The Kenpeitai in Java and Sumatra
(Selections from Nihon Kenpei Seishi)
Translated by
Barbara Gifford Shimer & Guy Hobbs
With an Introduction by
Theodore Friend
Cornell Modern Indonesia Project
Translation SeriesThe Kenpeitai in Java and Sumatra
Selections from
The Authentic History of the Kenpeitai
[Nihon Kenpei Seishi]
by the National Federation of Kenpeitai
Veterans' Associations [Zenkoku Kenyukai
Rengokai Hensan linkai]
Translated by
Barbara Gifford Shimer & Guy Hobbs
With an Introduction by
Theodore Friend
Translation Series
(Publication no. 65)
Cornell Modern Indonesia Project
Southeast Asia Program
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
19861986 Cornell Modern Indonesia Project
ISBN 0-87763-031-3
PRICE: $8.00TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: HELLCRAFT, NOSTALGIA, AND ERROR,
Thoughts on Memoirs of the Kenpeitai in Wartime
Indonesia, by Theodore Friend	1
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE	11
SELECTIONS FROM THE AUTHENTIC HISTORY
OF THE KENPEITAI	19
THE JAVA KENPEITAI	21
THE SUMATRA KENPEITAI	48
TERMINATION OF THE WAR AND THE JAVA
KENPEITAI	59
THE TWENTY-FIFTH ARMY KENPEITAI AND
MAJOR GENERAL HIRANO	66
THE SPECIFIC CHARACTER OF THE DUTCH
WAR CRIMES TRIALS	68
BIBLIOGRAPHY
69HELLCRAFT, NOSTALGIA, AND ERROR
Thoughts on Memoirs of the Kenpeitai
in Wartime Indonesia
Theodore Friend
Who cares to understand the Kenpeitai? These memoirs1 of the
Japanese military police in the Second World War are collected for
principals, friends, and sympathizers. They may therefore read
strangely to people of other nations, and other persuasions. The
writers, long after the events, lavishly distribute in-group credit for
courage under duress and imagination in adversity. They highlight
cases where individuals among them have understood native norms and
brightened the lives of desolate and oppressed Indonesians. They
find the Dutch-administered war crimes trials almost maniacally un-
just.
War stories rarely rise to the level of literature. Generally
they gratify the participants in particular. These are not except-
ional, but they are welcome because until recently it was not readily
possible to understand the Kenpeitai in Southeast Asia from their own
point of view. Now it is possible. The record is filled in. At
worst, however, it may remind us of press reports of the Waffen SS
in their annual reunion, rejoicing to the degree that President
Reagan's 1985 visit to Bitburg might help to clear their reputation.
The Kenpeitai have had no inadvertent American help, but presumably
are cheered by the style of Premier Nakasone's recent visit to the
Yasukuni Shrine.
1. The surviving Kenpeitai have looked to their reputations with a
recent trilogy. The basic work, of which the Java and Sumatra sec-
tions follow in translation, is Zenkoku Kenyukai Rengokai Hensan
linkai [Editorial Committee of the National Federation of Kenpeitai Vet-
erans' Associations], Nihon Kenpei Seishi [The Authentic History of
the Kenpeitai] (Tokyo: Zenkoku Kenyukai Rengokai Honbu, 1976). A
successor volume adds further details and lesser narrative accounts,
while_ expanding on self-justifying themes:	Zenkoku Kenyukai
Rengokai Hensan linkai [Editorial Committee of the National Federation
of Kenpeitai Veterans' Associations], Nihon Kenpei Gaishi [The Gen-
eral History of the Kenpeitai] (Tokyo, 1983). For the sake of
brevity, the first will be referred to hereafter as the Seishi, and the
second as the Gaishi. A companion volume will be referred to as the
Isho:	Junkoku Kenpei no lsho_ [Last Testaments of Kenpei Who Died
for their Country] (Tokyo: Tokyo Kenyukai and Zenkoku Kenyukai
Rengokai (1982).
12
Like the Waffen SS, and particularly its Death's Head Division
(Totenkopfverbttnde) ,2 the Kenpeitai were marked by extraordinary
discipline and motivated by racial and political fanaticism. Like them
they were a source of terror and repression to others, which fed a
fierce sub-civilized pride in themselves. Although the Death's Head
forces had originated as prewar guards of concentration camps and
then expanded their functions to become one of the most effective
units fighting the Russians, the Kenpeitai were rarely a field combat
force except in counterespionage forays. Among other functions,
they retained their predominant role as camp guards to the end.
If the Kenpeitai have less to apologize for than the Waffen SS,
reputation-clearing is nonetheless a major motive in these tomes of
1500 and 1400 pages. Their writers, however, do not reach out
imaginatively toward a global public. From the evidence here, former
Kenpeitai officers expect little of world opinion. They appear confi-
dent of esteem only in the subculture of Japanese militaristic national-
ism, vanquished in historic fact, but vindicable in memory. These,
in sum, are memoirs that rejoice in events known to a few, and with
a perspective that will not be shared by many.
That we have parts of the whole, in excellent English, is a re-
sult of the labors of Barbara Gifford Shimer and Guy Hobbs, Ameri-
cans dedicated to command of the Japanese language, and to under-
standing of Japanese values. As assistants to me at the Woodrow Wil-
son International Center for Scholars, at the Smithsonian Institution
Building in Washington, where I was a Fellow, 1983-84, they labored
successfully to make the Seishi sections on Indonesia and the Philip-
pines comprehensible to a wider range of scholars. Only the parts on
Java and Sumatra are published here, buttressed by references to
their sequels in the Gaishi, which Shimer has subsequently trans-
lated, and to the Isho, a collection of writings of the Kenpei facing
death.
The Kenpeitai has not received the analysis in English that its
German equivalents of World War II have received. One may not pro-
ceed with loose analogies in mind. The Kenpeitai were military police
whose power had increased corresponding to the influence of the mili-
tary and of the police in Japan in the 1930s, and at a geometrical
rate because they combined both functions. In Japan the ordinary
metropolitan police in that era could be brutal to those whom they saw
as political deviants. Nishijima Shigetada, later a key figure in Japa-
nese-lndonesian discussions during the	surrender/independence
crisis, was arrested three times as a Marxist in the 1930s, and the
third time jailed for two years. He was tortured by suspension by a
rope from the ceiling with his hands tied behind his back. During
interrogation, a police tough jammed a hot iron in his behind, making
him lurch forward in fright and pain at his interrogator, who hit him
2. See, particularly, Charles W. Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction:
The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945 (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1977).3
in the left eye, leaving him partially blinded.3 4 If this were police
treatment of their own nationals, what might be military police treat-
ment of captured peoples suspected of subversion?
Overseas, in the Great Pacific War, the Kenpeitai commander
reported directly to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the re-
gion—Sixteenth in Java, Twenty-fifth in Sumatra, Fourteenth in the
Philippines. So did the commander of the Tokkoka, whose function
was more specifically the OrweIJian one of the "Thought Police." The
Kenpeitai overlapped the Tokkoka to some degree, but their general
responsibility is better described, in their own language, as "control
and suppression." Their functions, more specifically, were investiga-
tion and punishment.
The Kenpeitai could investigate, and through a military court,
even try and punish fellow military personnel. That accounts in part
for their extraordinary power: a Kenpeitai officer might rebuke or ar-
rest a regular army officer two or three ranks above him, and no one
would readily interfere. And, although there may well be such in-
stances, I have come across no case in which a regional commander in
the Southern Army refused the recommendation or countermanded the
initiative of the Kenpeitai.**
Such power among Japanese was incomparably multiplied, in
wartime circumstances, among peoples the Japanese saw as "natives."
Counterespionage was increasingly required for Japanese security as
the war proceeded. Summary justice, the Kenpeitai's last resort, be-
came more and more commonplace an expedient in the final two years
of hostilities. Among the ordinary Japanese military, the Kenpeitai
was often the tail that wagged the dog. Among conquered peoples,
they were felt to be the bark and the bite of the Japanese Army.
And if the ordinary citizen had a tendency to mythicize the Kenpeitai
out of immediate fear, the Kenpeitai has a tendency to mythologize it-
self in nostalgic glory.
The spirit of the narratives that follow is best summed up, if a
bit on the dire and dashing side, in the term kikosaku. As a Kenpei
code word, it meant severe punishment without martial law proceed-
ings. That in turn meant execution. Ms. Shimer points out5 that
the term kikosaku combines elements of Buddhist mythology with a
sense of routine organizational mechanics. An apt English translation
might be Operation Hades, which suggests both the nether world
3.	Nishijima interview, March 20, 1968.
4.	Hesitations and reroutings might, of course, occur. The transla-
tion which follows contains the story of the offending director of the
Palembang army hospital. It illustrates causes and techniques of po-
litical delay and acceleration in the larger military-political system of
which the military police was a part. The Kenpeitai prevailed in the
end; justly, it would appear, in that instance.
5.	Note 34 to the translation following.4
inhabited by the shades of the dead, and modern systematic effort,
logistically rationalized. This, however, is not just one "operation"
with a limited objective and a deadline. In fact, by kikosaku, the
Java Kenpeitai writer means, as he and his colleagues by usage in-
tended, to describe summary justice—usually beheading without bene-
fit of the defense counsel and evidentiary sortings out, which were
customary in courts martial.
For an American or Australian scholar, say, to speak of courts
martial, is already to have left one's most familiar context of "due
process" and "presumption of innocence." To speak of a Japanese
court martial is a long stride further away. Adding exigent wartime
circumstances in a culture oblique to the Japanese makes justice as
the Japanese then saw it harder still to envision. When we take the
last step into kikosaku, we have arrived at circumstances where in-
vestigator, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all from the
same unit of police. Sometimes, under extreme duress, they could all
presumably be the same person. To those accustomed to observing
procedural niceties in English-derived law, such a condition is the
very antithesis of justice.
There was no appeal for clemency provided for in the system of
which kikosaku was part. No civil official was going to take all
things into consideration, including logically irrelevant but politically
significant sympathies, and order a stay of execution, or even a par-
don. The Kenpeitai commander might have to get the approval of the
regional commander-in-chief before proceeding with an execution, or a
batch of them. Indigenous political sensitivities apparently could
sometimes delay implementation of a Kenpeitai verdict, or might con-
ceivably soften it. But nothing was likely to change it except the
Kenpeitai's own convenience, or its rarely changed convictions.
Delays, formalities, the Kenpeitai would sometimes put up with.
Even they lived within a hierarchy: and seemliness is important within
hierarchies, even when chaos announces itself as the usurping king.
By using the term kikosaku, however, with its netherworld connota-
tions, the Japanese Kenpei seemed to appropriate the powers of hell
to themselves. Let's get on with it, the term suggests. We know
what has to be done, and we are equal to doing it. We will do it
with dispatch, and dignity, and even by our standards, with aes-
thetic beauty. We will, in short, cut off a guilty head with a samurai
sword, rather than waste weeks or months of valuable military time
and energy, because the compelling idea that we serve—the Holy War
for the Liberation of a Billion Asians—must be honored.
So, I suggest, a vernacular translation of kikosaku might be
"hellcraft." The Kenpeitai were hell's angels in their own minds:
trained to fierce deeds swiftly determined. They stood proudly at
the conjuncture of elevated ends and subterranean means. They were
capable, they proudly felt, beyond the nerve of others. Looking
back, they appear to themselves heroic in their hellcraft.
These are, it may be well to remember, the memoirs of captains
and lieutenants and sergeants. Somewhere among them, by some5
lights, there may have been great souls; but these are certainly not
the memoirs of statesmen. "This was what we faced," so the stories
run. "This is how we solved it. This is how it was done. Now,
long after, is come time to praise famous men. Is it true, in fact,
that we are not famous, but infamous in the eyes of others? Then let
us celebrate ourselves."
Those interested in the subject may be grateful that motives
otherwise obscure have been by these narratives clarified, and that
some light has been cast on historical moments that would be other-
wise almost completely dark. There must be, nonetheless, some res-
ervations in this gratitude. For the explanations in these memoirs
also carry with them a certain amount of self-deception. And the ef-
fort at justification of past deeds sometimes staggers under the extra
burden of self-glorification.
Two tales in particular are worth special comment. One is that
of "Dr. Maruzuki," who is punished for allegedly sabotaging the Jap-
anese war effort by poisoning volunteer laborers. The other is of
the Islamic rebellion at Tasikmalaya early in 1945.
"Maruzuki" is not even close to the doctor's correct name. All
the facts here presented suggest that the person in question was the
distinguished bacteriologist and Director of the Eykman Institute,
Professor Dr. Muchtar. He certainly did not kill hundreds of inno-
cent fellow Javanese, as suggested in these memoirs.6 Nothing in his
character or past suggests that he could conceive of medical murder
as a way to sabotage the Japanese conscript labor program, and
hence their war effort.
The disease that struck the laborers in question was not dysen-
tery, as stated here, but tetanus. The cause of the "epidemic" was
most probably a batch of vaccine prepared under the responsibility of
Japanese physicians at the Pasteur Institute, and inadvertently
botched. The arrest of Indonesians became important to save face for
the Japanese military physicians who would otherwise have been impli-
cated.
Muchtar, summoned to treat the hundreds of victims, writhing
and dying from contaminated vaccines, appears to have endangered
himself by trying to unravel the cause of the situation. Questions
were embarrassing. The investigator was arrested as the instigator.
6. Sukarno in his own memoirs, Sukarno: An Autobiography as told
to Cindy Adams (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), pp. 193-94, goes
even further than the Seishi, and speaks of "tens of thousands" dy-
ing in three days from "faulty vaccine." Because of the "enormity"
of what (Sukarno assumed) Muchtar had done, he told medical stu-
dents at the time that he could not intervene. Sukarno continued, in
short, to believe the Kenpeitai version until his own death in 1970.
Abu Hanifah, Tales of Revolution (Sydney: Angus and Robertson,
1972), pp. 125-27, gives a devastating refutation of Sukarno's ver-
sion.6
The threat to Japanese reputations was removed by identifying Indo-
nesian scapegoats. Muchtar was imprisoned for nine months and exe-
cuted on July 8, 1945. Two colleagues of his were not executed, but
died of torture and starvation.7
The story as related through Kenpei memories, however, is a
travesty of misinformation and obfuscation, concluding in the absurd
misstatement that the offender's "punishment was relatively light."
The Japanese not only beheaded Muchtar, but ran over his body with
a steam roller and trucked the remains to a mass grave.8 The Japa-
nese medicine man who was actually in charge of the laboratory and
responsible for the lethal vaccine was never, to my knowledge, ap-
prehended or charged with any crime. The range of his culpability
might run from criminal incompetence to diabolical experimentation,
with the former more probable.9
In comparison with the Muchtar story, which shows Kenpeitai
"investigation" at its shabbiest, and face saving at its cruelest, the
Kenpeitai account of the Tasikmalaya revolt is a bit more elevated.
This rendering reveals Japanese psychology about Islam, communism,
and uprisings in general. Of the first they were wary. The second
had to be prevented. The third had to be crushed.
The description of what happened at Tasikmalaya is perhaps the
most concrete Japanese version of an event more renowned than re-
searched. The writer's likening of the uprising to the "Ikko ikki" of
late sixteenth century Kyoto is illuminating because that was a major
threat to the sovereignty of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The element
of outraged peasant sentiment occurs in both cases, although the
noun "peasant" may hide a great variety of personal profiles and in-
terests. In both cases religious zeal is critical: Shinshu Buddhist in
the one instance, orthodox Muslim in the other. Kyai Zainal Mustafa,
a revered traditionalist in the eyes of his followers, was a dangerous
fanatic in the eyes of the Kenpeitai. Surviving the slaughter at the
mosque, there was only one imaginable fate for him—summary court
martial proceedings, and execution.
