The Journal of Dr. Ishii Yamaku

May, 23, 1943
I received word today that I am to be reassigned to a base outside of Kyoto. General Ishii delivered the news personally so this must be very important. No word yet about what I will be working on or who I will be working with, only that I and my family will be relocated to an undisclosed location outside of Ukyō-ku. I am of course grateful for the opportunity but, I am dreading the move. This will be the third time we have moved this year and Mai’s condition has yet to improve and I fear what another move may do to her. Of course it has always been difficult to move Chieko…..She started banging her head again, it’s getting harder and harder to hide her condition….hopefully the fresh air will do us all some good.
May, 27, 1943
This is incredible; I never imagined such things existed let alone that I would one day be working on them.  We are apparently developing a new source of energy, a kind of energy field that can be tapped into anywhere in the world, at any time provided that a certain substance called “Anima” is present. This substance is drawn from a rift deep inside the earth that looks out onto outer space; I can scarcely begin to grasp how such a thing is possible. Apparently this substance is not new and has been used by mankind for thousands of years and has a large array of remarkable properties. I have since been told that every story about magic can be traced back to men who have been able to use this substance and bend it to their will. At this point I was in awe of what they had shown me but, I didn’t understand why they needed me. Of course I was and still am deeply honored that General Ishii felt I was worthy of being included in such a project but, I still didn’t understand why they needed a doctor and then brought me to the Med lab.
Apparently there are a number of unintended side effects that result from Anima exposure; among them are enhanced speed and strength, resistance to extreme temperatures, enhanced recuperative capabilities, and a host of psionic powers. Though it appears that after a time (approximately three days according to my predecessor’s notes) the subjects seem to be driven mad by auditory hallucinations (a malevolent whispering in most cases.) Thus in the name of Emperor Hirohito I am to find a way to stabilize these side effects, that they may serve the empire (in bullshit speak anyway.) Chieko has yet to adjust to her new home, I found her the other day trying walk to back to Osaka. She cried when I took her home; Mai was able to placate her with her crayons but not before waking half the nation. I wish Mai would consider the asylum as it would be easier on both of us….but she loves the child to much. At least the fresh air seems to have put Mai in better spirits.
June, 1, 1943
The first batch of test subjects has succumb to madness after 5 days (an improvement over previous batches) but, not before yielding new insights into effects of anima. We have been using prisoners from the other divisions for the experiments particularly those who show psionic potential as they seem to be the ones most susceptible to the effects of anima. In this most recent batch we were able to amputate limbs and re-grow them in a matter of seconds (though the process appears to induce a great deal of pain) through the application of focused anima via a type of prism from the engineering lab. The same application of anima also allowed malnourished subjects to lift almost 50x their own weight (1.3kg) and sprint for up to 30 minutes. These of course were the more mundane effects of anima; of the 10 subjects in this batch 7 of them manifested some form of psionic power. 2 Chinese soldiers manifested a form of elemental control that allowed them to both cool air to the point that it became ice in their hands and heat it to the point that it ignited, 3 Korean civilians manifested potent telekinesis, and 2 Japanese defectors were able to boil blood.
We have been controlling them through a gas derived from another substance that I am not familiar with (though I have requested samples for analysis.) Chieko still hasn’t calm down despite Mai’s best efforts. I can see Chieko’s behavior is beginning to weigh on Mai, she has been more tired than usual and now has trouble standing. Her mother is visiting us for the next few weeks hopefully an extra set of hands will help…  If she just would let me send her to the dame asylum we could be done with this nightmare once and for all.
June, 8, 1943
Analysis of the substance used to create our neutralizing agent (now called anti anima) has yield a carcinogen that is toxic to all organic matter. We have yet to observe any effects on non organic substances such as steel though I suspect that is only because we have yet to expose it to the right conditions. It seems for lack of a better word “hostile” towards anima, subjects exposed to anima then anti anima suffer only minor corrosive damage. In contrast those exposed to anti anima first seem to suffer a number of deformities including the growth of vestigial eyes on the arms and forehead, the loss of teeth and nails, visual and auditory hallucinations…as well as the growth of tentacles from various open sours on the body. Auditory hallucinations experienced by those who have been exposed to anti anime are similar to those experienced by those who have been exposed to anima and I am beginning to suspect that it may be our use of the neutralizing agent that is driving the subjects mad and not continues exposure to anima.
 I am not sure though, particularly after the last few days; shortly after I started working with anima I had a dream, a nightmare really. In it I was looking up at a strange night sky on an alien world, next to me stood a man and woman; the man told me to listen to the whispers they speak only the truth, the woman told me not to listen to the whispers they speak only lies. As they argue I was engulfed by a swarm of bees, half of them are as black as night, the other half glow a warm orange, both are crawling into my mouth, I try to scream but, only light comes out. When I awoke I had trouble breathing and…my hands were on fire. Initially I panicked, which lead to a manifestation of telekinesis in the form of a flipped table, which woke both Mai and Chieko who panicked at the sight of the flames. Only after I was focused on calming Mai did the flames vanish (amazingly nothing was burnt) but, by then it was too late Mai was already having trouble breathing.
