Unit 731

I didn’t get much sleep that night.

The futon was hard and unforgiving and the cold from the floor below seeped through the thin material, chilling me to the bone. It did little to help my plight, but it wasn’t what caused me to toss and turn. I was uneasy. Nitta’s words had shaken me to the core and more than ever, I felt that my feeble attempt to impress my father was going to have dire consequences. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had made a grave error and with that weighing upon my mind, there was absolutely no possibility of sleep befalling me.

I decided to get dressed when the first faint rays of sunshine forced their way through the grubby window. There was no point in trying to sleep any longer. It had already eluded me for eight long hours, so one half-hour of shut-eye wasn’t going to help me now. Besides, I had worked on plenty of sleepless nights when I had been at home. I assumed it wouldn’t be any different to the morning after those nights I had spent studying.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Nitta and Nakada awoke at the same time as I did. Wordlessly, we exchanged knowing glances – whether or not we were going to aid the war effort on a major scale, we were going to find out what we would be doing for the duration of our stay. This didn’t seem to faze Nitta. He smoked a cigarette quickly, grinding the tip on the windowsill and placing the stub back into his pocket.

“For later,” he said with a wink, pulling on a battered boot. His fingers looped through the laces effortlessly, a stark contrast to Nakada. He was shaking so much that he kept dropping his laces to the floor every time he tried to tie them together. It was a horrible site, watching a man my age break down before my own eyes. Nakada wouldn’t last long in the war effort, that much was obvious. The Empire would have their way with him by the end of the month. It didn’t matter what they branded him – a traitor, a spy, an undercover agent – because the treatment would be the same. Military execution. There wouldn’t be enough for his parents to bury when the firing squad had finished with him.

“We need to be at the labs section of the compound by ten-hundred hours,” Nitta announced, even if only to ease the tension. It didn’t work. Nakada still struggled with the snakelike laces that kept slipping out of his fingers and I continued to bite my bottom lip. I had broken through the thin layer of skin and a tiny amount of blood had washed into my mouth, settling in between the bottom row like some form of disgusting spittle. My mouth was awash with the taste of iron. It clung to my tongue and the very back of my throat, a bad taste that I couldn’t wash away even after a few mouthfuls of stale water from the tap in the corner.

“We have an hour,” Nakada said shakily after a moment. The tremors in his hand seemed to have passed for the time being and his boots were messily laced on top of the dark trousers he had been wearing yesterday morning. It made no sense to change; after all, we had no idea what we had let ourselves in for and it wasn’t worth ruining a pair of fresh trousers when yesterday’s clothes were still wearable. Nitta looked at Nakada for a moment, his eyes sparkling with interest. It didn’t seem like Nakada was going to get away with existing peacefully. From the very second that I had met him, I knew that the Nitta was a bully and with Nakada showing his fear so openly, I knew who Nitta’s next target would be.

I tried not to dwell on the fate of my roommate, though. Survival is about one thing and one thing only; yourself.

~*~*~

To the credit of the Japanese military, the labs that they had crowded us in were top-of-the-range. Brand new tools were littered around the sterile metal counters, almost begging to be used. For a second, I forgot exactly what I was there to do and stared in awe at the workspace. When we had been marched through the door by another pre-pubescent teenage boy, I had expected the very basics and not a laboratory full of shine and professionalism. We didn’t even have this kind of machinery at the university for research purposes. The powers that be had obviously thought that warfare was more important than education. I couldn’t say I agreed with them.

The room was, however, incredibly small. Nine of us had been ushered in and almost instantly, it had become difficult to find a safe space to stand. A test-tube had already been smashed, the shattered remains swimming in whatever liquid had been stored in it. Several of the tools littering the tables had been moved in order for arms and elbows to have a place to rest. I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Nitta. The unmistakable odour of cigarettes was mixed with another, more subtle smell.

Fear. He smelled of sweat and fear. He was just as scared as the rest of us.

Including Kurosawa and the two guards that had shown us in, there were twelve men surrounding the workbenches. The air was stuffy and unregulated and as I took deep breaths in, I could taste the sour mix of body odour and cigarettes from all around. It seemed to press down on me, forcing me further into the crowd of people. A cool, throbbing pain was spreading throughout my hip as Nitta pressed on my shoulder. There was barely enough room to move and if anything were to happen in this room, we would have to untangle ourselves from the warped jigsaw puzzle we had become before we could escape. It wasn’t a comforting thought, imagining how many people I would have to clamber over to reach the exit.

With a lazy wave, Kurosawa sent the two guards away, giving us a little more breathing space. I could still feel the walls encroaching on my personal space, but I could relax a little. My spine had been stretched out for the ten minutes we had been waiting, so slouching a little gave me a small feeling of bliss. The edge of the nearest workstation was still pressing into my hip, but it seemed to have eased off a little. It was getting easier to focus on something other than what I had assumed was impending death by suffocation.