7. In a book-length manuscript being prepared for publication, I of-
fer a fuller account of the incident, based on interviews with Dr.
Bahder Djohan and Dr. Slamet Imam Santoso, and on documents in the
Indische Collectie, Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, Amster-
dam.
8.	Abu Hanifah, Tales of Revolution, p. 127.
9. The case awakens memories of the Hygienic Institute of the Waffen
SS, whose typhus experiments at Buchenwald, 1942-43, led to nearly
600 deaths (on which see Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction, p. 339).
Although there is evidence of similar Japanese experimentation in
other theatres, the circumstances regarding romusha deaths by teta-
nus convey shocked and embarrassed surprise rather than conscious
plan.7
Recollection of the event spins the writer toward reflection on
religious fanaticism from a Buddhist point of view. As he regards Is-
lam, he stresses blind belief in fatalistic accord with the wish of Al-
lah, and the difficulties of the Kenpeitai in dealing with the aftermath
of their bloody victory at the mosque.
He is then led to reflections on communism, and appreciation of
the fact that the Dutch had crushed the party, and its ideological in-
fection, in 1927. The easy mental transition from rabid Islam to radi-
cal Marxism was commonplace in the Kenpeitai. They suspected Mohd.
Hatta, for instance, on both accounts. His being devout in the one
manner, speculative in the other, and an ornery independent in
style, led to a Kenpeitai plot to assassinate him. It failed. Naturally
enough, neither that plot nor its foiling is disclosed here.10 In the
Philippine section of this same volume, however, much is made of the
investigative powers of the Kenpeitai in tracking down and eliminating
the man who attempted to assassinate Jose P. Laurel, whom the Japa-
nese had chosen for leadership of their occupation government. The
wrong man, it turned out later: but they still do not realize it.* 11
Inheriting as they did—by Dutch design, some say, although
that is difficult to prove—the files of the Netherlands Indies political
police, the Kenpeitai may have been influenced by the sheer assidu-
ous volume of Dutch investigatory prowess. That influence was all
the more potent, mixed as it was with the aversions to strange reli-
gions and to Marxist creed, which were characteristic of militant Jap-
anese nationalism.12 Belief in the Emperor, the quasi-magical polity
10.	I am_ preparing an account based on interviews with Miyoshi
Shunkichiro, Yamamoto Moichiro, and Hatta himself.
11.	The Kenpeitai believed that one Jirano Marcelino had led the
plot. They tracked him down and he was shot by other military
guards. The Kenpeitai were sorry to lose him that way, but were
glad to have captured and dealt with his alleged co-conspirators by
summary court martial, "and thereby preserve the dignity of the
Kenpeitai." (Nihon Kenpei Seishi, Philippine Section, pp. 927-28 of
Japanese original; quotation from Shimer/Hobbs translation, p. 21
(Japanese original p. 928). After the war, both the Hunters ROTC
and the Markings guerrillas took credit for the attempted assassina-
tion. President Laurel thought he had identified the gunman, but did
not prosecute him. None of those claims and clues appear to dovetail
with the Kenpeitai investigation and executions.
12.	Germaine A. Hoston, in an excellent series of articles, is illumi-
nating the special perspectives of those prewar Japanese who melded
their Marxism with indigenous, including nationalistic and even impe-
rialistic, values:	"Marxism and National Socialism in Taisho Japan:
The Thought of Takabatake Motoyuki" (Journal of Asian Studies, 44,
1 [November 1984]:	43-64); "Marxism and Japanese Expressionism:
Takahashi Kamekichi and the Theory of 'Petty Imperialism'" (Journal
of Japanese Studies, 10, 1 [1984]: 1-30); "Emperor, Nation, and the8
[kokutai], and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere were
blended in a nativistic-imperial teleology that left no comfortable room
for any other system of belief or cause of action.
The parallel of Kenpeitai suspicion with the Dutch police in
anti-lslamic, anti-Marxist currents was, however, only a loose affinity
of colonial consciousness. A deeper feeling among the Kenpeitai in
Indonesia was competition with the Dutch. Military triumph had to be
followed by effective psychological displacement of their imperial pred-
ecessors. This Japanese writer on Java does not quite bring it off.
The Dutch penetrate the narrative as having ingeniously extracted
the loyalty of "half-breeds" (konketsu), while exacting intellectual,
economic, and, for that matter, political, poverty among the "na-
tives." These almost incomprehensible "half-breeds" were held ac-
countable for most of the danger faced by the Kenpeitai, who them-
selves were, in their own view, simple men who "sought only to main-
tain peace and protect the army."
The writer concludes that Dutch spying stratagems, by using
half-breeds and excessively harassing the Kenpeitai, were the real
cause of kikosaku. The principal responsibility for criminal arrests
and summary executions lies with the Dutch, who instigated those es-
pionage activities in which many native lives were sacrificed. The
war crimes trials therefore are not only an expression of Dutch ven-
geance, but an unjust reversal of fault. Such was the considered
opinion of the Editorial Committee of the National Federation of
Kenpeitai Veterans' Association in 1976. By 1983, that opinion had
become still more pronounced in the Gaishi, which treats Dutch
"hatred" for and "reprisal" upon the Kenpeitai for having "caused the
breakdown of their colonial policy spanning three hundred years."13
Transformation of Marxism to National Socialism in Prewar Japan: The
Case of Sano Manobu" (Studies in Comparative Communism, 18,	1
[Spring 1985]). However important such indigenous syntheses of
Marxism were to some Japanese theorists, they themselves, in the
light of prevailing norms, were suspect of alien frailty or stark dis-
loyalty. As for what Marxist activists might suffer, see the passage
on Nishijima Shigetada, text above.
13.	Gaishi, quotation from Shimer translation, p. 52 (page 1147 in
Japanese original); see also Shimer translation, pp. 54-57, 61 (pages
1154-57 and 1159 of Japanese original). In a similar spirit is Yamazaki
Toyoko's novel, Two Fatherlands; the central figure is a Nisei who is
released from a wartime detention center for Japanese-Americans, to
work for US Army Intelligence. He goes on to serve as an inter-
preter at the Tokyo war crimes trials (1946-48), but disillusioned at
the end by what he considers "victors' justice," he commits suicide.
Beginning in 1981 and overlapping with US Congressional Hearings on
compensation for wartime internees, Yamazaki's work was weekly seri-
alized in Japan. When published as a novel in 1983 (the same year as
the Gaishi), it sold almost one million copies.9
Such a perspective need not be shared by anyone else. Who
behaved worse—the Dutch and the Americans in their original imperial
conquests, or the Japanese, seeking to displace and succeed Western
empires? Which was more unjust—kikosaku enacted in the heat of war
by temporary conquerors under conditions of extreme jeopardy, or
war crimes trials as a "revenge of pride" perpetrated in the cool of
peace by the eventual victors? These are questions which ramify in
diffuse ways. But they are not maximally fertile as modes of inquiry.
Here, in any event, translated for a readership that the au-
thors did not contemplate as they wrote, are the memoirs of the
Kenpeitai units in Java and Sumatra. They are vastly more self-
justifying than apologetic. How much of their vindicating tone should
be conceded as a normal human tendency? Self-preservation is no
doubt closer to the fundamentals of nature than self-criticism. Ele-
mentary canons of scholarship, nevertheless, make one restless with
these narratives, without there being space to detail all the errors
which they contain. With or without error, their combination of re-
pression, atrocity, and pride makes them sources analogous to those
of other unhappy histories, Americans in Batangas and Samar at the
turn of the century, and the Dutch in Aceh.llf A major difference,
however, is that both North Atlantic powers faced bitter struggles to
complete their conquests. That the Japanese behaved as detailed
here, after easily capturing Indonesia in nine days, suggests what
might have been the character of their empire had they succeeded in
their "Holy War."
14. Stuart Creighton Miller, "Benevolent Assimilation,11 The American
Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903 (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1982); Paul van't Veer, De Atjeh-oorlog (Amsterdam:
Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, 1969).TRANSLATORS1 PREFACE
To understand the tone of recent Kenpei recollections, it helps
to recall that in the final days of World War II, the Kenpeitai com-
mand bitterly opposed any Japanese proposals for surrender.1 When
the Emperor finally did concede defeat, some Kenpei squad leaders in
the field refused to comply and fled to the hills to resist.2 Once a
complete Allied victory looked certain, the Kenpeitai burned many of
its files in a frantic effort to conceal its war-time record.3 4 These
memoirs,** then, are significant first in that historians have few pri-
mary materials on the subject of the Kenpeitai in World War II. They
are also important because they reveal the thinking of men who
helped to shape some of the events of the Pacific War, and certainly
helped determine the atmosphere under the Japanese occupation. Of
more interest here than accounts of the historical facts, which are
often inaccurate, are the tone and attitude of these veterans of the
Kenpeitai. Their white-washing and self-vindication do not arise from
having been written during the bitterness of the early postwar years,
but from a new Japanese pride and nationalism of the last decade.
Historically considered, the Kenpeitai itself was part of a
full-scale program of suppression, engineered by the Meiji oligarchs
to contain forces potentially destabilizing to their emerging modern
state. Created in 1881 with an elite corps of 349 men, the Kenpeitai
first disciplined army officers who resisted the newly imposed re-
quirement of conscription.5 The officers—former samurai recently
1.	Lester Brooks, Behind Japan's Surrender:	The Secret Struggle
that Ended an Empire (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), p. 238.
2.	Caishif p. 1147.
3.	Interview with Dr. Akira Fujiwara, Hitotsubashi University,
Tokyo, June 1985. On instructions to destroy records issued by the
Japanese Ministry of War, see Records of the Office of the Provost
Marshall General (RG 389), National Archives, Prisoner of War Opera-
tions Division, Information Bureau, Subject File, 1942-45, File: Japa-
nese POW Information Bureau, S. Iguchi, "Report on the Destruction
of Records and Documents of the Prisoner of War Information
Bureau."
4.	See footnote 1 of Dr. Friend's essay (above p. 1) for a complete
citation.
5.	Seishi, p. 35, Otani Keijiro, Showa Kenpei-shi (Tokyo: Misuzu
Shobo, 1979), pp. 4-5.
1112
deprived of their military monopoly—loathed the idea of commanding
an army of mere commoner troops.6 The Kenpeitai also policed the
growing unrest among the farmers and merchants newly subject to
conscription. From the beginning, then, the Kenpeitai's duties were
twofold: to police the army and to police the people.7
Since 1911, a separate corps, the Tokko, had directed the cam-
paign against exponents of subversive ideologies.8 In the mid-1920s,
the Kenpeitai joined forces and officially established its own Tokko di-
vision, although it had in fact been jnvolved in anti-ideological work
since 1881.9 Increasingly in the Showa era, the Kenpeitai's targets
were workers, students, farmers, socialists, and Communists. It
stifled groups espousing foreign ideologies, pacifist sentiments, or ir-
reverence for the Emperor. Its methods were designed to spread
terror in the populace. The Kenpeitai extracted confessions and re-
cantations through intimidation and abuse and, in a few instances,
killed its prisoners.10 By 1945, the Kenpeitai had arrested, de-
tained, tortured, and imprisoned tens of thousands of Japanese.11
Overseas, the Kenpeitai was active in all of Japan's wars and
occupied territories, including Formosa (1895-1945), Korea (1896-
1945), and China (1901-1945), and during World War II in Burma,
French Indo-China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. In the
occupied territories, the Kenpeitai maintained order among the indige-
nous peoples and sought to crush any form of anti-Japanese mobiliza-
6.	Seishi, p. 1380; Paul Akamatsu, Meiji 1868: Revolution and
Counter-Revolution in Japan (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p.
257.
7.	Otani Keijiro, Showa Kenpei-shi , p. 5.
8.	'Tokko' is an acronym for Tokubetsu Koto Keisatsu [Special
Higher Police], ajso called "thought control police." It had a prede-
cessor named Koto Keisatsu [Higher Police], organized in 1904.
Richard H. Mitchell, Thought Control in Prewar Japan (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1976), p. 25.
9.	Seishi, pp. 370-71_. A document describing in detail the workings
of the Kenpeitai	Tokko,	prepared	by Kenpeitai Second	Division Com-
mander Colonel Noguchi	Masao for	General MacArthur,	is reproduced
in full in Gaishi, pp. 1304-14.
10.	In 1923 when the massive earthquake hit Tokyo, the Kenpeitai
took the opportunity of the ensuing chaos to kill Osugi Sakae, the
Japanese anarchist, by strangulation. John W. Dower, Origins of the
Modern Japanese	State:	Selected	Writings of E. H.	Norman (New
York: Pantheon, 1975), pp. 58, 355. Also on that day, the metropol-
itan police imprisoned or killed Koreans and alleged extremists,
lenaga Saburo,	The Pacific War:	World War II and	the Japanese,
1931-1945 (New York: Pantheon, 1978), pp. 8, 60.
11.	Brooks, Behind Japan's Surrender, p. 237.13
tion. It censored the press, monitored suspected subversives, eradi-
cated networks of spies, and maintained an undercover surveillance of
post offices, railway stations, hotels, schools, temples, and other
public gathering places. For disobedient civilians, it meted out pun-
ishments that were swift and harsh.12
During World War II, the worst Kenpei excesses occurred in
prisoner-of-war and civilian internment camps. These held captured
Allied soldiers and civilian European colonialists, respectively. Con-
ditions in many camps were appalling. Prisoners were kept in filth
and squalor in overcrowded pens with inadequate food and water.
Starved, exhausted, and diseased, they were made to work day and
night, and beaten repeatedly, often at random.13 The Kenpeitai also
went to great lengths to contrive tortures of a most depraved na-
ture. li+
On November 1, 1945, in one of his first acts, General Douglas
MacArthur disbanded the Kenpeitai, which by then had grown to a
force of 36,000 men stationed overseas and in Japan. In 1952, the
year the occupation ended, former Kenpei in Tokyo, Osaka, and other
cities formed local Kenpeitai Veterans' Associations. On March 21,
1953, the separate local chapters formed an umbrella organization, the
Zenkoku Kenyukai Rengokai (National Federation of Kenpeitai Vet-
erans' Associations). The Zenkenren (its acronym) prides itself on
being the "leading war veterans' group in Japan, with the strongest
12.	Seishi, pp. 9-28; Gaishi, p. 1155; George S. Kanahele, "The
Japanese Occupation of Indonesia: Prelude to Independence," (Ph.D.
dissertation, Cornell University, 1967), p. 259, n. 70.
13.	On prisoner-of-war camps in Java and Sumatra, see Doetje van
Velden, De Japanse interneringskampen voor burgers gedurende de
Tweede Wereldoorlog (Franeker: Wever, 1977), and Records of the
Office of the Provost Marshall General (RG 389), National Archives,
Prisoner of War Operations Division, Information Bureau, Subject File,
1942-45.
