where he opened a clinic, performing examinations and treatments for free. Ishii kept a diary, but it did not make reference to any of his wartime activities with Unit 731. Death In his last years, Ishii could not speak clearly; he was uncomfortable and on pain medication and spoke in a harsh voice. He died on October 9, 1959 from laryngeal cancer at the age of 67 at a hospital in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Interestingly, one of Ishii's idols, Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō, also died from throat cancer. Ishii's funeral was chaired by Masaji Kitano, his second-in-command at Unit 731. According to his daughter, Ishii converted to Catholicism shortly before his death. Ishii's daughter, Harumi Ishii, recalled in an interview that shortly before his death, Ishii's medical condition worsened: Popular culture Portrayed by Min Ji-hwan in the 1991–1992 MBC TV series Eyes of Dawn. Portrayed by Gang Wang in the 1988 film Men Behind The Sun. See also Josef Mengele Operation Paperclip Khabarovsk War Crime Trials Sources Citations References Barenblatt, Daniel. A Plague Upon Humanity: the Secret Genocide of Axis Japan's Germ Warfare Operation, HarperCollins, 2004. Gold, Hal. Unit 731 Testimony, Charles E Tuttle Co., 1996. Williams, Peter and Wallace, David. Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II, Free Press, 1989. Harris, Sheldon H. Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932–45 and the American Cover-Up, Routledge, 1994. Endicott, Stephen and Hagerman, Edward. The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, Indiana University Press, 1999. Handelman, Stephen and Alibek, Ken. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World – Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It, Random House, 1999. Harris, Robert and Paxman, Jeremy. A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Random House, 2002. Barnaby, Wendy. The Plague Makers: The Secret World of Biological Warfare, Frog Ltd, 1999. Yang Yan-Jun and Tam Yue-Him. Unit 731: Laboratory of the Devil, Auschwitz of the East: Japanese Biological Warfare in China 1933-45. Fonthill Media, 2018. 1892 births 1959 deaths Japanese military doctors Japanese Christians Japanese human subject research Japanese generals Japanese military personnel of World War II Japanese biological weapons program Japanese Roman Catholics Military personnel from Chiba Prefecture Converts to Christianity Kyoto University alumni Deaths from esophageal cancer Deaths from cancer in Japan