Documents on Japanese Biological Warfare was published by the National Library of China in September 2020. [Photo/IC]

Speaking of the notorious Japanese Army Unit 731, most Chinese would first come up with the endless heinous war crimes it committed during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) in Northeast China.

But actually, many other Chinese regions, particularly Zhejiang province in East China, also fell victim to the covert biological and chemical warfare research unit.

Japanese Army Unit 731, based in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province, during the 14-year war, undertook lethal human experimentation there in order to produce biological weapons that had plagued millions of Chinese who resisted the Japanese invasion.

Hu Xianzhong, an 89-year-old resident of the city of Ningbo in Zhejiang, recently told a reporter from Xinhua News Agency that his sister, brother, father, and mother tragically died one by one within 10 days of a pestilence in November 1940, which was caused by a fraudulent grain airdrop by the Japanese air force in a local community. A total of 135 victims were named. To prevent the spread of the pestilence, locals had to burn down the entire community.

Quzhou, another city in Zhejiang, is home to a well-known memorial hall for Japanese germ warfare victims. The museum is the former residence of a woman who died of a Japan-induced pestilence in 1940.

Pointing to a wall densely printed with the names of the pestilence's fatal victims, Wu Jianping, curator of the museum, said that both his uncle and aunt were among them.

According to Bao Xiaofeng, a senior historian in Zhejiang, the Japanese invaders waged large-scale germ warfare in Zhejiang in 1940, 1942, and 1944. Between 1939 and 1945, the Japanese brought into Zhejiang the pathogenic bacteria for pestilence, cholera, dysentery, diphtheria, anthrax, etc.

During the 14-year war, Zhejiang was one of the most severely victimized regions in China from Japanese germ warfare, with a direct death toll of around 60,000. Japanese Army Unit 731 and Unit 1644 were among the main perpetrators.

Around 7,000 pages of relevant detailed records in 79 volumes of archives are kept in the Zhejiang Archives Center, forming a powerful chain of evidence of the Japanese invaders' crimes against humanity.

Even today, some Zhejiang residents still suffer from the effects of the crimes on a daily basis. Wu Fagui, an 83-year-old villager in Quzhou, has had a festered left leg and foot since he was four, when he passed by a nearby pond. Back then, Japanese bombers continuously bombed the village, which was garrisoned by a Chinese military unit. Numerous villagers who escaped to the mountaintops witnessed the explosion of a bombshell in the pond.

In 2015, Shanghai launched a charitable campaign to treat germ-warfare-induced "rotten leg disease" patients nationwide.

According to Ye Chunjiang, a medical doctor at the wound repair department in a Quzhou-based hospital, a total of 80 people in Quzhou and surrounding regions have so far undergone free surgeries organized by the campaign.

Among them was Wu Fagui, whose festered leg has basically recovered after the surgery. Now he is finally able to walk around the village with a stick, after decades of chronic suffering.

An elderly man has his festered leg examined in Quzhou, Zhejiang province. [Photo/zj.zjol.com.cn]