In brief
A delegation from Japan’s Association for Inheriting and Propagating the Murayama Statement toured Unit 731 memorial sites in Heilongjiang Province and urged Japan to confront its wartime past. The members expressed remorse, condemned historical revisionism, and called for deeper reflection and accountability. The visit underscored China’s insistence that the truth of WWII atrocities cannot be buried.
A Japanese civil‑society delegation from the Association for Inheriting and Propagating the Murayama Statement toured Unit 731 memorial sites in Heilongjiang Province, China, on November 1, 2026, to confront wartime atrocities and condemn a surge of historical revisionism.
During the visit, deputy chief Shigenori Kanehira and university professor Mitsuhisa Fukutomi remarked that seeing the former execution and experimentation sites had shocked them, even though they had already studied Japan’s wartime history.
The delegation spent several hours in silent reflection at an exhibition hall that displays evidence of crimes committed by Unit 731, the notorious biological‑warfare division responsible for human experiments during World War II.
Takakage Fujita, head of the delegation, said the Japanese army’s act of injecting bacteria into living people can only be described as “demonic.”
“Japanese army’s act of injecting bacteria into living people can only be described as ‘demonic’.”
He added, “As a Japanese, I sincerely apologize to the Chinese people who perished in the disaster.”
Fujita also condemned the rising tide of right‑wing revisionism in Japan, noting that some politicians have made “absurd and ignorant remarks” and even urged regional conflict in recent years.
During a symposium with scholars from the exhibition hall, the delegation highlighted that decades of archaeological research and academic verification have established an irrefutable chain of criminal evidence, making it impossible to bury the truth of the Unit 731 atrocities.
