The upcoming war film "Evil Unbound", which reveals the dark history of Japan's germ warfare in China, unveiled its global promotional poster on Sunday.
The movie will premiere on September 18 in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, Australia, and New Zealand. The release date coincides with the anniversary of the September 18 Incident in 1931, which marked the start of Japan's 14-year invasion of China.
Setting during the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the film recounts the bacteriological warfare waged by Japan's infamous Unit 731 and the inhumane human experiments on Chinese civilians.
Unit 731 was a top-secret biological and chemical warfare research facility established in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin in 1935. It served as the nerve center of Japanese biological warfare operations in China and Southeast Asia during World War II. At least 3,000 people were subjected to human experimentation by Unit 731, and more than 300,000 people in China were killed by Japan's biological weapons.
The film sheds light on this dark chapter of history and the inhuman acts committed by the invading Japanese army.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) and the World Anti-Fascist War.
On August 15 this year, the Exhibition Hall of Evidence of Crimes Committed by Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army in Harbin unveiled new historical evidence, including 3,010 pages of archival documents, 194 minutes of video footage, 312 photographs, 12 postcards, and eight letters. Included are criminal records and historical materials from official Japanese institutions, oral testimony from Unit 731 members, and evidence of wartime crimes collected from the Japanese public.
On August 19, Russia's Federal Security Service also released declassified documents exposing horrific details of the unit's crimes.
The documents show that during World War II, Japanese invaders in China planned an attack on the Soviet Union from northeast China and prepared to use biological weapons capable of wiping out large numbers of troops. To support these efforts, they established Unit 731 in Harbin, where researchers studied bacterial diseases such as plague, anthrax, and cholera, and conducted ongoing human experimentation, detaining Chinese and Russians, as well as Japanese death-row prisoners, specifically for use in these experiments. According to the documents, Unit 731 once took hundreds of Chinese civilians into the fields and fired shells filled with plague, anthrax, and cholera pathogens at them to test the effectiveness of the biological agents.
Film on notorious Japan's germ warfare in China to premiere on September 18
Film on notorious Japan's germ warfare in China to premiere on September 18