I rushed Mai to the base hospital and while the staff stabilized her, I informed my commanding officer of the incident. I now have a nurse assigned to monitor my condition; General Ishii has informed me that if I begin to manifest symptoms of the test subjects’ madness I will be relieved of my position as head medical researcher of division 9. I am not sure if they intend to simply reassign me or execute me...Based on what I have seen it’s more likely to be the latter rather than the former.  The only thing I want at the moment though is for Mai to pull through.
June, 18, 1943
Mai Yamaku…My best friend since I was 6 years old, my first kiss, my first lover, my wife… She passed away last night; the doctor on duty said it was apnea caused by polio. She had always had a weak constitution but I never saw anything that told me polio; maybe I was working too much, maybe she didn’t want to burden me with her problems (she was always like that,) maybe she didn’t notice it herself. I wept all night and then slept and when I awoke, I felt nothing… Chieko started banging her head again and only stopped when Mai's mother held her down and made her… Mai and I tried everything with that child, everything, acupuncture, diet, every psychiatrist in Japan, a fucking exorcism by a catholic priest! I begged Mai to send her to the asylum but she wouldn’t listen she was determined to love this beast no matter what. I cannot help but wonder if she would be alive if Chieko had been normal or placed in the asylum; then maybe Mai could have focused on getting better, maybe she would have come to me with her symptoms, maybe everything would have been better. But, she loved the child to much…
 My mind keeps drifting back to those amputated limbs in the first batch of test subjects; we have used anima to heal physical wounds but we have yet to use it to heal the mind. We have always used subjects that were psychologically sound because they needed to be trained to use anima for our experiments but, we have yet to see how it affects individuals who are unsound. The worst case scenario, they simply get worse and we have to put them down and we are all better off for it. Best case scenario we discover a new way of treating madness and we are all better off for it. I will speak with General Ishii tomorrow about using patients from the asylum; Chieko will be among this new batch…I should have done this week’s ago.
June, 28, 1943
General Ishii approved my request for patients from the asylum… apparently the Germans have a similar policy and he said something about how it would be good for axis solidarity or some bullshit like that (None the less I have my test subjects.) Of the 25 we tested, 5 of them showed psionic potential of the 5 we have two males (identical twins) with severe mental retardation, a woman who believes she is a Shikigami, one man who is a an idiot savant (specializing in mathematics and memorization), and of course Chieko. Surprisingly enough Chieko scores indicate that not only is she the best candidate for anima exposure of the 25 patients but she has the highest scores of anyone we have tested ever; as such she was the first to be exposed.
We used the dragon’s tooth (the charming name given to the prism by engineering) for her initial exposure and her reaction was more or less typical; increased body temperature, hart rate, trouble breathing and then things got interesting. Her hands ignited (just as mine had) and the fire slowly began to consume her and as she panicked the fire became more and more intense until finally the pipes in the testing area began to burst and we had to activate her collar (we have since stopped using the neutralizing agent) and this only made things worse. After we shocked her she fell to the floor, the flames vanished and then an unseen force shattered the concrete floor in the testing area, as well as the two way mirror and most of our equipment.
I don’t know what came over me at the moment but I ran into the testing area to see if she had survived the experiment and then the most remarkable thing of all happened…she spoke to me she said “who are you?” Chieko had never spoken a single word to any one up to that point and her first words were to me. Mai would have wept with joy over this and I think I may have cried a little too. She does not remember who I am or anything else prior to the experiment but all tests indicate that she is functioning at the level of a normal 8 year old girl. We got similar results for the other test subjects (though none reacted quite as strongly as Chieko did,) the one exception to this is the woman named Aimi Iwate (the woman who believed she was a Shikigami.) In her case the Anima seemed to intensify her delusion, normally this wouldn’t have been a problem but, the powers she manifested were almost as strong as Chiekos and she became violent after her exposure. So much so that we had to brake protocol and use the neutralizing agent to get her under control; General Ishii later determined that she was too much of a security risk to keep alive and ordered her destroyed. Thus I am left with only 4 subjects all of whom are functioning at cognitively normal levels except Mr. Gin Ishikawa our former savant and current genius who has already offered surprisingly helpful insights. The anima has exceeded all of our highest expectations so far, hopefully all future experiments go this well from now on.
