Unit 731

Some said I would get used to it; the screaming. The chilling, gargling sound being forced from dying bodies as life was torn relentlessly from their grip. Some said it even got easier the second time you tried, and the third time was the charm for most, finding they were perfectly willing to participate in what could only be described as torture, unrelenting and merciless. But the screaming never stopped. I could hear it as I lay my head on my pillow at night, as I tried without success to catch at least a few hours of sleep, giving me nightmares far more severe than I had ever been subjected to as a child; worse, even so, than the ones I had after watching a film meant for people far my superior. The nightmares would keep me awake, the horrified shrieks echoing through my memory.

The faces of the victims haunted me, their horrified open eyes, filled with such pain and suffering that I alone could stop; their lips open so wide that it was almost inhuman. Their features twisted and warped into masks of pure agony, the faces of the hundreds of victims, subjected to the worst pain imaginable, pure torture so disgusting that I had to look away at times. And they were always screaming, the sound ripping through my head as they sobbed in pain, their shaking voices praying to their God to save them from the horror they had been forced into, but not even he could help them escape the reality that was their death; so sudden and unnecessary, yet something that the Empire saw as ‘a necessary evil’, an aid with the war efforts.

And the worst part about the whole experience was the fact that it was me doing that to them. It was me that yielded the surgeon’s knife, time after time, closing my ears to the screams and pleading cries of the thirty-three men, women, children and infants that I carelessly cut to pieces, ruthlessly slashing into them with the knife, time and time again. I was the one tearing families apart at the seams, cruelly murdering any being that happened to lie on my table, blindly being led by a failing empire with delusional views that we were the superior race, a race that needed to prove their authority by choosing over one thousand inferior beings to experiment with, to use as harbours for bacterium, breeding grounds for infection and pain that could be used against others, not even for the good. But, of course everything contributed to the war effort. Everything was used as a positive force to help us try and win back a war that we were fighting blindly, without hope that we would ever win. Our soldiers were being wiped out overseas, and we were slicing apart human limbs, infecting the thousands of humans in the facilities with chemicals and infections that we could use to perhaps win back some integrity, perhaps even win the war, and obliterate the enemy.

What the Empire didn’t realise, however, was the effect it had on not only the surrounding Chinese community, but the doctors themselves. Not one person escaped the wrath that was Unit 731. Not even me.