14.	Edwark E.F.L. Russell, The Knights of Bushido: The Shocking
History of Japanese War Atrocities (New York: Dutton, 1958), pp. 274
ff. This book contains a complete catalogue of tortures employed by
the Kenpeitai, including first person accounts by survivors of specific
instances in Java and Sumatra. Some methods clearly go far beyond
the infliction of pain for the delimited purposes of extracting informa-
tion or punishing a violation of camp rules. Forcing water from a
hose down a victim's throat and nose, then jumping on his bloated
stomach; making prisoners stand for days at a stretch crammed in a
tight cage of barbed wire set on top of a nest of red ants; lashing a
dehydrated man with barbed wire to the trunk* of a tree without water
for two days and placing a bucket of water right in front of his
eyes—these are deeds conceived and committed by the Kenpeitai.14
organization and best esprit de corps."15 As of June 1985, member-
ship was 4,000 representing one third of the former Kenpei alive to-
day. 16
The four stated goals of the Zenkenren are to "affirm the value
of the Kenpeitai"; to honor Kenpei war dead; to promote comradery;
and to aid the families of those lost in the war.17 In 1969, the
Zenkenren erected a small memorial to the Kenpei war dead in a quiet
corner on the grounds of Yasukuni Jinja, a famous Shinto shrine in
Tokyo which memorializes the legions of Japan's war dead.18 Funds
for the memorial came from Zenkenren members, their families, and
friends. Japanese people ostracized Kenpeitai veterans after the war,
and thus to have a memorial so near the revered Yasukuni Jinja
serves to enhance Kenpei standing, at least in their own eyes. "Just
about no one knows about it," brood the authors of Seishi, "the
Kenpei memorial stands quietly deep in the woods of Yasukuni, glis-
tening under the great shrine gates. But that is all that can be ex-
pected. For the Kenpei memorial harbors a spirit which only the
Kenpei can understand."19
To promote comradery among its members, the Zenkenren pub-
lishes a quarterly magazine called Kenyu [Kenpeitai Comrades]. The
April 1985 edition, which can be taken to be typical, carries a review
of an article in the Japanese press about the Nanking massacre of
1937. An editorial discusses what it calls President Reagan's second
American revolution. There is also an imaginary letter from a Kenpei
youth who died in the war, followed by his friend's reply. We can
see group portraits of local Kenpei reunions held in restaurants and
public parks. There is an advertisement for a Kenpei figurine in
uniform, enclosed in a glass case suitable for display in the home.
To the Zenkenren, the Seishi, Caishi, and Isho constitute the
definitive trilogy of Kenpeitai history.20 These vast and sometimes
rambling memoirs were written by an editorial board of sixty members
appointed from the Zenkenren. Each editor took responsibility for a
15.	Gaishi, p. 1397.
16.	Interview in Tokyo with Mr. Yoshida Nisaku, former Kenpeitai
squad commander in Changzhou, China and current president of the
Toko Printing Co., publisher of the Seishi, Gaishi, Isho, and other
Kenyukai publications, June 1985.
17.	Isho, p. 631. Neither pensions nor other government assistance
provides for the families of Kenpei war dead. Interview with Yoshida
Nisaku, June 1985.
18.	In Japan, it plays a role analogous to that of the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier in the United States. Edwin 0. Reischauer, The
Japanese (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 219.
19.	Seishi, p. 1320.
20.	Isho, p. 7.15
part of the manuscript, and together they solicited diaries, letters,
and reminiscences from over a thousand former Kenpei. The
Zenkenren commissioned Mr. Ashizawa Norio, a non-Kenpei author, to
edit the Seishi, and he worked closely with the Kenpei editors of each
section.21 The Zenkenren followed the same procedure in producing
the Gaishi, and collaborated with the Tokyo Kenyukai in its produc-
tion of the Isho. The Seishi (published in 1976) took five years to
compile; the Gaishi and Isho (published in 1983 and 1982, respec-
tively) took two years each.22 The Seishi has sold 7,000 copies; the
Gaishi, 3,500 copies; and the Isho, 2,300 copies.23
The Seishi_\s organized chronologically, with sections entitled
"Meiji and Taisho" (1868-1925), "Showa Upheaval" (1926-36), "War-
torn Showa" (1937-45), and "The Termination of the War and the War
Crimes Trials." The selections translated here are the Java and
Sumatra chapters found in both "War-torn Showa" and "The Termina-
tion of the War and the War Crimes Trials." The Gaishi is organized
geographically, with sections on Japan, Manchuria, China, the Philip-
pines, Malaysia, Burma, French Indo-China, and Indonesia. It ends
with a section entitled "The Termination of the War," which includes
recollections of prisoner-of-war camps and the war crimes trials. The
Isho is a collection of last testaments by Kenpei who committed suicide
or received the death sentence. Many were written in the last hours
of life. Among the 300 or so pieces, we find letters to mothers and
fathers, messages for friends and lovers, and inner thoughts on
Kenpei destinies. Many of the poems display a finesse in the use of
the Japanese language. Directly after receiving the sentence of death
by firing squad, a captain from Java writes, "Oh, the joys and
worries of life are gone, and with them I fade too. Yearning for my
mother and father."24
A major, also from Java, who elsewhere says that world peace
would bring him supreme joy, writes, "Momentarily my life draws to a
close, but there is not a cloud in the sky over Japan. Now, my skin
feels cold again. The drone of the mosquito—it is my death knell."25
It is revealing to compare the tone of the Seishi published nine
years ago, with that of the Gaishi and Isho, published only two and
three years ago, respectively. The theme of self-justification is
stronger in the latter, and the authors apparently feel less guilt for
the means they used to achieve their ends. More than the Seishi,
the chapters on Java and Sumatra in the Gaishi paint a rosy picture
21.	Interview with Mr. Yoshida Nisaku, Tokyo, July 1985.
22.	Gaishi, p. 1397; Isho, p. 632.
23.	Kenyu, p. 3. Interview with Mr. Yoshida Nisaku, president of
the Toko Printing Co., in June 1985.
24.	Captain Sato, "Last Testament in Verse," Isho, p. 407.
25.	Nonaka Takami, "Last Testament in Verse," Isho, pp. 397-98.16
of Kenpeitai relations with the indigenous Indonesians and the immi-
grant Chinese. In the Gaishi, the authors try hard to convince the
reader of the Kenpeitai's professed support for the Indonesian inde-
pendence movement. Also, the Gaishi is more openly cynical about
the integrity of the Dutch war crimes trials.26 It more readily admits
that torture was used on "terrorists and spies," but is quick to
justify its use.27 Furthermore, the latter works have a more self-
assured tone, and this reflects a general trend in Japanese his-
toriography toward revisionism on the subject of World War II. Paral-
leling this trend, public opinion regarding the Kenpeitai has improved
somewhat in recent years, in the view of members of the Zenken-
ren.28 Finally, whereas the Seishi foresees no end to the world's
26.	Gaishi, pp. 1111-12, 1154-60.
27.	See Gaishi, pp. 1115, 1156.
28.	Interview in June 1985 with Satoru Onishi, former Kenpeitai
major and Tokko captain, a major member of the Seishi editorial com-
mittee.
Two sources which have influenced public opinion about the
Kenpeitai bear mentioning. _ One is Nakazawa Keiji's Hadashi no Gen
[Barefoot Gen] (Tokyo: Chobunsha, 1975, 42nd printing: July 1985),
a nine volume comic which seriously treats the events before and
after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The comic is considered a
long seller (2.8 million sold), is nationally recognized, and is often
assigned to middle and high school students for summer reading.
Telephone interview with Chobunsha, August 9, 1985. In the comic
the Kenpeitai is portrayed as a brutal and dreaded corps. The comic
is clearly anti-war, as is evident from illustrations of anti-military
protest, the Tokko deserter, and the fate of conscript Korean and
Chinese. The second source is Fukada Yusuke, Ennetsu Shonin
[Zealous Merchants], (Tokyo: Bungeishunju, 1982) 523 pp., a best
seller and winner of the Naoki-sho, the most esteemed award for pop-
ular literature. Produced for television, it was broadcast on NHK
three times, consecutively capturing a 15 percent (one million) audi-
ence share. Bungeishunju, NHK telephone interview, August 9,
1985. Written from the viewpoint of a Japanese-Filipino, the book
tells the stories of Kenpeitai Captain Baba in the Japanese-occupied
Philippines in the 1940s, and a Japanese trading company Manila
branch chief Kodera in the 1970s. Kenpeitai Captain Baba is por-
trayed as a martyr who saves his Filipina lover, local residents, and
fellow Kenpeitai by driving a truck of explosives into approaching
United States troops. The author draws a clear parallel between the
Captain and the Japanese executive Kodera, who is killed by exploited
Filipino laborers. Both are portrayed as humanists, pro-Filipino,
martyrs, and pawns in a greater military and economic game. The
story is based on an actual incident that took place in Manila in 1971,
in which Filipino laborers shot three Japanese businessmen, killing
one. All other events and characters in the book are fictional.17
hostility toward the Kenpeitai, the Goishi and Isho expect that the
story of the Kenpeitai will at least reinstill a sense of patriotism in
today's Japanese youth. The latter authors believe that the Kenpei
who died by execution and suicide should be remembered not as war
criminals but as valiant martyrs who died for the glory of Japan.
The preface to the Isho, for example, promises the "unparalleled,
noble, heart-felt	messages29 of patriots	that have been	left to	the
young people of	the new generation by	Kenpei	who . .	. were	the
victims of unjustified punishments and were thus the breakwater for a
nation of a hundred million."30
In the war crimes trials, the Kenpeitai fared far worse than the
Japanese army. For example, in the Batavia trials, from a pool of
20,000 regular army troops and only 538 Kenpei both stationed in
Java at the end of the war, there were 58 convictions for regular
troops as against	199 for Kenpei. Of these 199	Kenpei,	40 men	re-
ceived the death	sentence. In Sumatra	at the	Medan trials, of 55
convicted Kenpei, 12 men received the death sentence.31 Whatever
one thinks of the judicial atmosphere and processes, a branch of the
military in which well over a third of the men were convicted as war
criminals requires historical understanding.
********
In translating these memoirs, we faced the perennial dilemma of
a literal versus a liberal translation. While trying to remain faithful
line by line to the text, we have had to edit for the sake of reada-
bility in English. Japanese personal names appear as in the original
—surnames first, given names second. Where multiple readings were
possible for a Japanese name, we chose the most common reading for
that name.32 Where the spelling of a Dutch or Indonesian name was
unclear from the transliterated Japanese romaji, we attempted a_pho-
netic approximation of the Dutch or Indonesian, and noted the romaji.
We alone are responsible for any errors in the preface, translation,
and notes.
Several people assisted us in our efforts to research this unex-
plored topic. We thank Dr. Imai Yoshio, currently of the Hoover
Institution and former Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, for sharing his knowledge. He also introduced
us to Dr. Fujiwara Akira, professor of military history at Hitotsubashi
29.	Messeji in romaji.
30.	Isho, preface by lizuka Ken, pp. 5-8; Like sentiments appear in
Gaishi, preface by Moriyasu Seiichi, pp. 11-13; Seishi, p. 1321.
31.	Seishi, p. 1323; Isho, pp. 580-84.
32.	As listed in P. G. O'Neill, Japanese Names: A Comprehensive
Index of Characters and Readings (New York and Tokyo: IVeatherhill,
1972).18
University, whose comments and insights were very helpful. We are
grateful to Dr. Kataoka Tetsuya, currently of the Hoover Institution
and former Fellow at the Wilson Center, for providing advice on some
of the more obscure passages of the Japanese text. We thank Mr.
Philip Nagao of the Library of Congress in Washington, and Mr.
Chiyo Masaaki of the National Diet Library in Tokyo for assistance in
assembling a bibliography. For their interviews with Guy Hobbs, we
are indebted to Mr. Yoshida Nisaku, Mr. Onishi Satoru, and Mr.
lizuka Kinjiro. Mr. Yoshida is a former Kenpeitai Captain in
Changzhou, China and current president of the Toko_Printing Co.,
publisher of the Seishi, Gaishi, and Isho. Mr. Onishi, former
Kenpeitai major and Tokko captain on the Malay peninsula, was a
principal member of the Seishi editorial committee, and is the author
of Hiroku Jonan Kakyo Shukusei Jiken [The Secret Record of the
Singaporean Chinese:	The Purge Incident]. Mr. lizuka was a
Kenpeitai Tokko captain in Java from April 1942 to August 1945, and
edited the Java section of the Seishi. We are especially grateful to
Dr. Sadako Taylor who read the draft of the translation and con-
tributed valuable criticism and comments. We also want to thank Bill
Shimer for his help in the editing of the preface. Most of all, we are
grateful to Dr. Theodore Friend, who by his guidance and encourage-
ment brought us closer to an appreciation of the processes of history.Selections from
THE AUTHENTIC HISTORY OF THE JAPANESE KENPEITAI
(NIHON KENPEI SEISHI)
by the
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF KENPEITAI VETERANS1 ASSOCIATIONS
(ZENKOKU KENYUKAI RENGOKAI HENSAN IINKAI)
TOKYO, 1976
Translated by
Barbara Gifford Shimer and Guy Hobbs[1025] THE JAVA KENPEITAI
The Third Field Kenpeitai
On July 16, 1941 the Third Field Kenpeitai was formed out of
the Guandong Kenpeitai Training Regiment in Xinjing,1 Manchukuo as
follows
Third Field Kenpeitai	Commandant—Kenpei	Colonel Kuzumi
Kenzaburo
Vice Commander—Kenpei Captain Takayabu Saichiro
Attached Commissioned Officer2—Kenpei Major Ikeyama Yasushi:
20 commissioned officers
First Company—Company Commander Kenpei Captain Yajima Shichi-
saburo:
60 men
Second Company—Company Commander Kenpei Captain Kobayashi
Shokichi:
60 men
Third Company—Company Commander Kenpei Captain Sugo Shuzo:
60 men
Fourth Company—Company Commander Kenpei Captain Taniguchi
Kiyoshi:
60 men3
On August 2,	1941, after reaching full strength, the Third
Field Kenpeitai moved from Xinjing to Xinglongzhen on the outskirts
1.	Xinjing was the capital of Manchukuo during the Japanese occupa-
tion. Now called Changchun, it is the capital of Jilin province in
China.
2.	Major Ikeyama Yasushi was the chief of the Kenpeitai Tokko in
Java. Gaishi, p. 1110.
3.	These numbers total 262 Kenpei. In 1944, the Java Kenpeitai
grew to 522. For 1945, there are conflicting estimates for the number
of Kenpei in Java. The Japanese government statistic is 538 (Seishi,
p. 1381). The Gaishi mentions that there were 800 by the end of the
war; but this figure undoubtedly includes Indonesian "auxiliary
Kenpei" trained to assist the Japanese Kenpei. (Gaishi, p. 1125).
In an_ interview with George Kanahele, former Kenpei Major lizuka
Kinjiro said there were close to 1 ,000 Kenpei in Java by 1945. This
estimate probably also includes auxiliary Kenpei. Kanahele, "Japanese
Occupation of Indonesia," p. 272, n. 52.
2122
of Mudanjiang, ** where it was stationed to undergo in-service train-
ing. The training consisted primarily of individual squad combat
drills of the type used in anti-Soviet operations, with special em-
phasis on gruelling anti-gas drills using actual poison gas that simu-
lated real warfare.
The Greater East Asia War broke out on December 8, 1941 and
on January 3, 1942 the Third Field Kenpeitai was ordered to mobilize.
The Third Field Kenpeitai left its station in Mudanjiang on January 6,
and arrived in Dalian on January 15. In Dalian the unit received
supplementary men and officers, before setting sail on January 22,
1942.