July, 7, 1943
In the time since my last entry we have made astounding progress in understanding anima and its effects. The power manifested by our subjects from the asylum have been developing at an astonishing rate, General Ishii has been particularly interested in our unnamed twins (their file says they were left at the asylum as unnamed infants) whom the staff have taken to calling Akio and Akira. When they came to us they were 152.4cm and 36kg each, they are both now 213.36cm and 104.326kg and still growing. They have shown proficiency with weapons they have never handled before and are able to channel anima in such way as it enhances their lethality. Depending on how things go with the next batch of test subjects Akio and Akira and their fellow subjects may see combat as early as August.
Mr. Ishikawa has also made remarkable progress; when he came to us he was a lot like Chieko save for his abilities in mathematics and now he is perhaps the single smartest person on the base. In less then week he has mastered elemental magic, mastered Chinese, Korean, and English, read the complete analects of Confucius, helped increase the efficiency of the dragon’s tooth and mastered levitation. He has also taught us a lot about the nature of anima; apparently he is hearing a voice in his head, a kind of buzzing that reveals new information to him, things that might not be readily apparent to those who have not been exposed to anima. He claims that this voice has shown him paths through space that are not accessible to those without anima and he demonstrated this by walking through a wall that was at least 2.5 meters of concrete. The most astonishing thing he has shown us so far though is his ability to control other via telepathy; he has been able to do things such as make cafeteria staff serve him extra rations, cause guards to unlock his cell and on one occasion he got a guard to take him into town to get cigarettes. It took me all night to convince General Ishii not to have Gin destroyed after that. He fears Mr. Ishikawa has grown beyond his ability to control and if he decides to side with anyone else besides the empire he could decide the outcome of the war. I told him he has no interest in the war, his greatest desirers at the moment seem to be books, cigarettes, and girls (he seems to have taken a special interest in miss Mahiru the nurse assigned to observer me.)
 I think the greatest success I have had so far though is getting to know Chieko; she is a remarkably fast learner and a gifted magi, any magic that Gin can do, Chieko can do it better. If Gin can summon a flame, Chieko can summon 10 flames, Gin walks through walls and Chieko teleports back to our house, Gin hears a voices and Chieko has conversation with them. She is a gifted artist (Mai and I always knew that) but she still likes to draw with her crayons and she has taken to using her magic to entertain herself, when we taught her to channel anima the first thing she did was to form a cat out rubble and later (though she has been forbidden from doing this again) a puppy out of fire. I can’t help but think that this is the child that Mai loved so much; I only hope she can love me back. Her memory has begun to return, this was made evident by a argument we had earlier in the week; we were going over Taoist meditation techniques and she looked sad, I asked her what was wrong and she asked why I didn’t love her. I laughed and told her that I did love her and she said “then why did you use the anima on me? “ I had no answer for her then she said “it could have killed me, if you love me why were you trying to kill me?” As the questions started pouring out of her mouth everything Mai and I did started coming back; I remembered the screaming, the head banging, the wondering off, and the sleepless nights…the anima was the best thing that ever happened to her and she accused me of not loving her. Then she said it the single most hurtful thing she could have “mommy would have hated you for using the anima.” In that instant I snapped, I slapped her harder then I had ever slapped anyone before; I sent her to the ground with a single blow (I think I may have chipped one of her teeth,) then she just looked at me in a state of shock and then she screamed and sent me flying back into the wall. I activated her collar it had no effect she was in tears now and couldn’t be consoled, I broke protocol for the second time and used the neutralizing agent while the nurses sedated her.
I was angry and upset at what I did and we haven’t spoken since the incident. At first I was worried about having used the neutralizing agent on Chieko but new information via Gin has put my mind at ease. Apparently it was not the neutralizing agent that was driving our subjects mad but rather raw anti anima; Gin believes that only direct exposure to anti anima can drive a person mad and in order for a person who has been exposed to anima to be driven mad, that person needs to channel first anima then anti anima. He thinks that there may be other voiced similar to the buzzing he hears, which calls to people who have been exposed to anti anima that causes them to either ingest it in some physical form or to channel it. If this is the case then what we were seeing in earlier batches may have been a form of suicide…something to think on at the very least.
July, 10, 1943
After all that has happened I feel a need to leave a record of the events that have lead to my captivity and the destruction of unit 731’s 9th division. I don’t know if this journal will ever leave my captors and find its way back to the world at large none the less I feel the need to recount these events, if not for the sake of history then for the sake of my own conscience. The incident began around 20:00 I was finishing a report for General Ishii when I heard a strange sound a kind of creaky moan, like metal slowly bending under some enormous weight. At first I thought nothing of it, after all it was a big base filled with steel beams that creaked all the time but, then I went to get a glass of water and that’s when I saw it. The oily black substance we had been using to create the neutralizing agent was dripping out of the tap.
