You've heard of the Gestapo and the NKVD before, but what about the Kenpeitai,
whose members were largely responsible for Imperial Japan's atrocities? The Kenpeitai
was Japan's military police and secret police force during the Second World War, and there's
no doubt about it: they were a bunch of sadistic A-holes. In this video, we're going to talk about
the structure of the Kenpeitai and some of the unforgivable things they got up to during the war.
The Kenpeitai wasn't created during World War II. The organisation was established back in 1881,
stealing a bunch of ideas from France's national police force
the National Gendarmerie. At its conception, it consisted of just 349 men.
The Kenpeitai was technically a part of the Imperial Japanese Army, though it also carried out
tasks for the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Naimusho or "Home Ministry," and the Shihisho or "Ministry
of Justice." Because the Japanese Army and Navy hated each other's guts (as we've discussed in
a previous video), the Navy had its own military police, the Tokkeitai. This force was far smaller
than the Kenpeitai and existed, in part, to stop the Japanese Army from sticky-beaking in
naval affairs. Under the umbrella of the Kenpeitai, most kenpei found themselves
working in the Naikin Han "Administration," Keimu Han "Police," Tokumu Han "Special
Duties," or in auxiliary units composed of local forces in Japanese-occupied areas.
Kenpeitai HQs and Field Kenpeitai, the latter composed of between 315 and 600 personnel,
were attached to Area Armies. Field Kenpeitai could be broken down into Buntai or "Sections"
and Bunkentai or "Detachments," the smallest Field Kenpeitai units.
In 1901, the Tokkō or "Special Higher Police" was formed. Also known as the "Thought Police,"
this was a civilian secret police force under the Home Ministry
and can be thought of as the civilian counterpart to the Kenpeitai.
The Tokkō policed internal affairs, suppressing anarchists, socialists, communists, pacifists,
student activists, certain religious groups, and anyone who disrespected the Emperor.
Via a network of informants, the organisation had made over 59,000 arrests by 1936 alone. While the
Kenpeitai and Tokkō were separate organisations, the Kenpeitai had its own secret police branch.
According to a report from the June 1945 issue of the US Military Intelligence Service's
Intelligence Bulletin, "Practically all members of the kenpei were volunteers—both commissioned
and enlisted personnel—and the standards for admission to the organization were high." The
enlisted men had to hold the rank of Jotohei or "Superior Private," and had to meet high physical
and mental requirements. They also had to be politically reliable. Enlistees went to military
police schools or were trained in special units. NCOs and officers were held to a higher standard,
needing six or more years of military experience to be considered. Depending on their role,
kenpei generally wore Japanese Army uniforms, cavalry uniforms, or civilian clothes with a
badge underneath. In uniform, kenpei wore a white armband on their left arm which read "kenpei."
Officers carried a pistol and sabre, while enlisted men got a pistol and bayonet.
Kenpei had a range of responsibilities. They concerned themselves with intelligence,
counterintelligence, espionage, propaganda, and counter-propaganda, working under disguise at
home and in foreign countries, where they often employed local informants. At home, they protected
military zones, maintained military discipline, dealt with crimes committed by Japanese Army
personnel, dealt with conscription laws, issues travel permits, maintained security by spying on
and arresting possible traitors, defeatists, and people harbouring anti-war sentiments,
and, lastly, crushed threatening rumours and anyone trying to undermine Imperial Japan.
Overseas, they seized supplies and food from local populations,
managed rations, recruited locals for fun-time auxiliary units, maintained rear area security,
managed prostitutes, and forcibly recruited sex slaves. Notably, kenpei were also in charge of
absolutely ruining the lives of prisoners of war. When it came to methods, kenpei loved a
bit of torture, so much so that they had their own handbook on this depraved artform of theirs.
While the Kenpeitai certainly inflicted great suffering before World War II—such
as during Japan's annexation of Korea and the early stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War—we're
going to focus on their kenpei atrocities in the Second World War.
In World War II, at least eleven Field Kenpeitai's were active outside Japan, in Japan's captured
and occupied territories, which were mostly in the Pacific. By the end of the war, the United
States Army estimated that the Kenpeitai had more than 35,000 discernable members,
with that number estimate climbing to 75,000 to account for undercover personnel and such.
