On January 11, Japan's Mainichi Shimbun reported that groups in the northern Chinese city of Harbin have announced a six-year plan to preserve historical sites associated with the Japanese Army Unit 731 medical and germ warfare atrocities. According to Unit 731 Exhibition Hall curator Jin Chengmin, local groups will repair the sites, which were converted into factories and schools in the postwar decades, in preparation for a bid to have them registered as a UNESCO World Heritage site alongside Auschwitz and Hiroshima's Peace Memorial, both preserved as examples of human destructiveness and continued appeals for world peace. Elements of the Harbin plan stress both the importance of preserving and disseminating testimony in the face of denial by some Japanese neo-nationalists and the neo-nationalist attempt to avoid linking stories of past victimization with contemporary nationalism or thoughts of vengeance. The site will include both a “Monument of Testimony” inscribed with the confessions of Japanese war criminals and a “Forest of Peace and Friendship” which will stress positive future Sino-Japanese ties. While the plan has existed in embryo since 2006, Jin reports that 288 houses and a middle school were moved from the site between 2009 and 2010, a prelude to the start of restoration work and construction in earnest.