I went to see General Ishii about the contamination immediately and that’s when the power went out. Emergency lighting clicked on and the alarm began to sound, I ran to General Ishii's office to find out what was happening only to find it empty. Then all of a sudden my thoughts turned to Chieko, I ran all the way from General Ishii's office in the east wing to the holding cells in the west. When I arrived I herd gun fire coming from the testing area and found Miss Mahiru trying to lock the metal door behind her. I quickly went to help close the enormous metal lock on the door before asking her what happened. Between her crying and incoherent babbling I could only make out a little of what had happened apparently Akio and Akira where in the middle of target practice and Akio wanted to try something new, he stretched out his arms summoned a flame in each hand and then the power went out and when emergency lighting came on Akio had tentacles coming out of his back and then he started attacking Akira. The guards opened fire on both of them as they hurried her out of the testing area; they told her to lock the door behind her and get to the surface as soon as possible.
This is all I could make out before the gun fire stopped and then something began pounding on the door; Mahiru ran the other direction as fast as she could while I continued my mad dash for Chieko's cell. I stopped only once at Gin cell to see if he would help me…His cell was empty he had apparently either seen this coming or had a escape route planed in advance I would have been furious if I had not for the first time in my life been genuinely afraid for Chieko safety. When I arrived, the door to her cell was open and not a single sound could be heard not even the incessant blaring of the alarm; that is where I found General Ishii frozen in terror staring at the creature that had once been Chieko. She was floating in the air slowly bobbing up and down as if carried by some unseen wind, her skin had gone as white as milk and her hair now seemed impossibly black (though I swear I could see stars floating in it.)  She had become impossibly thin and her hands had been twisted into long boney claws but the thing that disturbed me the most where her eyes…They were black as night and full of stars like her hair…when she saw me all she did was smile and whisper “welcome home daddy.”
Than as she opened her mouth to scream I prepared myself for the end only to feel a hand seize me by the shoulder and pull me back into what I thought was a wall and out on to the surface. At first there was darkness then a click then blinding light, General Ishii and I were on the surface and surrounded by flood lights and soldiers in blue uniforms. They had their guns pointed at us, they yelled at us in English as others moved to secure the base entrance. One of them grabbed me by the arm as another hit me with the butt of his rifle; then there was only blackness. When I awoke I was sitting in a dark room across from an American in a suit patiently tapping his lighter against the desk, waiting for me to regain consciousness. “Where am I?” I moaned, “Good you’re awake” he said in perfect Japanese as he tucked his lighter away into his jacket “where am I? Who are you?” I groaned trying my best not to black out “That’s not important right now, what is important is that you’re up and we can have a little chat. My employers have been watching you for some time now and they are impressed with your work, they feel that you could be a valuable asset assuming you choose to cooperate that is.”  “Who are your employers?” I asked “The Americans?” He smiled at that “No, I am not here on behalf of the United States or any other party to the war...well the current war anyway.” “I represent a group who has humanities best interest at hart and they feel that your work could be useful in developing new assets they have recently acquired.  They are particularly interested in your work with your daughter and Mr. Ishikawa; did you know that there are others like your daughter and that they are highly sought after by people like my employers” he said as he lit a cigarette. I didn’t know what to make of that so I only shook my head “My employers have recently acquired several such individuals, all children from around the world, mostly by browsing the reich and US’s eugenics registries and  then pulling the rights strings to make sure they end up in the right asylums” He said as he inhaled. “We would like you to come to one of our facilities in the US and over see the education of these assets.” I thought on this for a few seconds “but I am Japanese, the Americans won’t just let me walk in” I started before he interrupted “a minor detail, one that is easily taken care of.”
I remained silent for a few minutes “And if I refuse?” I asked; he sighed before putting out his cigarette “then we cannot protect you from General Macarthur who will likely charge you with crimes against humanity and hang you for them.” What about General Ishii surely he is better suited for this post then I” I said. “General Ishii has been given to General Macarthur as a thank you for his assistance in finding your lab we also gave him Miss Mahiru though I fear she is of little use now, poor dear will likely spend the rest of her life in an asylum.” “What about Gin and the lab?” I said hesitantly, “Mr. Ishikawa is currently unaccounted for though I believe he may have found employment with another interested party; as for the lab I am afraid it has been sealed off…there was nothing we could do for Chieko or any of the other infected; So what will it be?” he said as he got up from the table. If you are reading this then I accepted his offer, I can’t tell you exactly why I accepted maybe I was afraid for my life, maybe I felt that this was my retribution from Mai for not loving Chieko as she was; Either way Dr. Ishii Yamaku is dead and Dr. Shinji Yuasa now serves the illuminati. To whoever reads this, please don’t judge me too harshly, I know that I sound like a monster in those earlier entries but in the end I really did love Chieko perhaps not as much as she deserved but I did love her. If you are reading this for information about my work you can find it with Chieko and the others sealed in the lab by the illuminati at (35.015, 135.67.)
I’m Sorry Mai; I’m Sorry Chieko