locals knew better than to take an interest in the “special transport vehicles” that roared into the facility at all hours. They had learned that whenever the blare of police sirens preceded these large trucks, they must never be caught within viewing distance.
The situation had reached a point at which even regional administrators in the puppet Manchukuo government were concerned about maintaining the cover-up.
“What should we tell the people?”
Kimura would always remember Lieutenant Colonel Ishii’s contemptuous reply. “Tell them we have constructed a lumber mill,” he told his subordinates, and they in turn had informed the Manchu ministers.
From that day forward, the “patients” at Ping Fan would have a new name—maruta.
From that day forward, they would become “logs.”
Inside the “woodshed,” which had no visible windows and only a single vent near the ceiling, the heat of the day had made the conditions even more oppressive. Beyond the temperature and humidity, there was the unmistakable smell of human excrement, and something else—something indescribable. One of the Japanese soldiers began gagging even before they had dumped R. J. MacCready’s unconscious body into the first of a line of steel-barred cells. The sickened man gestured toward the cell door, then fled quickly, without uttering a word.
The soldier who remained, a private named Yamane, locked the cell as quickly as he could. He wanted to follow his sickened friend’s hasty retreat and was surprised, therefore, to find his dash for the exit thwarted by hesitation.
Strangely, suddenly, there was something about this place that brought back a memory of Yamane’s youth and the butcher shop where his father worked.
It certainly isn’t the horrible smell, he thought. But just then, and only for a moment, he could almost hear his beloved father’s voice.
JENTORU
Yamane shook his head. Not something my father would have said, he thought.
There was a hiss of air, and the private’s hand moved instinctively toward the sidearm he carried. But it was only the stirrings of the new prisoner, beginning to regain consciousness. Yamane relaxed a bit, watching as the American groaned and half-rolled onto his back.
The newest permanent resident was quiet again, but just as Yamane turned to leave, there was a rustling sound from the far corner of the room. Like two pieces of old rice paper sliding past each other.
The private squinted into the darkness. Something was there—something odd and barely visible—a black shape suspended near the ceiling. Did it move?
It did move, he thought. The strange object seemed to expand for a moment.
Then he heard his father’s voice again. JENTORU.
“Uh-oh!” came a singsong voice from the farthest cell.