Unit 731 Museum

The Unit 731 Museum in Pingfang, about 25 kilometres south of central Harbin, is one of the most important and disturbing memorial sites in Asia. The facility was the headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Army's biological warfare unit during the Second Sino-Japanese War — a place where systematic medical experiments were carried out on prisoners, described in military documents euphemistically as "logs."

The museum preserves the ruins of the original compound — blast furnaces, holding cells, research blocks — alongside a substantial exhibition documenting the experiments and the unit's broader programme of germ warfare. The displays are graphic and unflinching. For anyone who wants to understand the full horror of what happened in this part of China during the 1930s and 40s, this is essential. Take the subway to Xinjiang Dajie station and then a taxi, or join an organised city tour that includes the site.

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A story
Unit 731 was the Imperial Japanese Army's covert biological and chemical warfare research unit. Between 1936 and 1945, it conducted lethal experiments on thousands of prisoners — Chinese, Soviet, Korean, and Allied — at its Pingfang facility south of Harbin. The site was demolished by the Japanese as they retreated, but the scale of the facilities and the nature of the experiments were so extreme that substantial ruins and documentation survived.

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