From the day of its departure from Dalian, the Third Field
Kenpeitai officially joined the ranks of the Sixteenth Army commanded
by Lieutenant General Imamura Hitoshi. Aboard ship on the way to
Gaoxiong Bay in Taiwan, we Kenpei received intensive instruction in
the Malay language and other training appropriate to the southern re-
gions. 4 5
Subsequently the Third Field Kenpeitai joined the Sixteenth
Army in the port of Cam Ranh in French Indo-China. By this time
the Sixteenth Army had shifted its orientation to the advance on
Java.6
The main strength of the Sixteenth Army landed in Banten Bay
in west Java after the Surabaya and Batavia offshore naval battles,
just before dawn on March first. The Batavia naval battle had
erupted just after midnight early the same day when a fleet of our
Japanese transports anchored in Banten Bay was attacked by the
enemy. During the ensuing battle the two enemy ships from Australia
and the US and our escort fleet confronted each other at point blank
4. Mudanjiang (Botanko in Japanese) was the former military capital
for the Japanese Guandong army. It is now a major city in Heilong-
jiang province, China. Xinglongzhen was a local administrative unit
on the outskirts of Mudanjiang.
5. Many of the Third Field Kenpei who ended up in Java had studied
the Russian language as part of their training for anti-Soviet warfare
in Manchuria. With only a brief course aboard ship in Bahasa Indo-
nesia, they were ill-prepared to communicate with the Indonesians.
In fact, there was only one man in the Japanese military who was
known by the Indonesians to speak their language fluently. (Kana-
hele, "Japanese Occupation of Indonesia," pp. 257; 273, n. 52.) In
Gaishi, the authors acknowledge that many Kenpei did not take their
assignment to learn Indonesian seriously. In fact, the Kenpei blame
their ignorance of the native language for their arrest and punish-
ment of innocent people. (Gaishi, p. 1115).
6.	Upon hearing that Singapore had fallen to the Japanese on Feb-
ruary 15, the Sixteenth Army headed south towards Java earlier than
it had originally planned (Gaishi, p. 1109).23
range.7 One of our transports was sunk by a torpedo, and three
ships were damaged when they ran aground. Fortunately our ships
were in shallow waters because we had come in to anchor, so there
was little loss of human life. However, like many others, the majority
of the Third Field Kenpei had to abandon ship for the open sea.
Sergeant8 Akabori and several men under him were killed in the
battle.
[1026] The Kenpeitai command and the Fourth Company landed
near Frawan [?] Promontory in Banten Bay, where we cremated Ser-
geant Major Akabori and his men killed in battle, and set out to cap-
ture any remnant enemy troops and collect secret documents escaping
from the destroyed vessels.
Closely following the army's take-over of Batavia on March 3,
the Kenpeitai command and the Fourth Company set out for Batavia
via Serang on March 5. Closing in on Serang, we discovered that
the retreating Dutch Indies army had felled trees on both sides of the
road between Serang and Batavia to block our advancing Japanese
forces. As soon as the Kenpeitai command and Taniguchi's company
marched into Batavia, we immediately took over the law school to the
south of Cambir plaza in the center of the city. Here we established
our Kenpeitai headquarters and the headquarters of the Fourth Com-
pany, and set to work.9
We Kenpei began immediately to direct the local police, round
up remnant enemy soldiers, and manage the military supplies. We se-
cured vital natural resources, put a check on looting by the natives,
generally maintained civil order, and interned important persons. In
particular, we interned in Struiswijk prison in Batavia some four hun-
dred enemy Dutch, Australians, English and Americans, which ex-
cluded only a few priests and innocuous half-breeds.10
7.	For a description of the Battle of Banten Bay, see F. C. Van
Oosten, The Battle of Java Sea (Annapolis:	Naval Institute Press,
1976), pp. 55-60.
8.	The rank designated in the original Japanese is socho. Socho
overlaps the following two ranks in the United States army: Sergeant
Major of the Army, and Command Sergeant Major. In cases such as
this where a Japanese rank overlaps two or more American ranks, we
have used the highest rank equivalent in the United States army
system. Koh Masuda, ed., Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dic-
tionary (Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1974), pp. 2102-3.
9.	The Kenpeitai headquarters later moved to the Institute of
Technology (Gaishi, p. 1110).
10.	The Japanese word konketsu translates literally as "mixed
blood," and refers here to Eurasians. Konketsu is a derogatory term
in Japanese, hence the translation "half-breed" used here. Many
prewar Japanese valued racial purity highly and thought of children
of interracial unions as being somehow inferior. Prior to the24
The Japanese landing on Java was complete by March 4. The
main force of the army had already departed on the Bandung offen-
sive, when we discovered that the remaining Dutch Indies troops were
hiding out in the mountains along the Serang River. The Sato pla-
toon, a military command reserve squad, was immediately dispatched
on a subjugation mission. It set out for its destination some 800
meters high up in the mountains, accompanied by Kenpeitai Warrant
Officer Moriki and three of his Kenpei. The offensive resulted in the
surrender of one Dutch Indies company and a police chief and his
wife, as well as the capture of some twenty US and Australian sol-
diers who had been roaming about in the area. By the end of March
the detachment had finished its mopping up operations in the area
and returned to the home unit.
Meanwhile the Third Company commanded by Captain Sugo
Shuzo had been on the Ryujomaru, the same ship Commander Imamura
was on, at the time of the landing. The ship was heavily damaged
under enemy attack, and ran aground. The entire crew had jumped
ship into the oil-covered sea, but rescued with death at their shoul-
ders the military command who had taken cover in their cabins.
After landing, the Third Company joined the main force of the
Second Division (commanded by Lieutenant General Maruyama Masao)
in subsequent attacks on Rawairian [Leuwiliang] and Buitenzorg
[Bogor].1* On the afternoon of March 9, we followed the front line
units as they triumphantly entered Bandung city and then we Kenpei
began operations.
twentieth century, a child of mixed race was usually called an ai no
ko, which means both "in-between child" and "lovechild." The term
ai no ko was originally used to refer to youthful Kabuki actors who
were neither children nor fully adult. The term clearly had negative
connotations however; it was also used to refer to mongrel dogs, for
instance.
During World War II the term konketsu first came into frequent
usage as a means to refer to Gl babies and children of Japanese
servicemen abroad. In defining the term konketsu the Nihon Kokugo
Daijiten cites the following from the Yokomitsu Riichi novel Shangai:
"If you do that, all you will be left with is a half-breed problem."
Nihon Daijiten Kankokai, ed., Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (Tokyo: Sho-
gakkan, 1972-76), 8:484. The negative connotations of the term are
apparent from the tone employed here. Nowadays the word konketsu
is rarely used; the preferred term for children of mixed race is hafu,
from the English term "half."
11. The Second Division of the army spearheaded the invasion on
West Java, while the Forty-eighth Division coming from the Philippines
invaded Bali and East Java. Van Oosten, Battle of the Java Sea, pp.
77-78.25
The Second Company, commanded by Captain Kobayashi
Shokichi, became the Kenpeitai officially attached to the Forty-eighth
Division of the army (commanded by Lieutenant General Tsuchihashi
Isao). On February 19 the Forty-eighth Division set sail from Jolo12
Island for its landing site on Java:	Flangan [?Brondong] in the
Surabaya province. As the division approached Flangan the troop-
ships were heavily bombed by the United States air force, and the
units were forced to scatter upon landing.
[1027] Everywhere the Japanese troops landed law and order
were disrupted. The natives took advantage of the opportunity vio-
lently to ransack the homes of the Chinese and the whites. They ran
off with all items of any value, as though they were avenging hun-
dreds of years of resentment in one terrifying sweep. Seeing this
graphic illustration of the natives' deep-rooted hostility, Kenpei Cap-
tain Kobayashi realized how extremely harsh the colonial policies of
the Dutch governor general must have been. But now that the Japa-
nese army had moved in, the violence of the natives was to be left
unchecked no longer. Captain Kobayashi ordered his men to make
every effort to restore civil order immediately.
The strength of the Kobayashi company and the Forty-eighth
Division crushed the enemy Taypu Kerutosono Jonpan, and success-
fully penetrated and occupied Surabaya on March 8. One section of
Kobayashi's company was assigned to the "Sumatran operations"13 in
central Java, where it was in charge of enforcing law and order in
the Semarang district. Once order had been restored, the section
returned to the Kobayashi company headquarters.
The First Kenpeitai Company under Captain Yajima Shichisaburo
was attached to the Thirty-eighth Division (commanded by Lieutenant
General Sano Tadayoshi), and had separated from the main Kenpeitai
force at Cam Ranh Bay in the first half of February. To capture the
Dutch territory of southern Sumatra, the Thirty-eighth Division
moved upstream along the Musi River on February 15, landing in
Palembang on February 18. When the division arrived, Palembang
was already occupied bv the Japanese army, our paratroopers having
landed on February 14.^
On March 12 the Imperial Guard Division of the Twenty-fifth
Army landed in northern Sumatra to undertake the victorious central
and northern Sumatran operations; the battle proceeded smoothly be-
cause the Dutch Indies forces had already unconditionally surrendered
12.	Horo in romaji.
13.	Sumatoran in romaji. One Japanese scholar speculates that "Su-
matran Operations" may have been a special term used by the Japa-
nese to indicate a particular kind of military strategy.
14.	The purpose of this digression on Sumatra is to provide back-
ground on the Yajima company, which subsequently moved to Java.26
as of March 9.15 The army took over Medan, the capital of Sumatra,
and Padang on the central western coast, and by March 17 the cen-
tral and northern mopping-up operations were complete.
During the closing days of the operations a provisional Kenpei
detachment comprised of sixty men led by Lieutenant Colonel Yokota
Masataka arrived. The detachment had formerly been with the
Kenpeitai attached to the Twenty-fifth Army (commanded by Lieu-
tenant Colonel Oishi Masayuki). Second Lieutenant Ueno's Kenpeitai
unit16 was also dispatched to Palembang, where it relieved the Yajima
company. Ever since landing a month and a half before, the Yajima
company had been hard at work sweeping up remnant enemy troops,
securing vital natural resources, and generally upholding civil order.
At the time the Sumatran residents in the Palembang area were co-
operating with the Japanese army, and conditions were almost too
peaceful for the Kenpeitai. Now that it was being replaced, the
Yajima company set sail from Palembang Bay on April 5 and returned
to the Third Field Kenpeitai command in Batavia on April 8.
The Java Kenpeitai
Mopping-up operations on Java wound up in March 1942. The
Third Field Kenpeitai deployed its men to maintain law and order in
crucial areas throughout Java. After the take-over, Lieutenant Gen-
eral Imamura Hitoshi, Commander of the Sixteenth Army, [1028] or-
dered us to put all Dutch, starting with the governor general and his
wife, government personnel, and the directors of powerful govern-
ment-related companies into detention camps within Batavia city. Sol-
diers and military personnel were put into prisoner-of-war camps and
prisons respectively. Separate detention camps just for women were
set up, where boys and girls under the age of sixteen were also in-
terned. 17
15.	"Within ten days in March of 1942 the approximately 55,000 men
in the Sixteenth Army who had landed before the enemy had forced
some 80,000 Dutch soldiers to surrender" {Gaishi, p. 1111).
16.	A Kenpeitai unit (buntai) was a section of the Kenpeitai corps of
indeterminate size, usually ranging between fifteen and thirty men.
A unit dispatched smaller bunkentai, or detachments, for special
missions.
17.	"The detention centers housing Dutch army prisoners were ex-
tremely open prisons without wire fencing," write the ex-Kenpei in
Gaishi. "They didn't try to escape because they feared being at-
tacked by the Indonesian people." (Gaishi, p. 1122.) An American
civilian internee quotes the Japanese commandant of her internment
camp as announcing on the first night "You Americans are merciful,
but we Japanese do not know mercy. If anyone attempts to escape,
he will be killed. If anyone does escape we will choose ten of you at27
Java was a complicated mix of races. Besides the Dutch, there
were many Dutch-lndonesian half-breeds, as well as overseas Chi-
nese, Ambonese, Indonesians, and Menadonese. In the government
and various governmental organizations, the positions were invariably
held by the Dutch and by the half-breeds, who were appointed as
minor officials. The half-breeds and the overseas Chinese had the
economic power, while the native Indonesians, Ambonese, and Menado-
nese were extremely poor.
After proclaiming a military government, the Sixteenth Army
appointed particularly those half-breeds who had pledged cooperation
with the military to positions in the central military administration,
public corporations, and general manufacturing industries. The half-
breeds continued to be entrusted with virtually all military adminis-
tration, just as they had been under the former governor general.
They were also appointed to posts in the central military administra-
tion.18
The Sixteenth Army command, the military administration com-
mand, and the Kenpeitai headquarters were all established in the
Dutch Indies capital of Batavia.
At the end of April 1942 the Third Field Kenpeitai was renamed
the Sixteenth Army Kenpeitai (commonly called the Java Kenpeitai)
and was reorganized as follows:
The Sixteenth Army Kenpeitai
July 1941—Third Field Kenpeitai established
April 1942—Became Sixteenth Army Kenpeitai
Headquarters—Batavia
Commandant—Lieutenant Colonel Kuzumi Kenzaburo
Vice Commander—Captain Takayabu Saichiro
Chief of the Tokko—Major Ikeyama Yasushi
Total force: 30 officers
Warrant officers and noncommissioned officers: 492
Total: 522
Batavia unit (Tanjung Priok detachment) Commandei—Major
Taniguchi Kiyoshi
Serang unit Commander—Second Lieutenant Onishi Kyutaro
Bogor unit (Sukabumi detachment) Commander—Second Lieutenant
Taniguchi Takeji
random, and you will be shot ..." The killing of other inmates
upon the escape of one was a common policy, and an effective deter-
rent to escape attempts. Judy Hyland, In the Land of the Rising
Sun (Minneapolis: Ausburg Publishing House, 1984), p. 24.
18. The repetition of this fact belies the Kenpeitai's incredulity that
Eurasians would be trusted with such a vital task.28
Banduncj unit (Tasikamalaya detachment) Commander—Captain
Sugo Shuzo
Cirebon unit (Tegal detachment) Commander—Captain Matsuoka
Takezo
Solo unit (Madelang [?]19 detachment)
Purwokerto unit (Cilacap detachment) Commandei—First
Lieutenant Kato Michitaro
Yogyakarta unit (Magelang detachment) Commander—First
Lieutenant Sato Heikichi
Semarang unit (Pekalongan detachment) Commander—Captain
Yajima Shichisaburo
Surabaya unit (Wharf detachment;_ Bojonegoro detachment) Com-
mander—Captain Kobayashi Shokichi20
Malang unit (Kediri detachment; Probolinggo detachment)
Commander—First Lieutenant Inoyama Jiro
Jember unit (Banyuwangi detachment) Commander—Captain Wada
Kunishige
Surakarta unit (Madiun detachment; Yogya detachment)
Commandei—First Lieutenant Onishi Katsuhiko
[1029] After we Japanese had proclaimed our military govern-
ment, the Indonesians were the warmest to us, as was their nature,
followed by the Ambonese and Menadonese. With the exception of one
circle, the overseas Chinese were also relatively pro-Japanese.21
There were a great many Chinese, and they were financially far
better off than the Malaysians. The problem was the Dutch-lndone-
sian half-breeds who superficially cooperated but were actually ex-
tremely anti-Japanese. From the very beginning they were the
cancer afflicting the body politic. The other very troublesome factor
for the Kenpeitai in Java was the infiltration of spies from nearby
Australia.
The climate in Java is similar to that in Japan just before the
rainy season begins about the end of May. In the afternoon there is
often a brief squall and the heat abates for a while. The rainy sea-
son begins at the end of August and lasts for about two months, al-
though it rarely rains all day long even during this season. For
19.	Maderan in romaji.
20.	Gaishi notes that this is an error: Major Yanase Kasuku, and not
Kobayashi, was the commander of the Surabaya unit. (Gaishi, p.
1109).
