| Gendarmerie,Kempeitai | |
|---|---|
| 憲兵隊 | |
 Kempeitai logo found on armbands | |
| Active | 1881–1945 |
| Country |  Empire of Japan |
| Branch |  Imperial Japanese Army |
| Type | Gendarmerie,Military police andSecret police |
| Role | Clandestine operation Close-quarters battle Counterinsurgency Counterintelligence Covert operation Espionage Force protection HUMINT Intelligence assessment Internal security Interrogation Jungle warfare Law enforcement PSYWAR Public security Raiding Reconnaissance SIGINT Tracking Urban warfare |
| Size | about 35,000 (c. 1945) |
| Part of | Home Ministry (Japanese home islands) Ministry of War (overseas territories) |
TheKempeitai (Japanese:憲兵隊,Hepburn:Kenpeitai, orGendarmerie),law soldiers, was themilitary police of theImperial Japanese Army (IJA). The organization also shared civilian secret police that specialized in clandestine and covert operation, counterinsurgency, counterintelligence,HUMINT, interrogated suspects who might be allied soldiers, spies or members of a resistance movement, maintained security of prisoner of war camps, raided to capture high-value targets, and provided security at important government and military locations at risk of being sabotaged within Japan and its occupied territories. It was notorious for its brutality and role in suppressing dissent. The broad duties of theKempeitai included maintaining military discipline, enforcing conscription laws, protecting vital military zones, and investigating crimes among soldiers. In occupied areas, it also issuedtravel permits, recruited labor, arrested resistance, requisitioned food and supplies, spreadpropaganda, and suppressed anti-Japanese sentiment. At its peak at the end ofWorld War II, theKempeitai had about 35,000 personnel.
Founded in 1881 during theMeiji era, the size and duties of theKempeitai grew rapidly as Japanese militarism expanded. During World War II, the organization ran Japan'sprisoner of war and civilian internment camps, known for their mistreatment of detainees, and also acted as a political police force in the military and occupied territories. It carried out torture,summary executions, and violent reprisals and massacres against civilians, as well as procuringcomfort women and human test subjects forUnit 731. TheKempeitai was disbanded after the war, and many of its leaders were tried and convicted of war crimes.
While institutionally part of the Army, theKempeitai also discharged limited military police functions for theImperial Japanese Navy (IJN). A member of theKempeitai corps was called akempei(憲兵).
TheKempeitai was based on France'sNational Gendarmerie.[1]
TheKempeitai was established on 4 January 1881, during theMeiji era, by order of theGreat Council of State as part of a broader modernization and Westernization of the Japanese military. Initially, the organization was an elite corps of 349 men, and was tasked with the narrow role of enforcing the new armyconscription legislation. Under laws passed in 1898 and 1928, the organization functioned in a General Affairs Section and a Service Section; the former took up theKempeitai's policy, personnel, discipline, and records functions, as well as political policing within the IJA and IJN parallel to the civilianSpecial Higher Police (Tokkō), while the latter was responsible for supply, organization, and training; public security; and counterintelligence. The Navy, seeking to limit Army influence, also maintained its own military police corps, known as theTokkeitai.[2]
Following theRusso-Japanese War (1904–1905), the Empire of Japan effectively controlled theKorean Peninsula, which was formally annexed into the empire asChōsen in 1910. The KoreanKempeitai developed into a uniquegendarmerie organization known as theKempei keisatsu, which operated from 1,642 police stations and recruited large numbers of Korean nationals. TheKempeitai was instrumental in suppressing Korean opinion and political participation, and played a major role in recruiting comfort women and in conscripting guards for prisoner of war camps. It carried out the empire's policies of suppressing Korean national identity, language, customs, and culture; it also promoted Japanese organizations and spread pro-Japan propaganda through Korea's daily newspapers.[3]
