Hideo Shimizu, a Japanese veteran who served at the notorious Japanese germ warfare army during World War II, arrived in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin on Monday.
Shimizu, the former Unit 731 Youth Corps member, is scheduled to visit the origin of his lifelong heavy memories — the Japanese bacteriology unit’s sprawling complex in Harbin, where thousands of Chinese civilians and Allied prisoners of war were killed from the late 1930s to the end of the war.
“I have always wanted to go to China to pray for the deceased and apologize to their families,” Shimizu said at a press conference in Japan’s Iida City in July.