21.	Pro-Indonesian and pro-Chinese sympathies resound more clearly
in the Gaishi. "Looking back on the history of the Kenpeitai and
their relations with the natives in occupied territories, relations with
the Indonesians and the overseas Chinese were especially good," write
the authors, "... The warmth of the Indonesians is racially deter-
mined, and explains the dearth of violence committed towards women
by the [Japanese] military and personnel." (Gaishi, pp. 1111-12.)29
clothing a short-sleeved shirt will do during the day and you only
need one blanket for sleeping at night. The temperature varies a
good deal in Indonesia even though it is in the tropics, because of
the mountain ranges. The temperature drops five degrees if you
climb a 300-meter hill. The Dutch and Chinese country cottages are
located on the outskirts of town in the hills, where it is a different
world indeed.
The tallest mountain on Java is Mt. Semeru, which towers 3,676
meters. Being a volcanic region, Java has many hot springs. There
are no very large rivers but several well-known ones including the
Solo, Brantas, and the Citarum.22 Kenpeitai Captain lizuka Kinjiro23
remembers the island of Java as having a most suitable climate for the
Japanese, and being a rather fine place to live. The ground is fer-
tile and every last bit is cultivated to grow such major products as
rice and corn, and oil is produced on a small scale. According to a
military survey, the population at the time was 20 million.214
No sooner had the Kenpeitai taken on the responsibility of
maintaining civil order and conducting counterespionage activities,
than the number of anti-Japanese incidents began to grow. Let us
now turn to an explanation of the sort of incidents with which each
Kenpeitai unit had to grapple.
An Incident Under the Direct Control of Kenpeitai Headquarters
In July of 1942, enemy aircraft and submarines began attacking
Japanese vessels transporting arms, ammunition, and other military
supplies from Java to New Guinea and the Ambon islands. Our ships
were being sunk one after the other, particularly in the Flores and
Banda Seas. The damage just kept on increasing. The Japanese mil-
itary command suspected enemy involvement even prior to the ships'
departures, and ordered a close investigation by the Kenpeitai. We
Kenpei judged that the spies based on Java were relaying information
about the departing ships to the enemy, and that this could only be
done by radio. In December of 1943 more than ten men in the Cen-
tral China Kenpeitai Radio-Probe Squad, led by Second Lieutenant
Muratomi Yoshio, were dispatched to Java to work with our Java
Kenpeitai.
[1030] The critical investigation had been under way for some
time, but the spies still remained on the loose. The military command
22.	Chitarumu in romaji.
23.	lizuka Kinjiro is the Zenkenren editor of this chapter on Java in
the Seishi.
24.	This figure is a gross underestimate. In 1945 the population of
Java was over 41 million. (Kanahele, "Japanese Occupation of Indon-
esia," p. 65.)30
and the Kenpeitai decided to strengthen the radio-probe squads by
sending some thirty superior military communications unit members
and ten or so noncommissioned Kenpei to a radio training school in
Kuala Lumpur on the Malay peninsula. Over a three-month period
military radio communications unit chief First Lieutenant Yoshie
Yasuyuki and Kenpeitai V/arrant Officer Yamazaki Toshio trained some
eighty special radio-probe squad members. Thus, through our com-
bined efforts, the military communications unit and the Kenpeitai
spawned one large intelligence network.
In May of 1944 the special radio-probe squads began working
with various Kenpeitai units throughout the island of Java in an ef-
fort to identify suspicious radio signals. Nonetheless we were some-
how unable to capture these spy culprits before the end of the war,
although we were positive of their existence. After Japan met defeat,
Yoshie's special radio-probe squads played an active role in the Indo-
nesian independence movement at the time of Sukarno's kidnapping.25
All the squad members were eventually arrested as suspected war
criminals, while most of the enlisted men who were not Kenpei re-
turned to their units scotfree.26
Rebellion, Intelligence, and Espionage
Japan had plunged into the Greater East Asia War in December
1941, and by March 9, 1942 our army had invaded Java and forced
the Dutch army to surrender. In the interim the Dutch had roughly
three months time to prepare for the Japanese occupation. By the
time our Japanese army made its advance, the Dutch authorities had
already established a powerful intelligence network using armed radio
spies which spanned all of Indonesia. They tended to use the pro-
Dutch half-breeds, the Menadonese, and the Ambonese, sending the
inexperienced ones to Australia early on to be trained in espionage.
One can see from this experience just how ingeniously the Dutch colo-
nialists had operated for the past three hundred and fifty years. No
wonder the half-breeds tried to highlight their Dutch white man's
blood! And they used it well—to be appointed to positions in the
military and government, where they served as an important base for
the intelligence network.
Indeed the half-breeds had secured a decent livelihood and so-
cial standing for themselves under the Dutch. But it was doubtful
that the status quo would be maintained under the Japanese occupa-
tion since, in spite of appearing to cooperate with us, in their hearts
25.	We learn later that the Kenpeitai failed to recover the kidnapped
Sukarno, even with the assistance of the radio-probe squads.
[Gaishi, p. 1221).
26.	Another demonstration, to the Kenpei, of the injustice of the war
crime trials.31
the half-breeds [1031] were secretly praying for the return of Dutch
rule. You can see here the difficulty of colonial rule faced by the
Japanese military administration which had to use them, because they
knew everything, to maintain the civilian administration. Clearly, the
creation of the half-breeds, like the making of intellectual poverty
among the natives, was a link in the shrewd Dutch policy. For us
Kenpei, who sought only to maintain peace and protect the army, this
continual spying under a military government was bound to turn the
half-breeds into our bitterest of enemies. Naturally when the war
ended in Japan's defeat we Kenpei found ourselves up against the re-
criminations of the half-breeds and others on the Dutch side.
However, the Japanese army was narrowly saved by the exis-
tence of the native Indonesians. They were not especially anti-
Japanese and, although they even rioted with a fiery surge of inde-
pendence at the time of the Japanese defeat, they were essentially of
a gentle nature. Since they were extremely poorly off, being socially
controlled by the Dutch and the half-breeds, and economically sup-
pressed by the half-breeds and the overseas Chinese, they partook in
almost no anti-Japanese activity. In fact, the remarkable thing about
Java and Sumatra was that the Dutch government had taken great
pains to ensure that there were very few problems with Communist
activity.27
When the Sixteenth Army occupied Java, we put Governor Gen-
eral van Mook and the chief officials in his government, the Dutch
Indies Commander Lieutenant General Ter Poorten, some 93,000 Dutch
Indies troops, and approximately 5,000 American, British, and Aus-
tralian troops and military personnel into prisoner-of-war camps in
the Batavia area.28 Mrs. van Mook and other civilian personnel who
had Dutch citizenship were placed in a separate detention camp. How
we Kenpei struggled to maintain law and order and combat the local
spying activity! An account of the sorts of incidents encountered by
our various units follows.
Around June of 1942 in Batavia, just as the Sixteenth Army
military administration was getting underway, a rumor that "the Japa-
nese will soon lose the war, and the Dutch forces will return, so that
those who have been cooperating with the Japanese will be punished
as traitors" began circulating from God knows where. In order to
gauge the effect of this rumor on public opinion, the Batavia Ken-
peitai undertook an investigation and discovered that the rumor had
originated in the detention center for Dutch women and children.
27.	Suppression of communists was a primary function of the Ken-
peitai in Japan.
28.	This information is clearly erroneous, as Lieutenant-Governor
H. J. van Mook escaped to Australia on March 7, 1942, the day be-
fore the Allied forces were surrendered to the Japanese. See Walter
B. Maass, The Netherlands at War: 1940-45 (London: Abelard-
Schuman, 1970), p. 100.32
Batavia unit commander Major Taniguchi Kiyoshi then launched a care-
ful investigation within the detention center on the off chance that
the principal offender was one of the women detainees. The culprit
turned out to be none other than the Governor General van Mook's
wife, who had had permission to travel to and from the camp and had
been secretly listening to foreign radio broadcasts. Knowing the
propaganda reports of the British and American side, she was
deliberately spreading this rumor. Major Taniguchi immediately
confiscated the radio but [1032] simply scolded and warned the
governor general's wife.29
In September our Batavia Kenpeitai unit detected that some
half-breed gas company employees were plotting to help the Allied
forces land. We Kenpeitai also knew well that the half-breeds were
anti-Japanese. However, severely punishing all the half-breed em-
ployees would clearly have necessitated the suspension of all gas com-
pany activity. We therefore chose to arrest only ten half-breeds and
give them light sentences.30
In another incident, on a Japanese holiday when the Sun flag
was raised, the [Japanese] anthem was sung, and "Banzai" was to
come at the end, half-breed employees refused to cry "Banzai," say-
ing "We are not Japanese." This came to be known as the "Anti-
Japanese Banzai Refusal Incident."
This sort of incident abounded. Around February 1943 the wife
of a Dutch businessman named N [?] in Batavia was arrested for dis-
seminating a rumor similar to that spread by the Dutch governor gen-
eral's wife. Another incident involved a public corporation managed
by the Dutch that handled tobacco, coffee, sugar, and palm oil, and
employed some 1 ,000 half-breeds. The Batavia Kenpeitai unit dis-
covered that these half-breeds, who had continued to be employed
even after military rule had been established, were storing up
weapons, and forming an underground organization in preparation for
an uprising on the occasion of an Allied landing. All involved were
arrested in April 1943, and dozens of the main criminals were sent to
the Kenpeitai headquarters, after we had gathered such undeniable
evidence as weapons and other espionage material.
At headquarters the incident was immediately assigned to the
Tokko division.31 But, in the midst of investigating this incident,
29.	Had the offending person carried less rank, she might have been
treated a great deal less leniently. For a first-hand account of the
tortures suffered by one Australian prisoner-of-war who was caught
assembling a short-wave radio, see Russell, Knights of Bushido, pp.
194-98.
30.	This incident demonstrates how much the Japanese army relied
on local personnel and resources to conduct its war.
31.	Tokko is an acronym for Tokubetsu Koto Keisatsu [Special
Higher Police], commonly known as the thought control police. See
Translators' Preface.33
the Kenpeitai headquarters became so overwhelmed by time con-
straints, the frequency of incidents, and a shortage of hands that we
ended up being unable to afford the time to conduct martial law pro-
ceedings scrupulously.32 Major Murase Mitsuo, chief of the Tokko di-
vision at the time, therefore received approval from Lieutenant Gen-
eral Harada Kumakichi33 to sentence or take severe measures with
those whose investigations had been concluded and for whom suspicion
had been established, without holding martial law proceedings. "Se-
vere measures" meant execution, or "kikosaku" as we Kenpeitai called
it. 34
32.	A martial law proceeding [gunritsu kaigi] was a summary pro-
cedure used by the Japanese military in occupied territories to inflict
punishment on wrongdoers from enemy armies or the local populace.
As compared with a court martial (gunpo kaigi], a martial law pro-
ceeding provided the accused with no right to present a defense. No
law or edict expressly authorized the use of martial law proceedings,
but the Kenpeitai argued that the right to use such proceedings was
encompassed by the military commander-in-chief's "authority of
supreme command." According to the Seishi, it was common practice
for military judge advocates to receive directives on martial law
proceedings from the military chiefs of staff, who had only to report
their policies to the commander-in-chief. Ex-Kenpei claim that in a
martial law proceeding "the substance of the trial was nowhere com-
pletely different from a court martial . . . [and] should be regarded
with equal respect." (Seishi, p. 1246.) These summary proceedings
were popularly called "Kenpeitai proceedings" among the Japanese be-
cause the judge advocates, prosecutors, and judges were often all
Kenpei. An explanation and defense of gunritsu kaigi by a former
Kenpei appears in_ Miyazaki Kiyotaka, Gunpo Kaigi [Courts Martial],
(Tokyo: Fuji Shobo, 1953).
33.	Japanese Commander-in-Chief of the Sixteenth Army in Java,
November 1942-April 1945.
34.	Dr. Tetsuya Kataoka coined the phrase "Operation Hades" as an
appropriate translation for this Kenpeitai internal code word.
Kikosaku is a compound word, the first character of which comes from
the Buddhist term Kosen ["yellow spring"], which is an abode for the
dead in Asian mythology. The underground spring was known as the
"yellow spring" because yellow was the color of the earth in China,
where the myth originated. While Kosen was originally simply a land
where all dead people go, as distinct from the Buddhist notion of
hell, nowadays particularly in Japan the two notions (Hades and Hell)
are confounded in most people's minds. Nihon Daijiten Kankokai,
ed., Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1972-76), 7:532. It
is fair to assume, then, that the word kosen, and hence the prefix
ki, had a hellish connotation to the Kenpeitai. The second two
syllables of the term kikosaku mean engineering, construction,
manoeuvering and the like, and are best translated as "Operation."34
By this time—July 1943—the Japanese forces had already lost at
Guadalcanal, and had met honorable defeat in the dead of winter on
Attu Island; Navy Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku had been killed in
battle; and day by day the tide of war was turning against the Japa-
nese forces. Even on Java the anti-Japanese activity was mounting
and the frequency of incidents was making the Kenpeitai nervous. It
was at this point that the Chief of the Tokko division, Major Murase,
decided that following the normal procedure from the reporting of an
incident through to the martial law court proceedings, was hindering
us Kenpei from accomplishing our duties.35 The army was being par-
alyzed, and the work of the military government being impeded.36
[1033] The word kikosaku comes from the word Kosen.37 Even
though the Kenpeitai had been under murderous pressure38 at the
time, the Dutch side viewed the omission of martial law proceedings as
an illegal act, and after the war it was used as a pretext for accus-
ing the Kenpeitai of war crimes. But the Kenpei who were there at
the time remember that both the Kenpei and the private first-class
soldiers were well aware that kikosaku was illegal. But they claim
that realistically, since not a single day had passed quietly without
having to cope with countless incidents, honorably conducting martial
law proceedings would have completely paralyzed both the Kenpeitai
and military headquarters. They also claim that the normal citizens
were at fault, for they knew that it was a crime for them, to say
nothing of a soldier, to be forming schemes for spying or rebelling in
any way against an occupying army during wartime.
In any event, the decision to perform kikosaku involved the in-
vestigation by each unit of the incident, and the reporting of the in-
cident to headquarters. If the army commander gave his approval, it
was permissible for the unit to execute the criminal on the spot.
This sort of execution was called kikosaku.39
35.	The Dutch executed Murase by firing squad in Glodok prison on
November 3, 1949. After being sentenced to death, Murase wrote to
his subordinates awaiting their executions in the same cell block of
his non-attachment to life:	"now, for my life, I have not even the
slightest lingering affection; nor for my death, have I the slightest
remorse ..." See Isho, pp. 443-45.
36.	The Gaishi authors cite the July 1943 series of kikosaku as one
of the three main events that took place during wartime in Java, in
the minds of ex-Kenpei. The other two major incidents were the
Tasikmalaya Revolt and the Blitar Rebellion (see forthcoming discus-
sion in text). (Gaishi, p. 1112.)
37.	See footnote 34 above.
38.	It is unclear whether this pun was intentional, but surely the
irony of the choice of adjective is evident in retrospect.
