This paper examines the nature of colonial medicine itself which laid the groundwork for Unit 731.

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Death sentences were scheduled to be carried out at predetermined times, so autopsy preparations could be made in advance. Negotiations for the collection of jaw and neck organs were conducted by military police and the National Police Agency. The army’s subjugation of “bandits” enabled the use of their bodies as research material (Furuta 1934, 15–18). This was another advantage Kubo had over his counterparts in Japan, who only had access to a few healthy bodies they received by chance as the result of crime, war, accident, or suicide.

Professor Kubo was in the position to gain biological data following a scheduled death and compare this with previous information about the body. Thus, medical research in Manchuria directly benefitted from military executions. As Kubo wrote, “It was our great honor to have been commissioned by the Kwantung Army.

In addition, Rehe is a medically unexplored land, so our research spirit was forced to rise to high tide.” He thanked the army for the new knowledge he had acquired through research he was able to conduct “while receiving the great asylum of the Kwantung Army” (Kubo 1934b, 124).