After the Japanese 25th Army defeated the Allies in Singapore and seized control of the island in
February 1942, The Kenpeitai set up a headquarters in a YMCA building, which became known as
Kempeitai East District Branch. The building was used to administer the 200 regular kenpei and
1,000 auxiliary kenpei in Singapore. It was also a house of pain. Many civilians were tortured here,
many of them innocent. On the 10th of October 1943 alone, the Kenpeitai arrested and tortured
57 civilians they suspected were involved in a raid on Singapore Harbour. Really,
the attack was orchestrated by the joint British and Australian spec ops unit Z Special Unit. One
Singaporean woman, Elizabeth Choy, was held in the YMCA for nearly 200 days. They actually let
her go in the end, but she suffered no less. In Choy's words, "When my interrogators could not get
any information out of me they dragged my husband [out], tied him up and made him kneel beside me.
Then, in his full view, they stripped me to the waist and applied electric currents to me." The
kenpei also erected iron stakes outside the YMCA building and mounted them with severed heads.
Sandakan POW camp on Borneo was hell on Earth for the Allied POWs, mostly Aussie,
held there by the Kenpeitai from July 1942 to May 1945.
Putting aside the infamous Sandakan Death Marches for a moment, Aussie Lieutenant Rod
Wells described his own experience with one of the Kenpeitai's interrogation methods:
"The interviewer produced a small piece of wood like a meat skewer, pushed that into my left ear,
and tapped it in with a small hammer. I think I fainted some time after it went through the drum."
Sybil Kathigasu was a nurse living in Japanese-occupied Malaya during the war.
Sybil and her husband provided medical supplies and services to the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese
Army. The Kenpeitai caught wind of them and arrested them in July 1943. They were tortured for
two years. In Sybil's words, "They heated iron bars in a charcoal brazier and applied them
to my legs and back; they ran a stick between the second and third fingers of both my hands,
squeezing the finger together and holding them firmly in the air while two men hung
from the ends of the cane, making a see-saw of my hands and tearing the flesh between my fingers."
Also in Malaya, an unnamed magistrate was arrested by the Kenpeitai because they suspected he was a
spy. The Kenpeitai tortured him by burying him. As per the magistrate, "They buried me in the ground
leaving just my head above ground. I was then made to close my eyes. One of the Kempeitai men
put his sword against my throat as if to cut it, and kept it there for some minutes. After that
I was unburied and left out in the sun for the rest of the day." After that, they shoved the
magistrate in a 40-gallon drum of oily water and put the lid on. This didn't kill him, though.
The Japanese invaded the Dutch East Indian island of Java on the 24th of February 1942,
and it was theirs by the 12th of March. This was a disastrous turn of events
for Jan Ruff-O'Hearne, an Australian woman living on the island with her mother and two sisters.
All four women were taken into Ambarawa Prison Camp, where they were held for a couple of years.
In February 1944, the Kenpeitai took her from the camp and forced her into sexual slavery
in a military brothel, where they kept her for three months before sending her back to Ambarawa.
In Jan's words, "They dragged us away one by one. I could hear screaming and this large, fat,
bald Japanese officer appeared, grinning at me. I put up an enormous fight but
he just dragged me to the bedroom. I never thought suffering could be that terrible."
We've covered the dreaded Japanese biological and chemical warfare unit Unit 731 before,
but it's worth mentioning that the Kenpeitai established this unit, which experimented
on living human beings in a variety of ways. To name just a few of these so-called "experiments,"
they amputated people's limbs and otherwise operated on them while they were still alive,
spun them in centrifuges until they died, exposed them to toxins like pufferfish venom,
exposed them to lethal x-ray doses, infected them with horrible diseases,
and raped them to spread sexually transmitted infections and force pregnancies for further
testing. The Kenpeitai were responsible for rounding up many of these unfortunate souls.
Those were literally just a handful of the atrocities perpetrated by Imperial Japanese
military police and secret police force the Kenpeitai during the Second World War.
But what do you think? Did you know that it was the Kenpeitai, not just the Japanese Army, that
was responsible for many of Japan's atrocities? Had you heard about the Japanese Thought Police?
Can you think of any other atrocities perpetrated by the Kenpeitai, or anything else they got up to
in the war? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.