Did Kishi Nobusuke, the former prime minister of Japan in 1958-1960 (and the grandfather of Shinzo Abe, also the former prime minister of Japan from 2012-2020), lead the Japanese human medical testing in a secret project called Unit 731 during the 1930s and 40s near Harbin in Japanese-occupied Manchuria? No, that's not true: Unit 731 was led by Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii and Masaji Kitano, who replaced Ishii as Commander of Unit 731 from August 1942 to March 1945.
The claim appeared on a TikTok video (archived here) on August 17, 2023. Translated from Japanese to English by Lead Stories staff, it opened:
The leader of the Japanese human medical testing in a secret project called Unit 731 was Kishi who was the grandfather of Abe.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
In the lower left-hand corner is the picture of Kishi and Abe and the title says,
Ignoring the Japanese constitution and running wild, the Abe government will be condemned.
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Aug 18 12:10:17 2023 UTC)
Kishi/Abe had nothing to do with Unit 731. Kishi developed Manchkuo's first Five-Year Plan. From 1937 to 1940, Kishi was made the army's de facto head of Manchukuo's industrial economy. He was a civil service employee so it is not correct to say that he was one of the leaders of the Japanese army.
Unit 731 was one of the research institutes that existed in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II and was known for developing biological weapons in the early 1930s. It committed inhuman atrocities mainly against the Chinese, but the US did not put those who were involved on trial in exchange for information. It was disbanded in August 1945 at the conclusion of World War II.