In 1931–1932, Japan invaded and occupiedManchuria and established the puppet state ofManchukuo. It became a major zone of operations for theKempeitai, with 18,000 personnel in the area by 1932. Many of Japan's wartime leaders built their reputations and careers as officers in the ManchurianKempeitai, including Lieutenant GeneralToranosuke Hashimoto [ja], commander of the ManchukuoKempeitai (1932–1934) and later Vice Minister of War; GeneralShizuichi Tanaka, commander of theKwantung Army'sKempeitai (1937–1938) and later commander of TokyoKempeitai (1938–1940) andEastern District Army; and notoriously GeneralHideki Tojo, commander of the Kwantung ArmyKempeitai (1935–1937) and later Minister of War, Prime Minister, and Chief of the General Staff.[4]
As further foreign territories fell under Japanese military occupation during the 1930s and the early 1940s, theKempeitai recruited large numbers of locals in those territories. Taiwanese and Koreans were extensively used as auxiliaries to guard POWs and police the newly occupied areas inSoutheast Asia, and theKempeitai also carried out recruitment activities among the populations ofFrench Indochina,Malaya, and other territories.[citation needed]
TheKempeitai also operated on the Japanese home islands, where it was responsible for maintaining public order as a secret police, alongside the civilian Special Higher Police (in the 1920s there were mentions of a jointTokkō–Kempeitai organization). The two organizations served as public censors and overseers of private morals and thought. All prisoners were presumed guilty on arrest; examinations of suspects took place in secret, and the use of torture to extract confessions of guilt was commonplace. While its suspects were nominally subject to civilian judicial proceedings, they were often deniedhabeas corpus (the right to have one's case tried before a court). TheKempeitai had close ties with theTokumu Kikan military intelligence agency, which reported directly to theImperial General Headquarters; the organizations jointly carried out clandestine and covert operation, counterinsurgency, counterintelligence, espionage,fifth-column, HUMINT, internal security, propaganda, and public security activities. After Tojo was appointed as Vice Minister of War in 1938 and theNational Diet passed an anti-espionage act in 1939 which expanded its power, theKempeitai became even more visible and active in Japan.[4]
From 1933 to 1941, the Soviet Union operated a spy ring in Tokyo led byRichard Sorge andHotsumi Ozaki, which gathered intelligence on Japanese intentions in the Far East. By 1940 both theKempeitai andTokkō suspected an espionage ring operating in Japan, though neither organization shared information with the other. The Germans began to suspect that Sorge, who was posing as a journalist sympathetic to Nazism, was a Soviet agent, and in mid-1940 informed theKempeitai that Sorge was under surveillance. TheKempeitai andTokkō investigated and concluded that Sorge was a Soviet spy, and also came to suspect Ozaki, who was arrested on 15 October 1941. Information from his interrogation by theTokkō implicated Sorge, who was arrested on 18 October. Both men were tried, and executed by hanging on 7 November 1944.[5]
TheKempeitai was disbanded afterJapan's surrender in 1945, upon which its officers were ordered to disperse and vanish.[6][7] Nonetheless, many of its former commanders were convicted of war crimes.[8] The post-warSelf-Defense Forces military police corps, theKeimutai, has no jurisdiction over civilians.
