A Unit 731 in Malaya? Yes, a deadly bio-lab that was buried...
Unit 731 china The School of Shadows: How a Quiet Negeri Sembilan Institution Became Japan's Secret Bioweapons Lab
Behind the colonial-era walls of a school in Kuala Pilah, a dark secret lay hidden for decades. While students studied in one part of the building, Japanese doctors and veterinarians were conducting experiments with plague-infested rats and rabbits in another—part of a sinister network that stretched from Tokyo to Singapore, designed to weaponise the bubonic plague.
This is the story of the Tuanku Muhammad School, the forgotten bioweapons lab of Malaya.
The Mask of Education
During the Japanese occupation of Malaya (1942-1945), the Tuanku Muhammad School in Kuala Pilah, Negeri Sembilan, served a dual purpose. Officially, it was a base for the Kempeitai — the feared Japanese secret police. But this was merely camouflage for a far more sinister operation.
A portion of the school was converted into a biological weapons laboratory focused specifically on breeding rats and rabbits for plague experimentation. This operation was part of Japan's broader network of bioweapons research in Southeast Asia, linked to the notorious Unit 9420 — the southern counterpart of the infamous Unit 731 in China.
The school's upper floor was strictly forbidden to local Malaysians. Behind those closed doors, Japanese doctors and veterinarians worked alongside local Indian assistants, extracting rabbit blood and breeding thousands of rodents in the service of a horrific science.
The Witnesses: Teenagers Who Saw Too Much
The most compelling evidence of the school's true purpose comes from the testimony of local Malaysians who were forced to work there as teenagers.
Lim Jun Tian was just 13 years old in 1942 when he was sent to work at the school. His father had refused to let him help build a Japanese airfield, so Lim found work breeding rabbits instead. He and dozens of other Malay and Chinese youths were tasked with feeding nearly a thousand rabbits, while a separate building housed thousands more rats.
Lim later recalled that Japanese doctors and veterinarians were stationed at the school, along with Indian assistants. The laboratory on the administrative floor was strictly off-limits. But one day, while sweeping the floor, Lim managed to peek inside.
"I saw them extracting rabbit blood. The room was full of bottles filled with blood."
Lim Jin Lou, then 16 years old, worked under the supervision of a Japanese officer named Inaba Taro. He later testified that the rabbits' lives were treated as more precious than human lives. When a rabbit fell ill, it was immediately treated with serum by a veterinarian.
"At night we had to stand guard and couldn't go home. The Japanese were afraid of communist attacks. Sometimes they would come to check on us in the middle of the night."
Yahya Yakin, the head of Parit Tinggi village, was also 13 years old when he was sent to breed white rats for the Japanese. He continued this work for about two years before being transferred to the Japanese military base in Port Dickson.
From Tokyo to Kuala Pilah: The Logistics of Death
The operation in Kuala Pilah was not a local initiative—it was part of a vast network coordinated from Japan itself.
Takayama Yoshiaki, a former Japanese army officer, testified that rats were transported to Kuala Pilah from Tachikawa Airfield in Tokyo. He personally accompanied some of these rats on a flight from Japan to Singapore.
From Singapore, the rats were distributed to multiple locations across Southeast Asia, including Johor Bahru, Kuala Pilah, and Bandung in Java.
In 1993, a 76-year-old Japanese veteran named Daihatsu Yoshiaki visited the former Japanese guard headquarters in Kuala Pilah and confirmed the secret rat-breeding programme. He revealed that 50,000 rats had been flown from Japan to Singapore using Unit 731's special aircraft. He was one of six men assigned to bring rats to Kuala Pilah for secret breeding, under the command of a Captain Takabe.
The Cover-Up: Burning the Evidence
When Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945, the operation at Tuanku Muhammad School came to an abrupt end.
One night, all the rats and rabbits suddenly disappeared. The Japanese had ordered local Indian workers to burn everything — the iron cages, the wooden hutches, and any other evidence of their biological warfare programme.
The school's dark secret lay buried for decades, known only to the teenagers who had worked there and the veterans who had returned to Japan.
The Legacy: An Unresolved Crime
The Tuanku Muhammad School was not an isolated case. It was part of Unit 9420, a Japanese biological warfare unit established in Singapore and Malaya on 5 May 1942. The unit was headquartered at the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore and had a total of 590 personnel, divided into three teams.
Other facilities in Malaya included the Tampoi Mental Hospital in Johor, which was used as a laboratory for cultivating bacteria, complete with a special ward, autopsy room, and rat-rearing facilities.
The biological warfare programme in Southeast Asia was part of a broader pattern of Japanese war crimes. Unit 731 in China had conducted horrific human experiments, and its methods were exported to the south.
A Sinister Connection: The Massacre at Parit Tinggi
The story of the bioweapons lab is intertwined with another atrocity. On 16 March 1942, the Japanese massacred 675 villagers in Parit Tinggi, a village near Kuala Pilah. The victims were shot or bayoneted, and their bodies were left scattered among the coconut groves.
The same village head, Yahya Yakin, who had been forced to breed rats for the Japanese, later provided evidence of both the massacre and the bioweapons programme.
The connection between the two events raises haunting questions: Were the villagers killed because they knew too much? Or was the massacre simply part of the broader pattern of Japanese brutality in Malaya?
Why This Story Matters Today
The Tuanku Muhammad School bioweapons lab is a reminder that the war in Malaya was not just a military campaign—it was a campaign of systematic brutality that extended to biological warfare.
For decades, this chapter of history remained hidden. The witnesses were children at the time, and they carried their memories in silence. The Japanese veterans who returned to Kuala Pilah in 1993 were elderly men, their confessions coming half a century too late.
Today, scholars like Dr. Marina Abdul Majid of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia are working to uncover the full extent of Japan's biological warfare programme in Southeast Asia. Her research highlights the potential environmental contamination from the plague experimentation and the need for further investigation.
But the full story of the Tuanku Muhammad School remains incomplete. Who were the Japanese doctors and veterinarians? What happened to the blood and the rats? How many other schools and hospitals across Malaya were used for similar purposes?
The answers may still be buried in the archives of Japan—or in the memories of the last surviving witnesses.
Further Reading on 1942MALAYA
Resources
The Star (2025) – "QuickCheck: Was a Negri Sembilan school once used as a Japanese bioweapons lab?" – Comprehensive fact-check confirming the Tuanku Muhammad School's role as a bioweapons laboratory.
BBC Chinese (2005) – "Japan also produced biological weapons in Southeast Asia during WWII" – Detailed interviews with Lim Jun Tian and Lim Jin Lou, the teenagers who worked at the school.
Marina Abdul Majid (2018) – "A Japanese Biological Weapon's Legacy in Malaysia" – Academic research paper documenting the plague experimentation at Tuanku Muhammad School and Tampoi Mental Hospital.
MyJurnal – "A Japanese Biological Weapon's Legacy in Malaysia" – Full research paper containing witness testimonies and historical documentation.
News.cn (2025) – "International scholars investigate WWII Japanese biological warfare in Southeast Asia" – Recent scholarship on Unit 9420 and its operations in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.
Do you have family stories about the Japanese occupation in Negeri Sembilan? Were your grandparents among those forced to work for the Japanese during the war? Share their memories in the comments below. The truth about the Tuanku Muhammad School is still emerging—and every story helps complete the picture.
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