39.	In the Tokyo War Crimes Trial a Major Katsumura, former opera-
tions officer of the Java Kenpeitai headquarters in Batavia gave35
But one anti-Japanese conspiracy incident involving the Saibai
Corporation led to a fairly serious error on the part of the Batavia
Kenpeitai unit. The investigation into this incident was carried out
by the chief of the Tokko division at the Kenpeitai headquarters.
evidence admitting to execution without trial in the so-called "ki" case
in which, according to the prosecution's summary of Katsumura's re-
port, "239 persons were executed in strict secrecy. ... In order to
settle the case as soon as possible, this case was dealt with on the
spot. The investigation officer decided whether to inflict the death
sentence and his decision was approved by the higher officials on the
authority of the commander-in-chief after examination by the staff
officer for Kempei [sic] affairs at army headquarters." Major Katsu-
mura also gave evidence about a similar "Ji" operation that took place
in Sumatra in 1943. According to the prosecution's oral summary sub-
mitted as evidence of Katsumura's written report, the same system
was used as in the "Ki" operation in Java: "The suspects were not
sent up to Court Martial but a speedy way of dealing with them was
adopted. . . . When the crime was clearly proved—in the opinion of
the torturing investigators—and the death sentence was considered
suitable, the criminals were executed, on the decision of the Army.
These executions were carried out fortnightly by every detachment of
every section, in secrecy. The executions were at once reported to
Kempei [sic] headquarters, who at once reported to the Army."
R. John Pritchard and Sonia M. Zaide, eds., International Military
Tribunal for the Far East:	The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pro-
ceedings, 22 vols. (New York: Garland, 1981), 6: 13701-702, 13810.
International Military Tribunal for the Far East:	The Tokyo War
Crimes Trial: Index and Guide, 5 vols. (New York: Garland, 1981-
85), 3: 226, 228.
In "Self-criticism by the Kenpei," a three page section toward
the end of the Seishi, the authors have the following to say about the
executions they committed without a trial: "In the southern occupied
territories, especially in the islands, there were many instances in
which enemy air force pilots were executed without martial law pro-
ceedings [gunritsu kaigi]. Conditions were such that there were in-
evitably no judge advocates, and communication with [those conduct-
ing] martial law proceedings had been cut off, but all the same, in
whatever case in the army, one should probably always offer the
opinion to one's superior that trials should be enforced. Even if it
was a military order, we cannot nod in approval at the fact that the
Kenpei themselves, who had a responsibility to uphold the legal
system, executed prisoners of war without a trial. Also, as far as
the execution of prisoners of war is concerned, in the war crimes
trials the Allied armies pointed out the atrocity of decapitation.
Because it is clearly stated in martial law that death should be by
shooting, the Kenpei should have followed this guideline in offering to
their superiors their opinion on the method of execution." (Seishi,
p. 1299.)36
The arrests were made by the Batavia unit, to whom headquarters
had sent a list of those to be executed in three months. Thirteen
persons were executed in connection with this incident. Among the
names on the roster was the newly identified ringleader of the con-
spiracy, whom the Batavia unit set off to arrest immediately. The
subject was at the home of a Dutch clergyman. When the Kenpei ar-
rived, a young woman about twenty-four years old came out of the
house and, declaring that she was the person on the roster, gave
herself up for arrest. The true criminal was really this woman's
younger brother, but the young woman protected her brother know-
ing that she would be killed. The Kenpei failed to detect the truth,
since the roster was in English and the family names of the woman
and her brother were the same, and because it was not at all unusual
for women to take part in these kind of activities.
The young woman kept quiet and covered up for her brother
until the very end, when she was executed along with the twelve
criminals. The Kenpei sympathized with and were deeply impressed
by the woman's quiet composure, but when the orders came they
could not help but obey.
When a letter of complaint was issued by the woman's family
after the war, headquarters and the Batavia unit Kenpei were aston-
ished. Until the letter of complaint came out, we had had no idea
that the girl had been a substitute. It was probably inevitable that
this mistake was treated as a war crime. This woman who kept
silent, uttering not a word in her defense to the very end, was
really admirable, and remains a heart-rendering memory in the minds
of the Kenpei from those days.
[ 1034] In August 1943 we Kenpei uncovered an attempt at anti-
Japanese conspiracy led by the Dutch professor Bijirusuma [?] and
other school officials. About the same time we also detected an
anti-Japanese plot led by three Indian-European half-breeds, who
were clearly storing up_weapons for an armed uprising. The culprits
v/ere executed via kikosaku. Then, in mid-September, a group of
several dozen Ambonese night watchmen in Surabaya was arrested
wholesale for using fireworks during the daytime to guide the Austra-
lian air forces to bombing targets and important facilities.
In February 1944 the world-famous Indonesian microbiologist Dr.
Maruzuki was arrested by the Batavia Kenpeitai. Unhappy that the
natives were being rounded up to work at military facilities, Dr.
Maruzuki caused an outbreak of dysentery among the workers by in-
jecting dysentery bacteria into their normal preventive vaccines. In-
capacitating the workers was a plot to obstruct Japanese military con-
struction.
We Kenpei were suspicious of the sudden outbreak of dysentery
among the laborers, and proceeded to conduct investigations. The
investigations took over three months, if only because the laborers
were naturally unsanitary; they became a sort of blind spot in our
investigations, causing unforeseen delays. But eventually it was dis-
covered that Professor Maruzuki's injections were to blame.37
We Kenpei realized early on that Professor Maruzuki was a man
of influence in pro-Dutch circles and popular among the Indonesians,
so he was treated with extreme caution from the moment of his arrest
through to the investigations. Accordingly, his punishment was rela-
tively light.
In April, midway through the Maruzuki investigation, the public
railway administrative offices throughout the island erupted in an at-
tempt at rebellion. This incident may have been an outgrowth of the
Saibai Corporation incident of May 1943, as the two organizations were
related. The plot had been engineered by all the corporation officials
on the entire island, including the very director of the Railway
Corporation. Their aim was to destroy the railway network and aid
the counteroffensive Allied landing. After a careful investigation was
carried out jointly by the Batavia, Semarang, and Purwokerto
Kenpeitai units, the top brass was arrested simultaneously in the
three respective places and the principal offenders were executed by
kikosaku.
The Batavia unit was extremely busy, with incident after inci-
dent cropping up in a row. We Kenpei got burned, especially by
false rumors invented by the mixed bloods and Chinese. The Robbs-
Carlton [?]40 incident was just such a case in point, but a truly more
serious incident occurred in the military command in 1945.
[1035] The military command had an international broadcast
station which disseminated propaganda among the natives. Four
Dutch-lndonesian half-breeds did the translation work. They often
secretly listened to our military headquarters short wave radio, and
after work would spread news that was not helpful to the Japanese
army (such things as where the Japanese forces had been wiped out
on such and such an island, where the Allied forces were landing on
Java, that the Japanese were sure to lose, and so on). This sort of
news began spreading around the middle of 1944, but even the
Kenpeitai could not easily identify the source of these reports. The
source was indeed within the military command: the beacon does not
shine on its own base. By the time the Kenpeitai investigations re-
vealed that the four half-breeds had indeed been responsible it was
already June, and the war ended midway through the arrests and in-
vestigations. This was the last of the incidents like the incidents
handled by the Batavia Kenpeitai.
Then there was the Bogor Kenpei Unit. Soon after it was
formed, the Bogor Unit took over the job of handling the rumors cir-
culated by the anti-Japanese Briatsu Society41 conspiracy. In July,
this unit encountered its most serious incident. The Dutch army sur-
rendered as soon as the Japanese army occupied Java. A young
40.	Robesu-Carudon in romaji.
41.	Probably Briat,_ as in the Briat people of eastern Siberia.
Usually spelled Buriyoto in Japanese.38
Dutch First Lieutenant named Welter commanded one of the companies,
and at the time of his surrender had pledged to cooperate with the
Japanese and spy for our side. But the Kenpeitai discovered that
Welter was actually organizing an espionage ring with the help of
eighty half-breeds in Bogor behind our backs. First Lieutenant
Welter was arrested, sent to martial law proceedings,1*2 and finally
executed.1*3 But it turned out that Welter was the son of a former
Dutch Prime Minister. After the war First Lieutenant Welter's death
in Java was glorified in Holland as an heroic anti-Japanese act.
In a similar incident, the Dutch officer Captain Wernink capitu-
lated, pledged assistance to the Japanese, and secretly began organ-
izing an underground. He was also arrested and executed. 4
Finally there were such failed attempts at espionage as the De
Toortz [?] incident, the Pati conspiracy incident, and the Mulder [?]
conspiracy, all ending in arrests.
The Bandung Kenpeitai, located some 130 kilometers to the
southeast of Batavia, had to contend with the Kruisman45 conspiracy,
the plot by Dutch Captain deLange, and other incidents. deLange
was executed during the war for being a spy.46
The important Japanese navy base was located in eastern Java
in Surabaya across from Madura island. The Australian forces re-
garded the spot as a key strategic base because of its great ammuni-
tion, grain, and fuel storage capacity. It was also the target on
Java [1036] most often bombarded by enemy air raids. The Surabaya
unit was in charge of patrolling this area.
In August of 1943 the Surabaya unit detected an anti-Japanese
plot fomenting, and immediately arrested several half-breeds working
on a naval construction site. During the interrogations some Kenpei
excessively tortured and killed one of the criminals. Consequently
the Surabaya unit yielded eight war criminals after the defeat.
42.	Gunritsu kaigi.
43.	First Lieutenant Welter was executed on May 15, 1943. Prof.
Dr. I. J. Brugmans et al., eds., Nederlandsch-lndie onder Japanse
Bezetting: Gegevens en documenten over de joren 1942-45 (Franeker:
Uitgave T. Wever, 1960), p. 660.
44.	Captain A.L.J. Wernink was executed in Batavia on December
12, 1944. Ibid., p. 660.
45.	Kurisuman in romaji.
46.	Captain R. C. deLange was accused of being the leader of an
underground group in Bandung. He was executed by the Japanese in
Batavia on April 10, 1943. Brugmans et al., eds., Nederlandsch-
lndie, p. 645.39
In September the unit arrested a spy ring operated largely by
Ambonese. The group's aim had been to guide the Australian forces
to bombing sites using flash signals.
In the latter part of 1943 Java began to be bombarded by the
Australian forces. Surabaya was bombed repeatedly because of the
naval base there. Ships leaving the bay were attacked by US subma-
rines, which had learned the whereabouts of the vessels from spies.
Some 65 kilometers south of Surabaya an oil-pipeline originally set up
by the Dutch was destroyed a few times. The damage was relatively
light and repairs did not require many days, but the Bojonegoro
Kenpei lacked the manpower to patrol a pipeline of such length.
Even while we kept strict guard, it was damaged again and again.
Once we made the arrests, we found that half-breeds formed the nu-
cleus of the sabotage ring in this case as well. As for the con-
spiracy to blow up the oil field, we made certain to arrest the spy
rings before they made their attempts.
Incidents involving the Purwokerto Kenpeitai unit included the
failed revolt of the public railway corporation mentioned earlier, which
was the largest incident [encountered by this particular unit], an in-
cident in which the Batavia and Semarang units were also involved,
and the Overseas Chinese Linquan incident involving spies planted by
the Dutch. The Kenpeitai detachment sent to Cilacap, an important
port—the largest on the southern coast of Java—was busy keeping
track of, investigating, and arresting armed spies dispatched at night
by US and Australian submarines. A number of arrests were also
made of half-bloods communicating with enemy submarines from remote
areas on land. In other cases, people making their lives by the sea
were arrested for communicating with English submarines navigating
the Indian Ocean.
The Kediri unit on eastern Java to the southwest of Surabaya
encountered the conspiracy of the people's Sarekat Islam party, a
public pro-Dutch political society.47 There were four incidents of ar-
rests of armed infiltrators and about a dozen arrests of spies planted
by the Dutch. In truth, there must have been a few times more than
the arrested numbers.
[1037] At the time Java was already fairly developed and there
were few areas that remained unexplored by man. The jungles were
not very dense, so it was not easy for spies to hide. Although
planted spies achieved some measure of success, infiltrating spies
were easily detected. As Japan continued her offensive, the number
of arrests continued to increase, but a number of Dutch officers es-
caped to Australia and returned to Java bringing with them several
spies newly trained in Australia. The Kenpeitai occasionally patrolled
the southern coast of Java because there were only a few coastlines
47. Sarikatto-aya in romaji. This was, of course, the oldest anti-
Dutch nationalist party in Indonesia.40
where it was possible to land, but it was still easy for groups of
armed spies that prepared carefully to infiltrate.
But then, the majority of spies used by the Kenpeitai were
Dutch-lndonesian half-breeds. They misled the Kenpei who assessed
information by intentionally spreading false rumors. In particular,
there were more than a few occasions when we mistakenly made ar-
rests, having been led on by false information.
The Tosikmaloya Revolt
Tasikmalaya, located in western Java between Bandung and
Cilacap, was a large Muslim gathering place. Soon after the Japanese
took over, the Muslim leader Mustafa began stirring up anti-Japanese
sentiment, and clearly harboring plans to build an Islamic kingdom at
the first opportunity. He was supported by approximately 3,000 dev-
otees and adherents, so his influence could not be taken lightly. Do
what it might, the Tasikmalaya Kenpeitai detachment was small and
could not treat any action lightly.
In March 1944 Mustafa incited an anti-Japanese riot. The local
detachment sent Sergeants Kobayashi and Nakamikawa, Corporals
Okuno and Kuwada, and local interpreters to the site to quell the riot
and gather intelligence. In the midst of reconnoitering, Sergeants
Kobayashi and Nakamikawa were sighted by the mob and slaughtered.
Corporals Okuno and Kuwada barely escaped disaster and survived to
report the situation to the local detachment.48
At this point the Tasikmalaya Kenpeitai unit commander became
determined to crush the riot. He enlisted the support of one com-
pany of locally stationed infantry, mobilized over ten tank trucks,
surrounded the rioters assembled at the church,49 and ordered the
48.	General Yamamoto Motoshige, chief of the Japanese military ad-
ministration, tells the story differently. According to Yamamoto, the
Kenpei had come upon a gathering of Mustafa's students who were
outfitted with spears in order to defend themselves against gangs of
thieves terrorizing the neighborhood at the time. The Kenpei mis-
takenly believed the Muslims were organizing an anti-Japanese riot,
approached Mustafa, and began to interrogate him using physical
force. This incensed some people in the crowd, and led to the spon-
taneous outburst of violence. Kanahele, "Japanese Occupation of
Indonesia," pp. 139-40. For other accounts of the Tasikmalaya
revolt, see Benedict R. O'G. Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution:
Occupation and Resistance,	1941-1946 (Ithaca:	Cornell University
Press, 1972), p. 35, and Harry J. Benda, The Crescent and the
Rising Sun (The Hague, van Hoeve, 1958), pp. 159-61 , 269, n. 48.
49.	Here the authors use the term kyokai, which usually refers to a
church, when they are really speaking of a mosque (kaikyojiin in
Japanese).41
mob to surrender. He was met with resistance; a battle ensued, but
the riot was eventually crushed, with a death toll of several hundred.
Mustafa and twenty-three under him were sent to their deaths follow-
ing martial law proceedings,50 while others were imprisoned in the
government military detention unit. This was the greatest purely ci-
vilian rebellion in the history of the military government in Java, and
clearly brought home to us the fearsome nature of religious rebellion.
The incident recalled the famous "Ikko ikki"51 of the Honganji
sect in Japanese history, the uprisings that continued from the middle
of the Muromachi period through to the time of the Warring States.
The great sense of mission felt by the Ikko ikki religious adherents
who blindly followed their leaders confronted others with a very par-
ticular view of life and death, [1038] a religious conviction which
feared not even death as a means to accomplish a goal. During the
Tasikmalaya riot, when their leader gave his orders, the mob of be-
lievers, armed only with hatchets, charged for all they were worth at
the surrounding Kenpei who called for their surrender, climbing over
their dead comrades even as they fell under the fire of the Japanese
forces. The ghastly sight of the mob closing in, with their hatchets
above their heads, is said to have set even the Kenpei, with our vast
battlefield experience, trembling in spite of ourselves.
