While twelve Unit 731 researchers arrested by Soviet forces were tried at the December 1949 Khabarovsk war crimes trials, they were sentenced lightly to the Siberian labor camp from two to 25 years, seemingly in exchange for the information they held.
During the trials, the accused, including Major General Kiyoshi Kawashima, testified that as early as 1941, some 40 members of Unit 731 air-dropped plague-contaminated fleas on Changde, China, causing epidemic plague outbreaks.
[5] Judges found all twelve accused war criminals guilty, sentencing them to terms ranging from two to twenty-five years in labour camps.
[7] Speaking to the overall judicial integrity of the proceedings, bioethics expert Jing-Bao Nie said the following: Despite its strong ideological tone and many obvious shortcomings such as the lack of international participation, the trial established beyond reasonable doubt that the Japanese army had prepared and deployed bacteriological weapons and that Japanese researchers had conducted cruel experiments on living human beings.
[8]Historian Sheldon Harris described the trial in his history of Unit 731: Evidence introduced during the hearings was based on eighteen volumes of interrogations and documentary material gathered in investigations over the previous four years.