TheKempeitai formed a branch of the IJA through its Administration Bureau, which was led by aprovost marshal general who was answerable to theMinister of War. In Japan during peacetime, theKempeitai was answerable to the Ministry of War for regular military duties, theHome Ministry for civil police duties, andMinistry of Justice for law administration duties. In war zones, theKempeitai came under the control of that area's military commander.[9]
TheKempeitai was made up of field officers (sakan), non-commissioned officers (kashikan) and superior privates (jotohei). When needed, first- and second-class privates were attached from other services. AKempeitai headquarters was established under eacharmy of the IJA, and commanded by a major general or colonel. Each headquarters controlled two to three field offices, each commanded by a lieutenant colonel, 22 field officers (sakan), and 352 other ranks. Each field office was divided into sections (buntai) commanded by a captain or lieutenant and 65 other ranks, in turn divided into detachments (bunkentai) commanded by a second lieutenant or warrant officer and 20 other ranks. Each detachment had sections for police (keimu han), administration (naikin han), and special duties (tokumu han).Yasen Kempeitai operated in forward areas as field units. Volunteer ethnicKempeitai auxiliaries, established under laws in 1919 and 1937, were allowed a highest rank of sergeant major.[10]
Kempeitai officers were usually graduates of theImperial Japanese Army Academy orArmy War College. In peacetime, officers typically had one year of training, while non-commissioned officers were trained for six months.[11] In 1937, Western sources estimated there were 315Kempeitai officers and 6,000 personnel of other ranks; in 1942, the U.S. Army estimated there were 601Kempeitai officers in itsHandbook on Japanese Military Forces. Japanese records show a peak of 34,834Kempeitai officers and personnel during the war: 10,679 in Japan, 6,115 in central China, 4,946 in theKwantung Army, 4,253 in north China, 1,927 in Korea, 1,094 in south China, 937 in Thailand, 829 in the Philippines, 758 in Malaya, 745 in Formosa, 540 in Burma, 538 in Java, 479 in occupied French Indochina, 387 in Sumatra, 362 in Singapore, 156 in Borneo, and 89 in the South Seas.[12] Included within these numbers were Taiwanese, Malays, Chinese, Cambodians, and Vietnamese. In Indo-China theKempeitai particularly recruited from members of the Cao Dai religious sect.[citation needed]
In Japan, theKempeitai often assisted local civilian law authorities (though it was not agendarmerie), and targeted students, farmers, socialists, communists, pacifists, foreign workers, and any showing irreverence for the emperor. In occupied territories and war zones, theKempeitai was responsible for issuingtravel permits, recruiting labor, arresting members of resistances, requisitioning food and supplies, spreading propaganda, and suppressing anti-Japanese sentiment. The organization was notorious for its brutality in suppressing dissent, and was responsible for widespread abuses, including forced labor, torture, and executions. Torture methods were taught atKempeitai schools, and includedflogging,waterboarding, burning and scalding, administration of electric shocks, knee joint separation, suspension from ropes, kneeling on sharp edges, fingernail and toenail removal, and digit fracturing.[13]
TheKempeitai also ran Japan's network ofprisoner of war (POW) and civilian internment camps, which treated detainees in violation of theGeneva Convention of 1929 (not ratified by Japan). A total of 350,000 prisoners were taken and housed in 176 camps in Japan and about 500 in occupied territories. TheKempeitai pressed many POWs and civilians into slave labour gangs for war work, and subjected them to torture, including standing inside small cages set on top of red ant nests and lashing to trees with barbed wire. Prisoners were forced to sign non-escape oaths, and those who escaped and were recaptured were subjected to beatings and torture as examples in front of other prisoners. 27 percent of Allied POWs taken by Japan during the war died in captivity. Camp guards, often Korean and Formosan, were also abused byKempeitai superiors.[14]
After theDoolittle Raid in April 1942, captured Allied airmen were accused of intentionally attacking civilians so were treated as war criminals rather than POWs, and were thus made subject to the death penalty. The U.S. airmen captured in China after the raid were subjected to harsh treatment and interrogation by theKempeitai; three were sentenced to death and executed in October 1942, while five others had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. They were subjected to mental torture in the form ofmock executions. Every airman captured in occupied territory after the raid was starved, interrogated, and tortured by theKempeitai; by May 1945, theKempeitai decided that formal trials were a waste of time, and executed airmen (often by beheading) soon after theircourts-martial had been approved.