On closer inspection, Kurosawa wasn’t as impressive as he had seemed on our entrance to the compound. His surgical coat was way too big for his tiny frame and despite the sleeves being rolled up to reveal twig-like arms, he still seemed as if he were drowning in the material. Several questionable stains covered the breast area and I couldn’t help but wonder what they were from. Rumours had spread like wildfire through the camp and my only guess was that he had gained them from working on questionable patients. His eyes still moved like they were electrified, but the dark circles that his glasses hid from a distance were magnified tenfold by the lenses and despite his best attempts to cover it, there was a look in his eyes that said he would rather be anywhere but here. He was haunted; haunted by the lives of the men, woman and children he had taken the lives of. Haunted just like we would all be once we had completed our say in Unit 731.

“Welcome, men!” he said. Even the enthusiasm in his voice seemed to emit an air of defeat. It was sad, to see a man that had seemed to imposing last night stripped of his authority and laid bare in front of a group of students. He even seemed smaller, more shrunken into himself. At that point, did I realise I was looking at a mirror image of myself in a year’s time? Probably not. I didn’t think about my own future at that point. Get in, survive and get out. Those were my main thoughts and only goals.

“Today,” Kurosawa announced, his voice reverberating off of the walls, “you will be assigned to your divisions. There are eight divisions in the camp.”

Kurosawa extended his twig-like arm, letting his hand sweep around the room momentarily. Nine sets of eyes followed his empty gesture, once again taking stock of the equipment the room had to offer.

“This is Division One. You will all be working under me. This is my section.”

There was a small tinge of pride in Kurosawa’s voice as he said the last sentence. I would later find out that he hated his work and hated the unit as a whole, but he was exceptionally proud of the training facilities and equipment they had been given. He had built the section from the ground-up and had been given a say in everything, including the types of patients we would initially work on. His grasp on those parameters would slip rapidly though. His lack of bloodlust was seen as cowardice, a crime punishable in the same way as betraying the country would be. He would later be executed for the crimes he had committed against the country he loved with all of his heart.

“Division One deals with the study and experimentation of several diseases: bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid and tuberculosis,” Kurosawa explained. The light in his eyes had been extinguished completely. I didn’t expect any good news after this phrase. They were all fairly routine infections, each of which had been mentioned at least once in the period of time I had spent in our infectious diseases class. Utilised in the ‘war effort’ that they kept trying to sell to us, they spelt disaster.

“There are two sections to this division. Section one will be working within this lab and the sister lab next door.”

Standard. I had expected lab work. It wasn’t my favourite thing to complete in the world, but it showed my dedication to the country and my contribution to the war effort. I would be warmly rewarded for my efforts for the rest of my days, just as my father was rewarded with a healthy pension and regular health checks for the entire family. I would be rewarded just as Daijiro would be when he returned from his posting, exhausted but triumphant in his survival. Not only would Daijiro be rewarded by the state, but he would be rewarded with the love and affection my father could only hold for the son that followed in his footsteps.

Kurosawa had a list of six names that would be working within the labs. I listened carefully for my name, ready to step forward and accept my fate. But Nakamura wasn’t called. Nakada was, and I felt a silent breath of relief for the poor man when I realised that Nitta’s name hadn’t been called either. At least he would have a little respite from the torment that was no doubt going to rain over him on a daily basis.

“If your name has been called, remain in this room. One of my colleagues will come and discuss with you what you will be doing for the duration of your stay here. Anyone who did not hear their name, follow me.”

It was difficult, to say the least. After I had managed to squeeze my way through the tight gap between a portly, middle-aged man and a man whose build strongly resembled Kurosawa’s own build, I found myself following my new boss into a damp corridor. The windows were grubby, but still held a view of the courtyard outside of the building. They were marching what I assumed were war criminals across the concourse, their filthy skin and hopeless faces embodying the very spirit of the war. They seemed to have given up their fates to the hard-faced men commanding them, their backs hunched and steps shuffled. I felt a pang of sympathy for them. Regardless of the crimes these men and women had committed, they deserved a bath and a good meal. They deserved respect.

“We asked for the class records of everyone that signed up,” Kurosawa said, stopping in the middle of the corridor. I jumped, not ready for the sudden interaction. I had still been engrossed in the men outside the window, peering at them as a child would peer at the lions at the circus. The only difference was that the lions would stare back with their exotic, sad eyes. The foreigners outside the window would not stare back, for fear of being reprimanded. They stared at their feet as they shuffled along, walking at the pace of a tortoise.

“Your names were selected from a very long list of men,” Kurosawa said seriously, “as the best of your year. That is why you are coming with me this morning. We don’t usually take on men to the surgical sides of our effort, but you were all given shining reviews from your tutors.”

I didn’t like the way Kurosawa had spat out the word surgical, the way he had rolled it around his tongue and muttered it as if it were a disgusting swear word. Standing in that dingy corridor, with Nitta on one side of me and a man whose name I did not know on the other, I felt like we were being recruited for some dirty experiment, something that we would regret for the rest of our lives. I had every reason to feel like this, and Kurosawa’s next words confirmed my fears and chilled me to the very bone.

“You have all been selected to join us as we further our research by using and testing on live subjects.”