Trama

Japanese troops round up Chinese and Russian prisoners of war and take them to unit 731, where they're horribly tortured and experimented on to test new biological weapons.

Story of a Japanese terror camp in the end of WW2, where the Japanese are using the Chinese as guinea pigs in terrible experiments to develop deadly bacterial-plagues.—Tobias Broljung <larry@algonet.se>

In the final year of WWII, a group of Japanese boys are conscripted into the Youth Corps. They are assigned to the Kwantung Army, and are brought to one of the facilities serving Unit 731, which is headed by Shiro Ishii. The unit's purpose is to conduct experiments to find a highly contagious strain of bubonic plague, to be used as a last-ditch weapon against the Chinese population of North East China, where Japan has occupied.

Soon, they are introduced to the experiments going on at the facility, for which they feel revulsion. Experiments include freezing a woman's arms with icy water and reheating them to peel off the skin, locking a man in a compression chamber until his body swells and he excretes his intestines, murdering a woman and her child with poison gas, detonating explosives at close range, and throwing a cat to be eaten alive by thousands of rats.

Meanwhile, the young soldiers befriend a local mute Chinese boy with whom they play games of catch. One day, the commanding officers ask the boys to bring the Chinese child to the facility. Naively, they follow orders believing that no real harm will come to the boy; however, the senior medical staff vivisects the boy and keeps his organs for research. When the young soldiers realize what has happened, they stage a minor uprising by ganging up and physically beating their commanding officer.

Some Chinese prisoners try to hatch a plan to leak information from the unit to the outside world. A young Chinese boy, Stone, is one of them.

After a revelation, Dr. Ishii develops a prototype ceramic bomb that does not kill the infectious fleas inside upon being launched. To test its efficacy, he orders several Chinese prisoners to be tied to crosses. However, the experiment is botched since the Japanese aerial forces are retreating. Chinese prisoners break free from the crosses, and attempt to escape; however, Japanese troops hunt them down, and nearly all of them are run over or shot, including several Japanese. Stone is not killed but is delivered to the crematorium.

Unit 731 overhears the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Russia's declaration of war. Dr. Ishii initially orders his subordinates and their families to commit suicide, but is persuaded instead to evacuate them and only commit suicide if captured. Afterwards, Unit 731 destroys evidence of their research, including gassing the surviving test subjects to death and blowing up the facilities. One of Ishii's loyal subordinates, Takamura, disagrees with the destruction of the "data" and is killed by Ishii in front of his pregnant wife.

That night, the Japanese troops and their families wait at the train station to arrive home to Japan. Mrs Takamura goes into labor. Suddenly, Stone, having disguised himself as a Japanese soldier, tries to attack Ishii but is shot and dies impaled by a Japanese flag, while Mrs Takamura dies giving birth. The Youth Corps clutch onto the blood-stained flag in horror as they depart the station.

The closing passages reveal that Dr. Ishii cooperates with the Americans, giving them his research and agreeing to work for them. Years later, he is moved to the Korean War, and biological weapons appear on the battlefield shortly thereafter. The Youth Corps involved with 731 are revealed to have led hard lives after the war, with their educational background being stigmatized.