Japanese Forces

Grim Reapers - Kempeitai.

Unknown private author.

Officers of the Kempeitai travel by train, ?Japan, 1935. Founded in the late-19th century as part of the Meijii modernization of the state, the Kempeitai were conceived of as Japan's Military Police corps. The original force was very small - only a few hundred members - as befitted the originally small Imperial Japanese Army. However, as the Meijii/Showa government became increasingly dominated by the military, the Kempeitei expanded, both in numbers and in function. By the time of WW2 they were, in effect, the security and secret police of Japan, not just of the military of which they remained an integral part. The Kempeitei have been described as the equivalent of the Gestapo. This description is understandable, but somewhat inadequate. Their functions came to range from military policing, to secret intelligence and counterintelligence (including foreign intelligence), to "Thought Police" enforcing conformity with official policy at home, to "enforcers" along the lines of Germany's Einsatzgruppen. Thus one might argue that they encompassed the functions discharged in Germany, not only by the Gestapo, but by the German RHSA in general (including the SD) and indeed of some other branches of the German police apparatus. Understandably, they were widely hated, even in Japan. The last function mentioned above has exposed the Kempeitei to much opprobrium, and rightly so. While it would probably be inaccurate to say that this was a matter of "system", as it was for the Germans, the Kempeitei were responsible for numerous "cleansing" operations, in particular, in China and Korea, going back to the late-1920s at least. In China, things tended towards a large scale. Brutal, if localized, campaigns of mass murder often claimed huge numbers of victims. The total "kill" of the Kempeitei in China certainly ran into hundreds of thousands, and quite possibly millions. As the total strength of the Kempeitei around 1938 has been estimated at about 30,000 (rising to perhaps 35,000 at the outset of the war) - and that for all of their diverse functions - it would seem highly probable that, in their extermination operations, they drew assistance from the Imperial Japanese Army, in much the same way as German "special actions" relied on being able to draw on the assistance of a number of police and military formations. As a military formation, the Kempeitei were disarmed and disbanded at the end of the war. The particular approach taken to the reconstruction of Japan is probably responsible for the fact that the misdeeds of the organization (in Korea and in China in particular) have never received a comprehensive legal response. Best regards, JR.