[15] In December 1944, three U.S. airmen were arrested by theKempeitai atHangzhou; they were paraded through the streets, ridiculed, beaten, and tortured before being doused with petrol and burned alive. In February 1945, six British airmen were captured in southern Burma and interrogated by theKempeitai before being lined up on the edge of a trench, blindfolded, and beheaded by aKempeitai officer; their bodies were used for bayonet practice. In May 1945, a U.S. aviator shot down and injured near Saigon in French Indochina was left untreated for three days before being interrogated byKempeitai, then killed withprocaine. In July 1945, 15 U.S. airmen were captured and interrogated by theKempeitai near Hiroshima; 12 died in the U.S.atomic bombing of the city on August 6, of which two were possibly clubbed to death atHiroshima Castle by theKempeitai, and two were possibly stoned to death by civilians.[16]
TheKempeitai organized regular and violent reprisals against populations in Japan's occupied territories.[17] After the Doolittle Raid, it carried out reprisals against thousands of Chinese civilians accused of helping U.S. airmen. In 1942, it carried out theSook Ching, a mass killing in Singapore after it fell to the Japanese, and in October 1943, in theDouble Tenth incident, arrested and tortured 57 people in response to an Allied raid on Singapore Harbour; 15 of them died in custody. In 1943–1944, theKempeitai arrested 1,918 persons on Java, of whom 743 died while in custody (439 of whom were executed). In March 1944, theKempeitai brutally suppressed a riot inTasikmalaya in western Java, killing several hundred Muslims; Muslim leaderZainal Mustafa and 23 of his disciples were later executed. In September 1944, theKempeitai executed the Rajah of Loeang and 95 natives from the Loeang and Sermata Islands for failing to turn over guerrillas who had allegedly assassinated several officers. On 7 July 1945, theKempeitai killed 600 inhabitants of the village ofKalagon in theMoulmein region of southeast Burma in theKalagon massacre as reprisal for local guerrilla attacks after interrogation, beatings, and the rape of women and children did not elicit information.[17][18]
The ChineseKempeitai was responsible for providing human test subjects, codenamedmaruta ('logs'), for the Army'sbiological warfare research program underUnit 731 nearHarbin, Manchuria. Thousands of uncooperative prisoners and civilians were transported in windowless prison cars to the unit's facility under theKempeitai's Human Materials Procurement Arm and were subjected to medical experimentation, includingvivisection, artificially-induced illness,frostbite, and simulated combat wounds. More experiments, also facilitated by theKempeitai, were conducted on Allied POWs in the southeast Pacific.[19] In February 1944, an outbreak oftetanus among hundreds of laborers in Java, possibly tied to the biological warfare program, was traced to contaminated vaccines. TheKempeitai accused Achmad Muchtar of theEykman Institute in Jakarta, who treated many of the victims, of deliberately contaminating the vaccines to sabotage labor for the Japanese, and imprisoned him for nine months before beheading him and running over his body with asteamroller.[18]
TheKempeitai also organized extensive criminal networks, which extorted vast amounts of money from businesses and civilians in areas where they operated; the forced prostitution system for the Imperial Army, whose victims were known ascomfort women; and the all-femaleTokyo Rose radio propaganda broadcasts.
TheKempeitai operated commands on the Japanese mainland and throughout all occupied and captured overseas territories during thePacific War. The external units operating outside Japan were:
Kempeitai personnel wore either the standardM1938 field uniform or the cavalry uniform with high black leather boots. Civilian clothes were also authorized with rank badges or the Japanese Imperialchrysanthemum worn under the jacketlapel. Uniformed personnel also wore a blackchevron on their uniforms and a white armband on the left arm with the charactersken(憲, 'law') andhei(兵, 'soldier'), together read askempei orkenpei, which transliterates to "military police".
Until 1942, a full dress uniform comprising a redkepi, gold and redwaist sash, dark bluetunic and trousers with blackfacings was authorized forKempeitai officers on ceremonial occasions. Rank insignia comprised goldAustrian knots andepaulettes.Kempeitai officers were armed with acavalry sabre andpistol, while enlisted men had a pistol andbayonet. JuniorNCOs carried ashinai(竹刀, 'bambookendo sword'), especially when dealing with prisoners.[23]
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| Cabinet Intelligence Council |
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| Cabinet Office | |
| Ministry of Foreign Affairs |
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| Ministry of Defense |
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| Police organizations | |
| Ministry of Justice | |
| Japan Coast Guard |
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| Ministry of Finance |
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| Defunct agencies |
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| National | |