There were considerable regional differences in degrees of faith
among the Javanese Muslims, but at the time Tasikmalaya was an ac-
tive area. The Islamic doctrine of afterlife (Akhirat52) teaches that
people are revived after death. Except that the idea that the good
are blessed in heaven while the bad receive torture and suffering in
hell is assuredly Buddhist._ Also basic to Islam is the fatalistic tenet
concerning Cod's will (Qada) founded in an absolute belief in the one
and only God Allah, and the belief that everything happens just as
50.	Gunritsu kaigi.
51.	Ikko ikki ["single-minded uprisings" ] refers to uprisings led by
a militant Buddhist sect called Jodo shinshu [True Pure Land], which
earned the epithet ikko ["single-minded"] for its zealotry. The
headquarters of the sect were in Honganji, the Temples of the
Original Vow, in Kyoto. Perhaps partially because of its disregard
for high ritual and emphasis on salvation through faith alone, the
True Pure Land sect had a greater following among peasants than
rival Buddhist sects that drew on support from samurai and noble-
men. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the armed adherents
of the True Pure Land sect clashed openly with their Buddhist rivals
and the feudal warlords. They fought fiercely for ninety years, until
they finally succumbed to the feudal landlords in 1580. (John K.
Fairbank et al., East Asia: Tradition and Transformation [Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1978], p. 381. John W. Hall and Takeshi
Toyoda, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age [Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1977] p. 123.)
52.	Aahira in romaji.42
Allah wishes. Whenever the respected leader spouted his prophecies,
the ignorant followers blindly believed.	Because this incident took
place on what was clearly Islamic ground, the Kenpeitai had a hard
time dealing with it afterwards.53
When it comes to blind faith, communism shares something with
religion. All along the Kenpeitai was involved in fateful show-downs
with the Communist Party, but there was virtually no organized Com-
munist Party in Java at the time.
The Indonesian Communist Party was formed in May 1920
(Taisho 9) as the first such party in Asia. At the time there was a
considerable popular movement and the party received support from
all social classes, but by 1927 western Sumatra and Java were under-
going full-scale revolution, and the Dutch authorities began to sup-
press the uprisings. Later, in 1945 when the Greater East Asia War
ended, interest resurfaced with the Indonesian independence. Thus
Java was the one place where there was virtually no Communist
party.
The Rebellion of the Indonesian Volunteer Army54
In the latter half of 1943 the Japanese army established and be-
gan training the Indonesian volunteer army. Finally a sense of inde-
pendence was beginning to awaken in the Indonesians. However in
February 1945 Suprijadi, the commander of the volunteer army unit in
Blitar in eastern Java, who was opposed to the rigorous Japanese
army training and the wild private lifestyles of the Japanese officers,
conspired with a dozen or more top cadres in the volunteer army.
They called an emergency gathering of the entire battalion of 300
53.	In Sumatra as well, there were spontaneous outbursts against
the Japanese. One incident, known to the Kenpeitai as the Raid of
the Kotaraja Muslims, was triggered by a display of disrespect for
Islamic culture by some Japanese soldiers. "Half as a joke, they [the
Japanese soldiers] ate the carp that the natives were keeping in a
bathing pool close to the church. Full of hatred for what the com-
pany had done to their sacred church, a mob of over 1 ,000 native
Muslims attacked the company headquarters and slaughtered about
forty Japanese soldiers. One Kenpei attached to the company was
also killed. . . . From then on we Kenpei made a point of chatting
with the Muslim leaders, and repaying the church which respected the
ardent beliefs of the natives. In general, we strove to accustom
ourselves to the Muslim way of life." {Gaishi, pp. 1132-33.)
54.	_ In Japanese, the giyugun. The authors of Seishi use the term
giyugun generally to refer to either of the two Japanese-trained
Indonesian volunteer armies—(the Peta [Pembela Tanah Air—Volunteer
Army of Defenders of the Fatherland] in Java and the giyugun in
Sumatra—or any of their units.43
men, and all of the men deserted in full force. Had this been the
only incident, it might have been easier to accept, but the regiment
proceeded to attack the telephone bureau and the hotel where the
Japanese officers were lodged, managing to kill both the telephone
bureau director and the two half-breed female employees of the hotel,
while injuring several others. This required the mobilization of the
Kediri Kenpeitai detachment. With the help of the central and eastern
defense corps, the Kediri Kenpeitai detachment [1039] began encour-
aging the deserting battalion to submit and quelled the rebellion.
They arrested all of the men, with the exception of the ringleader
Suprijadi,55 and court-martialled ten cadres.56
In the Great East Asia War the most rebellion, conspiracy, and
espionage occurred in Java and the Philippines. What was unique
about Java was that so many strategems were detected before comple-
tion. There was not a spot anywhere where there was a Kenpeitai
unit or detachment that did not have any incidents. The Serang unit
arrested four armed radio spies who had infiltrated via submarine,
the Kediri unit seven armed spies commanded by a Dutch First Lieu-
tenant, and a half-breed who made counterfeit coupons, for example.
In another case the Kenpeitai, informed in advance by intelligence,
apprehended armed spies landing by night in submarine-launched
rubber boats. In this case the armed spies were arrested but not
killed. The most important thing was not to let them operate their
radios.- Once spies have been in contact by radio, their arrest is of
no value, because they cannot be used as double agents if they have
already communicated their situation. Because they were armed
spies, they were often equipped with portable light machine-guns.
Consequently, there was a good possibility that those of us on the
Kenpeitai side would be killed, and the arrest of armed spies was a
life-risking operation.
55.	Suprijadi apparently vanished during the uprising, but no
announcement of his death was ever made. He lived on as a legend
and was appointed posthumously to the Indonesian cabinet as minister
of the people's security in October 1945. (Anderson, Java in a Time
of Revolution, pp. 11, n. 3; 232.)
56.	The term used here is gunpo kaigi ni sochi-shita, or court-
martialled. No less than the full formality of a courts-martial could
be expected, given the fact that the offenders were volunteer auxil-
iaries trained by the Japanese themselves. Sukarno and other influ-
ential Indonesians were coerced into coming to the trial to make it
look as though they condoned the disciplinary action being taken, but
restraint was used in punishing the offenders to reduce the chance of
a mass reprisal. (Ibid., p. 74, n. 32; Kanahele, "Japanese Occupa-
tion of Indonesia," p. 187.44
Deplorable Incidents in the Army
In mid-1943 a Kenpeitai Company Commander (First Lieutenant)
was murdered at the army veterinary hospital in Bandung. The
Bandung Kenpeitai investigation was under way immediately and re-
vealed that the culprit was a private57 in his forties who had been an
orderly for the victim. It was an unusual case in Java.
The private explained his motive to the Kenpeitai. The events
had proceeded as follows according to the Kenpei record:58 The pri-
vate was aboard a ship transporting ailing horses when the ship was
attacked and sunk by enemy aircraft. When the older private at-
tempted to board a lifeboat with the rest of the soldiers, the company
commander refused to allow him to get on, saying that there was not
enough space for everyone and the eldest soldier should die first.
The private was dangerously close to drowning when another lifeboat
picked him up, but his hatred for the company commander never dis-
appeared.
Later on the private became an orderly under the company com-
mander. The young company commander lacked humanity and treated
his soldiers pretty roughly. And so it was that the orderly ended up
killing the company commander: the private took his own saber and
stabbed the company commander to death. Of course the private also
had his own emotional problems.
It being wartime, the killing of a superior was punishable by
death. [1040] In the end the old enlisted man was court-martial led
and executed, but the case gave much cause for thought.
One of the most difficult moral problems for the army at the
time was the treatment of older conscripted men.59 According to
military regulations, young commissioned and noncommissioned officers
and even veteran soldiers would have to train and command older new
conscripts who had both social status and ability. It was utterly
tragic when an older man was led by an inferior man. This was a
structural problem with the army hierarchy that could not be helped,
which necessarily led to much anxiety; it [the system] certainly would
be unbearable were it not for humanitarian considerations. An excel-
lent example of such a conflict can be seen in the case of Matsumae
Shigeyoshi, the former Telecommunication Engineering Bureau Chief.
At age forty-four, he was high-handedly conscripted as a second-
57.	The rank of itto-hei in the Japanese army is equivalent to the
rank of private E-2 in the United States army. Masuda Koh, ed.,
Kenkyushafs New Japanese-English Dictionary, pp. 2102-3.
58.	Kenpei Chosho in Japanese.
59.	The Japanese army in Java had an unusually high proportion of
older recruits, probably because Java was one of the least active
combat zones among the occupied territories. Kanahele, "Japanese
Occupation of Indonesia," pp. vi, 65.45
class soldier for ruffling the feathers of Prime Minister Tojo; the inci-
dent is a famous one in Showa history. Fortunately there were many
in the military who sympathized with Matsumae and his levy was later
cancelled.
There is no doubt that conscripting seniors as soldiers caused
much grief in the army, where solidarity is a cardinal principle.
Certainly an inexcusable lack of consideration for an older person
played a part in the Bandung company commander murder case. Even
today there must be many people who remember experiencing such
treatment.60
There were also incidents of corruption within the army com-
mand. Over several years, as the initial occupation turned into a
military administration, it was inevitable that military discipline be-
came somewhat lax. Under tense wartime conditions, it is easy
enough to uphold military discipline, but as the occupation moves
away from the battlefield, men everywhere both east and west of the
ocean lay bare their weaknesses.
We Java Kenpeitai were unique first in	that we	were	at the
mercy of the ingenious colonial	policy of the	Dutch.	The	Dutch-
Indies colonial policy must be viewed as a success, at the very least.
Their clever colonial policy was responsible for both the large number
of Dutch-lndonesian half-breeds	and the large	number	of pro-Dutch
factions in other racial groups,	as well as for	the extensive	intelli-
gence network which the Dutch were putting the finishing touches on
when the Japanese invaded. The intelligence activity was conducted
by planted spies in cooperation with soldiers and residents who had
supposedly surrendered, and developed into a full-scale anti-Japanese
movement during the occupation. The onshore infiltration of armed
spies from abroad also drew the entire island of Java into a vortex of
stratagems.
For the sparsely equipped Kenpeitai, control and suppression61
became a difficult task. Although it was easier geographically to
60. The story of Kitani recalls the harsh treatment suffered by the
protagonist in Zone of Emptiness.	For his failure to turn in the
money in a wallet he found in a bathroom, which turned out to belong
to a senior officer, the protagonist is imprisoned for two years,
brutally treated by the Kenpei and his other superiors, and emotion-
ally shattered. Hiroshi Noma, Zone of Emptiness (Cleveland: World
Publishing, 1956), translated from Japanese to French by B. Frecht-
man, and from French to English by H. de Boissel.
61.	The two Japanese words torishimari ["control"] and dan'atsu
["suppression"] are combined here in the compound torishimari-
dan'atsu which neatly summarizes the primary functions of the
Kenpeitai. The noun torishimari comes from the verb torishimaru,
meaning to control strictly, police, or manage. To explain the word,46
control the investigations than it was in other areas, the sheer volume of
incidents and arrests was a phenomenon unheard of in other Southern
regions.
After the war ended in our defeat, [1041] the Java Kenpeitai
turned out the greatest number of war criminals; this stemmed from
Holland's display of overly strong retaliation. It is only natural in
wartime for spying and other destructive activities to be quelled by
the occupying forces, but the Dutch had an unusually strong ten-
dency to implicate and sacrifice natives in their stratagems. Of
course this was not unreasonable since "in war all is fair,"6^ a truism
which can probably be understood through comparison with the United
States occupation of Japan. But Holland's case differed from Japan's
because Holland would still have been part of the Allied forces even if
she had met defeat. This difference was evident in the strategic ac-
tivities on Java. But it is still incomprehensible that no criticism
ever emerged of the Dutch military's responsibility for implicating or-
dinary civilians in its stratagems.
As we Java Kenpeitai continued to sentence to kikosaku the
ringleaders caught in the act of spying among those whom we had ar-
rested, intelligence operatives attacked us relentlessly, although we
continued to suppress and capture them. While these ceaseless at-
tacks may reflect another weakness in the Japanese military occupa-
tion policy, it can also be said that by this point the Japanese forces
may have already lost the strategic intelligence battles. And yet to
have court-martialled all these criminals and carried out scrupulous
trials for each of them would certainly have completely paralyzed the
tactical army corps. Under the circumstances, the Java Kenpeitai
alone cannot be blamed for implementing kikosaku.
To us Kenpei, it was not the Indonesians but the Dutch whom
we considered the enemy to the end. Indeed, which was it that pro-
voked the strategic counterattacks by the various racial groups, ex-
cluding the Indonesians? Was it the incompetence of the Japanese
military administration or the cleverness of the Dutch? The answer
probably lies in both. It is the opinion of this association,63 that the
principal reason that the Dutch displayed such a vindictive attitude at
the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten cites the following from a short story by
Natsume Soseki: "The police pronounced that thieves are individuals
each of whom tries to enforce control [torishimaru) as he pleases."
Dan'atsu means to trample down on, suppress, curb, or crush. A
more colloquial version of this compound, then, might be "clamping
down on and snuffing out." Nihon Daijiten Kankokai, ed., Nihon
Kokugo Daijiten, 13:242, 15:68.
62.	The saying "Senso to areba, shudan o erande wa irarenai"
translates literally as "when it comes to war, one has not the choice
to choose the means."
63.	Zenkoku Kenyukai Rengokai.the war crimes trials after the war, must be that they were well
aware that they had sacrificed many natives in their military strata-
gems.THE SUMATRA KENPEITAI
The Kenpeitai Attached to Central and Northern
Sumatra Operations
The first step in the assault on Sumatra was to occupy and se-
cure the Palembang oil refineries without a single strategic error.
The primary goal of the Greater East Asia War was to occupy the
vital resource-rich regions of the Southern territories, making the se-
curing of oil a supreme directive. In fact, more importance was
placed on the occupation of Palembang than on the capture of Singa-
pore, as is evident in the recollections of Southern Army Chief of
Staff Colonel Arao Okinari. In order to ensure the success of the
operation, the Palembang airport had first to be occupied by para-
troop brigades to block enemy planes; then on February 15 the sup-
port of the Thirty-eighth Division (led by Lieutenant General Sakuno
Tadayoshi) was enlisted for an upstream landing on the Telang, Musi,
and Saleh Rivers. The aim was for the attack on Sumatra to begin
immediately before the collapse of Singapore, because the fall of Sing-
apore would surely be a clear warning to the enemy. As it turned
out, however, the collapse of Singapore and the Thirty-eighth Divi-
sion’s landing operation in southern Sumatra took place on the same
day.
The initial operation on Sumatra was a surprise parachute at-
tack by the first air squadron. At noon on February 14 these "para-
troop soldiers of the gods," now immortalized in song, leapt to a suc-
cessful occupation of the Palembang airport and the areas adjacent to
the oil refineries.
On February 20 the bulk of the division arrived in Palembang.
Needless to say, Imperial Headquarters was pleased to learn of this
flawless occupation of the oil fields. However the Kenpeitai had noth-
ing much to do with this particular operation.
On February 19, the Southern Army Supreme Command officially
announced the invasion of central and northern Sumatra and the
Andaman archipelago by the Twenty-fifth Army Division. On March
12, the Imperial Guard61* Division (led by Lieutenant General
Nishimura Takuma) under the direction of the Twenty-fifth Army,
landed with one subdivision on Kotaraja and Sabang Island in north-
ern Sumatra, and the major portion of the division on Labuhanruku.
