Shiro Ishii - 石井四郎
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Shiro Ishii initiated the cooperation between the Kantsaywhere Institute and the Japanese scientific community 20 years ago. For what reasons, we do not know.

In 1932, General Shiro Ishii (石井四郎), chief medical officer of the Japanese Army and protégé of Army Minister Sadao Araki was placed in command of the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory. He and his men built the Zhong Ma Prison Camp (whose main building was known locally as the Zhongma Fortress), a prison/experimentation camp in Beiyinhe, a village 100 kilometers south of Harbin on the South Manchurian Railway. Ishii organized a secret research group, the "Togo Unit", for the conduct of various chemical and biological investigations. In 1935, a jailbreak, and later, an explosion (believed to be an attack) forced Ishii to shut down Zhongma Fortress. He later moved to Pingfang, approximately 24 kilometers south of Harbin, to set up a new and much larger facility.[5]

This unit later was integrated into the Kwantung Army as the Epidemic Prevention Department, but was divided at the same time into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit" with a base in Hsinking. From 1941 on all these units were known collectively as the "Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (関東軍防疫給水部本部)", or "Unit 731" (満州第731部隊) for short.[1]

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