Confession shows Japanese army's experiments on people

The Japanese army performed medical experiments on civilians in China during World War II, a confession by a Japanese war criminal released Saturday revealed.

According to the written confession of Seizaburo Katagiri, published by the State Archives Administration (SAA), he was part of a team that performed a vivisection on a Chinese man "to study human anatomy".

Seizaburo, who was captured in 1945, confessed that at Harbin Army Hospital in 1936 he was tasked with removing the man's organs, a procedure that resulted in his death on the operating table.

In another experiment at Mudanjiang Army Hospital, his colleagues exposed three restrained men to poison gas "to test its effectiveness". The experiment resulted in the death of all three captives.

Seizaburo also participated in a mission to spread the cholera bacteria in 1943, he was complicit in the death of more than 20,000 people.

The Japanese soldier also raped and murdered people during the war, according to his confessions.

Saturday's confession was the 11th of a series of 31 written statements by Japanese war criminals published on the SAA website in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII.