Unit 731

The rooms we had been assigned were tiny, to say the least. Three small futons lay in a uniform line, the thin white blankets laid upon them cutting a perfect angle across the upper third. We were lucky enough to have been given a room with a view; a tiny window that allowed us to peer out at the large courtyard. As we had arrived, there was a small commotion occurring just outside our window, but armoured trucks blocked our view. I found myself desperately hoping that it was not one of our fellow travellers that had attempted to run. I could only imagine what the men that had guarded us would do if anyone tried to escape. The Empire didn’t take too kindly on cowards.

Unpacking our cases hadn’t been a priority when we had reached the room. Nakada - a short and rather stout individual with whom I had attended several classes with back at Jikei - had collapsed onto his futon as soon as we had entered the room. He turned his face to the wall, away from prying and inquisitive eyes. I couldn’t say that I blamed him at that moment. The last thing that I wanted to do was face the two other men that I would be sharing a room with. Sitting down slowly, I ran my hands through my hair. The more I thought, the more I realised that my decision may have been the wrong one entirely. I wasn’t cut out for war. Heck, I used to cry when Daijiro would kill spiders that infiltrated the house. How could I deal with human death if I couldn’t deal with him killing a simple arachnid?

Nitta was pacing. Back and forth, back and forth, the hollow clunk of his boots hitting the floor was both rhythmic and steady. It seemed to calm my nerves a little, being able to focus on a constant sound rather than the chaos that seemed to be unfolding across the map of my life. From my hunched position, I could see the torn toes of the military-issue shoes moving to the left and then the right. It wasn’t unusual for men with military fathers to use the out-of-commission shoes that they had been issued years ago. Many things issued by the Empire were fleeting and fragile, able to be broken within hours, but military-issue boots lasted forever. A quick polish would clean up even the most worn pair of shoes.

The rhythmic heartbeat of the room stopped, as did the steps. Nitta couldn’t have been stood still for more than a few seconds before the tired protest of cracking knees signified that he had sat down on his own futon. Looking up, I immediately noticed the scrap of paper held carefully in his hands. His eyes were scanning across the carefully printed letters as if they were his only lifeline out of this hellhole. His face fell as he continued reading and the last glimmer of hope faded from his eyes.

“Listen,” he said hollowly, looking up from the page and catching my eye. Nakada turned around momentarily, rubbing his eyes and faking a yawn. He wasn’t fooling anyone; both I and Nitta could tell instantly that his bloodshot and watery eyes weren’t from tiredness. His attention seemed to be focused on Nitta, whose sombre gaze was almost entirely unnerving. The piece of paper was shaking ever so slightly, just like the hand holding it.

“Biological warfare, that’s our division,” he said, attempting to keep his voice completely emotionless but the tremor in his voice was unmistakeable. Nakada looked confused, shaking his head as if trying to comprehend the words. He wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box, but even then, the words seemed slightly perplexing to me. I had, obviously, heard them mentioned whenever someone had explained Unit 731’s main concerns to me but they had never properly sunk in. Biology was – of course – the main concern of almost every single student that I had been studying with at Jikei, considering we were all being trained to be doctors and surgeons. However, when we were being taught the vital skills needed to save a life, we were being taught just that – how to save a life. Biological warfare seemed miles away from the books and body diagrams back in the lecture halls. Biological warfare was dark, twisted and a total perversion of the skills that we had been honing in our classes and tutorials. Even the phrase seemed to sweep a cold air through the room, seemed to chill me to the very core. It wasn’t what we had signed up for when we had naïvely put our names down to join the war effort. It certainly wasn’t what I would have expected.

“What’s biological warfare?” Nakada asked after a moment of silence, taking a deep breath after he had asked almost as if he were scared of the answer he would receive. Nitta had now dropped the paper and I was attempting to read the characters from my own futon but despite the glasses that continued to slip down my nose at almost every opportunity they saw fit, I couldn’t read them for myself. I was all-too-aware that the entire atmosphere in the room had dropped from icy to sub-Antarctic and the uncomfortable silence, peppered only by the heavy breathing of my two new roommates, was almost suffocating. After a few moments of the unbearable silence, Nitta let out a long sigh and shifted his weight so that he was facing the baby-faced surgeon-in-training. I breathed a silent breath of thanks. Nitta was a nice man on all accounts, but his piercing stare was more intimidating than most of the guards that marched in and out of the complex when we had first arrived. In fact, looking back on it, I do think that I would rather have faced an angry Imperial soldier than Akira Nitta on a bad day. Nakada squirmed under the imposing man’s glance, choosing to look at his feet rather than the solemn expression of Nitta.

“Biological warfare,” Nitta began, “is basically an exploitation of what we do in classes. It’s a way of finding out what will cause the most harm to the opposition using biological aspects of life; for instance, where is the most painful to be shot or what organs will cause the most pain when removed. They’ll pair us up with the people put into chemical warfare; we’ll be made to do vivisections to see how the chemicals affect the human body. From what I’ve heard, the pigs held in this camp are prisoners of war, people not on our side, so I would bet every last yen in my pocket that we’ll be made to do everything on live men and women. In essence, biological warfare goes against every moral obligation you’ve been taught in your life. It’s disgusting.”

As if to accentuate the points he had made in his speech, he took the little change he had in his pocket and threw it across the less-than-pristine sheets across the futon. He then stood, spitting on the ground and coughing loudly. The only other things contained within his pocket were a half-used packet of cigarettes and a small group of matches. Lighting up a cigarette, he inhaled deeply. The acrid cloud of smoke exiting his mouth seemed to have calmed him and he sat back down on the bed, returning his gaze to Nakada.

“Essentially,” Nitta concluded, “we’re going to become Hell’s surgeons.”