China to repair Unit 731 site

HARBIN - Repair work will begin on the former headquarters of Japan's notorious Unit 731 in Northeast China's Harbin on Wednesday, a source with the Museum of Evidence of War Crimes by Japanese Army Unit 731 said Saturday.

Jin Chengmin, the museum's curator, told Xinhua renovation of the Unit 731 site, where the museum is located, is aimed at improving exhibitions and marking the 70th victory anniversary of China's anti-Japanese war as well as the World Anti-fascist War next year.

The 6,300-square-meter building, home to 13 exhibition rooms, a gallery and an exhibition hall, received roughly 400,000 visitors this year, Jin said.

Starting Wednesday, public visits will be halted until Aug. 15 next year to allow for restoration work, Jin added.

Unit 731 was a top-secret biological and chemical warfare research base established in Harbin in 1935 as center of Japan's biological warfare in China and Southeast Asia during WWII.

More than 10,000 people were killed there. Civilians and prisoners of war from China, the Soviet Union, the Korean Peninsula and Mongolia all perished at the hands of Japanese scientists.

The retreating Japanese invaders blew up the base when the Soviet Union army took Harbin in 1945.