Since the Dutch army had already unconditionally surrendered as of
64. Konoe in Japanese.
4849
the ninth of March, the operation drew virtually no enemy resistance.
The targets were Medan, Sumatra's main administrative center, and
the important Padang area in the center of Sumatra's western shore.
The operation was completed by March 17.
Under army orders, Army Lieutenant Colonel Oishi Masahiko,
Commander-in-Chief of the Twenty-fifth Army Kenpeitai, dispatched
Lieutenant Colonel Yokota Masataka, chief of the provisional detach-
ment, and his sixty Kenpei to assist with central and northern
Sumatran operations. 5
As planned. Lieutenant Colonel Yokota landed fifteen Kenpei led
by First Lieutenant Coshi Kosuke66 on Sabang Island off Kotaraja.
Here they joined the Kobayashi branch unit (led by Major General
Kobayashi Takashi), while the main provisional unit accompanied the
Imperial Guard Division. The main force of the Kenpeitai landed with
the major force of the [Thirty-eighth] division. While the military
conducted its operations, the Kenpeitai enlisted the help of a fellow
Japanese temporarily residing in Sumatra, a certain Mabuchi, known
as the "Father of Aceh." With his help we made use of pro-Japanese
elements to gather information, [1043] and be on the lookout for dam-
aged bridges, telephone lines, and so on. Assuming primary respon-
sibility for maintaining the military administration system, we turned
our attention towards Medan.
Lieutenant Colonel Yokota had already been instructed by Impe-
rial Guard Division Chief of Staff Colonel Obata Nobuyoshi that, fol-
lowing the invasion of Medan, we Kenpei were to take over the Dutch
administrative system, intern the enemy people, and maintain law and
order. Thus the first task to which we Kenpei gave careful thought
was to get a good grip on the Dutch administrative system.
The greatest single mistake of the occupation administration up
until this point had been the act of destroying in one blow the native
administrative system, even before establishing a system to take its
place. Those connected with the Kenpeitai who witnessed the govern-
ment disregarding the language problem and the customs and ways of
the native population, warned of the failure that had resulted from
trampling on the ways of the past.67 It seemed especially unneces-
65.	The Kenpeitai unit on Sumatra was considered to be a "provi-
sional detachment" until May of 1943, when its headquarters accom-
panied the Twenty-fifth Army headquarters in a move to Bukittinggi
{Gaishi, p. 1130.)
66.	Goshi Kosuke was a key figure in a series of massacres com-
mitted by the Kenpeitai in Singapore between February 18 and March
3, 1942, in which several thousand Chinese civilians were killed. See
Russell, Knights of Bushido, p. 249. Captain Goshi was executed by
the British in Kuala Lumpur in June 1947.	(isho, pp. 276, 623.)
67.	Like other military authorities, the Kenpeitai wanted to avoid
repeating mistakes they had made in China. (Kanahele, "Japanese
Occupation of Indonesia," p. 66.)50
sary because at the time there was little violent struggle in Sumatra,
and the people were generally very warm towards the Japanese.68
At this point Lieutenant Colonel Yokota, influenced by the
Kenpeitai, summoned Governor General Ott's69 staff, just as it was
configured at the time, to convene at the Medan Hotel. Governor
Ott, the prefectural governors, the chief commissioner of the metro-
politan police, and other department heads were there.
First, Lieutenant Colonel Yokota explained the policy of the mil-
itary administration and so on, persuading them that it should be
obeyed. Then he accompanied Governor Ott and the prefectural gov-
ernors to the Governor's office where he issued the following orders:
"From this day forth, general administration shall be carried out and
law and order maintained as commanded by the Japanese army."
Those cooperating with the Japanese army and those used by
the army were given arm bands with the red sun emblem. With the
exception of high officials, the Dutch were interned in designated
areas within Medan.
As for the police administration and all other commands, it was
ordered that the chief commissioner of the metropolitan police be in-
terned by the Kenpeitai, so that administrative affairs started off on
a harmonious note. Having consulted and accepted counsel, we [the
Kenpeitai] were mindful of conciliation with the native needs. Those
used on the Dutch side were interned in five different places with
their families and were permitted to move freely within the city.
There was no need for them to receive any army supplies because
they continued to receive their wages.
Three weeks after Medan was occupied, the military administra-
tion changed hands and Colonel Kurokawa assumed his new position in
the administration. Subsequently we Kenpei returned to our original
tasks of military policing, preventing espionage, and maintaining law
and order. As part of our policy of maintaining law and order, we
took measures towards conciliation with the native leaders, the Sul-
tans. Namely, we Kenpei summoned them to explain [to them] Japa-
nese army policy, after which they were administered a pledge of co-
operation, or we Kenpei visited the Royal Palace, which reinforced
their feelings of goodwill and empathy for the Japanese cause.
68.	Only after the war did many Indonesians dare to express their
feelings towards the Japanese army, and especially the Kenpeitai.
". . . With Japan's defeat, the Japanese army was suddenly hated by
the people. Even the children scorned us," write the authors of
Gaishi. The Kenpeitai rationalized this hostility, arguing that the
Indonesians were disillusioned with the Japanese for giving in to the
Allied side. (Gaishi, p. 1112.)
69.	Although most definitely "Ott" in Japanese, the authors are
presumably referring here to Sumatra Governor A. I. Spits.51
At the time the headquarters of the provisional Kenpeitai de-
tachment were located in the Medan Tobacco Company building. First
Lieutenant Hisamatsu was stationed with twenty of his Kenpei within
the city to assist with the operations of the division, and gradually
moved out to territories under Japanese control as the operations pro-
gressed.
[1044] When their operations drew to a close after the landing
at Kotaraja, First Lieutenant Goshi and his men in the Kobayashi
branch unit contacted headquarters and were told to resume normal
duties in the same area. From Kotaraja, they dispatched detachments
to Bukittinggi, Sibolga, Pakanbaru, and other areas where operations
were being conducted.
The Southern Army ordered that southern Sumatra be included
in the operational territories of the Twenty-fifth Army as of March 9.
Lieutenant Colonel Yokota dispatched those under Second Lieutenant
Ueno70 to Palembang. Shortly afterwards, Ueno was replaced by the
newly appointed Major Yamanouchi.
About two months later, around April 20, the Imperial Guard
Division released the provisional Kenpeitai detachment and the detach-
ment headquarters closed. The important officers in headquarters,
including Lieutenant Colonel Yokota, returned to Singapore, while
those under the unit commanders continued in their present capacity
under the direct control of the Twenty-fifth Army Kenpeitai Com-
mander-in-Chief Lieutenant Colonel Oishi Masayuki. About this same
time, the Imperial Guard Division command changed hands from First
Lieutenant Nishimura to First Lieutenant Muto Akira.
During this period71 the Kenpeitai attached to the Imperial
Guard Division accomplished the following:
1)	The maintenance of law and order, especially the curbing of
plundering by the natives.
2)	The maintenance of order within the military, i.e. the con-
trol of illegal actions and looting by military men.
3)	Religious policy, i.e. the correction of any misunderstand-
ing regarding the native religion.
4)	The arrest and internment of Governor Ott.
5)	Forcing the Governor to order the surrender of the Dutch
army (First Lieutenant Suzuki was largely responsible for this
action).
70.	Second Lieutenant Ueno was the combined Tokko and Police Af-
fairs chief of the first Kenpeitai unit on Sumatra. (Gaishi, p. 1132.)
71.	March 22, 1942 through April 20, 1942, during which time the
Kenpeitai provisional detachment was attached to the Imperial Guard
Division.52
6) Inspection of raw materials and the living conditions of the
people with the use of the chief commissioner of the metropolitan
police.
Note:	Law and order were satisfactorily maintained immediately
following initial operations on Sumatra. For example, on several occa-
sions natives picked up drunk Japanese soldiers and took the trouble
to deliver them directly by car to the Kenpeitai. Except for the Chi-
nese, the natives were extremely pro-Japanese.
At the time, the principal staff in this provisional Kenpeitai de-
tachment were as follows:
Provisional Detachment Commander—Kenpei Lieutenant Colonel
Yokota Masataka
Vice Commander—Kenpei First Lieutenant Suzuki Eikichi
Attached—Kenpei First Lieutenant Goshi Kosuke
Attached—Kenpei First Lieutenant Hisamatsu Haruyoshi
Attached—Kenpei Second Lieutenant Ueno Ken'ichi
Attached—Kenpei Chief Warrant Officer Hashimoto Kiichi
Attached—Kenpei Chief Warrant Officer Tomomune Toshiro
Attached—Kenpei Chief Warrant Officer Yamaguchi Koichi
The Sumatra Kenpeitai
The provisional Kenpeitai detachment came into being in March
1942, in connection with the successful completion of central northern
Sumatra operations. As operations progressed, we Kenpei were polic-
ing and maintaining law and order. Along with the move to Sumatra
of the Twenty-fifth Army headquarters in May 1943 the Kenpeitai
headquarters also moved to Bukittinggi, the seat of the military com-
mand.
In addition to assuming the military police duties of the
Sumatran defense force, we Kenpei [1045] turned to suppressing the
anti-Japanese overseas Chinese operations and investigating what re-
mained of the Dutch army's spy network. We also handled, both
shortly before and after the war, cases in which the Sumatran inde-
pendence army seized weapons from our army.
The Central Sumatran Railway Crash
In August 1943 a train with over a dozen cars toppled off a
central Sumatran railway (connecting Bukittinggi and Padang) bridge
with a deafening roar. The bridge was located about one kilometer
west of Pandang Panjang on the coast off the western sea. Over 500
people were killed and a great many were injured. The railway
bridge spanned a shallow river some thirty meters wide. The first
telegraph unit stationed in Padang Panjang mainly handled the inci-
dent with the cooperation of the local police. The majority of deaths53
were among the overseas Chinese and Minangkabau people; there were
few injuries and no deaths among the Japanese passengers.
The Bukittinggi Kenpeitai unit formed a special investigative
team of ten officers headed by a warrant officer; together with the
local police it conducted on-the-spot investigations and tried to obtain
information about the incident in the neighborhood. The investigation
revealed that the accident had been caused by a snapped track on
the bridge. In the year and some months since the start of the Jap-
anese occupation, no repairs had been made on the tracks and this
had taken a heavy toll. We Kenpei covered the area in which the in-
cident had taken place, carefully retracing the movements of people in
the neighborhood on the days before and after the incident, but were
unable to identify any suspicious characters. There was absolutely
no suspicion that the accident had been a plot. Thus we Kenpei who
investigated the data announced our conclusion that "a break in the
tracks was the result of unsatisfactory upkeep," thereby terminating
the investigation into the incident.
The Aborted Insurgence of the Dutch Army
Commander of Sumatra
Major General Overakker, the Dutch Army Commander for
Sumatra, was interned in a concentration camp in Medan. Towards
the end of 1942, he began expecting an Allied counteroffensive, and
was using the shopkeepers and others who serviced the camp to main-
tain contact with the outside world.
The General was planning to direct the army once it landed at
the time of the Allied counteroffensive, and planning the organization
of the spy squads that would cause disturbances to the Japanese
army. He was diligently expanding and strengthening the anti-
Japanese organization throughout all of Sumatra. He had put to work
all the overseas Chinese connected with the Dutch and former
property-owning Dutch soldiers being used by the Japanese army.
Since the middle of 1943, he had been secretly contacting parachute
spies landing by bomber plane and spies sneaking in by submarine,
and using the war funds provided to the spies, such as gold coins
and counterfeit notes, to expand the organization.
At the end of 1942 the Kenpei under First Lieutenant Hisamatsu
Haruyoshi, [1046] commander of the Special Operations Division in the
Sumatra Kenpeitai headquarters, received news that enemy spies had
infiltrated deep into the Takegon mountains of Aceh province in
northern Sumatra. Through the capture and subsequent investigation
of Dutch Army Captain Van de Tjark in early March 1943, we con-
firmed that an underground organization had indeed spread through-
out Sumatra.
Kenpeitai Commander-in-Chief Colonel Hirano Toyoji thought this
news very important. He immediately ordered our units to spy on
this underground organization. The operation was called "Operation54
Su."72 We delved full-force into the investigation, and approximately
half a year later finally exposed the entire organization. We then
prepared to move.
On September 20, 1943, the Sumatra Kenpeitai headquarters and
our units undertook a wholesale arrest. We arrested 160 suspects,
and seized a considerable amount of ammunition, arms, and clothing.
The principals arrested in this incident are as follows:
The Ringleaders:
Dutch Supreme Commander for Sumatra—Major General Overakker
(Death sentence)
Northern Commandei—Colonel Gosenson73 (Death sentence)
Brigade members—Captain Van de Tjark (Acquitted)
First Lieutenant Surell74 (Acquitted)
Of the some 160 people arrested, about seventy cases were dis-
patched to martial law proceedings75 based on criminal actions clari-
fied during the investigations. As a result of the trial, Major Gen-
eral Overakker and those under him were sentenced to death. The
executions were carried out by order of the Minister of the Army in
May 1945.76
This case was handled by the special operations unit in head-
quarters and the Medan, Kotaraja, and Palembang units.
72.	"Su" and "Ka" are equivalent to letters in the Japanese phonetic
alphabet. "Operation Su" and "Operation Ka," described later in this
text, are considered by the Zenkenren to be the "two major incidents
in the history of the Sumatra Kenpeitai." Kenpeitai Commander-in-
Chief Hirano Toyoji, the architect of both counterespionage schemes,
committed suicide on September 20, 1945 in anticipation of having to
stand trial for his actions. The Dutch held all the successive com-
manders of the Kotaraja Kenpei unit liable for both operations in the
war crimes trials. [Gaishi, p. 1134.)
73.	Hosenson in romaji.
74.	Sureru in romaji.
75.	Gunritsu kaigi ni jiken-sochi shita.
76.	Minister of the Army is Rikugun Dai jin in Japanese. "Major
General Overakker and Colonel Gosenson were confined in a farmhouse
until the end of 1944. In May of 1945, with the news that the Allied
landing was approaching, the military command ordered their execu-
tion by the Kenpeitai." (Gaishi, p. 1148).55
The Theft of Army Notes from the Post Office
In the latter part of November 1943 500,000 yen worth of mili-
tary currency was stolen from the Jambi Post Office in Sumatra. Im-
mediately following this incident another 100,000 yen were stolen from
the Special Muaratebo Post Office. The police had little concrete
evidence that the suspects they had arrested and interrogated in the
Jambi case had done anything wrong. What little evidence they had
was very weak. We therefore suspected that the police had not yet
found the real criminals.
A month after the incident occurred, the Twenty-fifth Army
Commander-in-Chief Lieutenant General Tanabe Moritake learned of an
upcoming tour by the Southern Army Supreme Chief of Staff Major
General Yahagi. He ordered the Kenpeitai Commander-in-Chief to ar-
rest the real criminals immediately to preserve the honor of the mili-
tary administration. Kenpeitai Commander-in-Chief Colonel Hirano re-
ceived these strict orders and immediately designated ten Kenpei
under First Lieutenant Hayashi Asao, chief of the headquarters' police
affairs division, to take charge of the investigation under the direc-
tion of the chief of the detachment.
[1047] First Lieutenant Kenpei Hayashi and his men began the
investigation on December 25, 1943. They soon concluded that the
real culprits were from the telephone bureau, the rival institution of
the Jambi Post Office. They were the head of the bureau, who was a
native, his younger brother, and three employees of the bureau. We
arrested them and presented considerable supporting evidence. It
was now clear to us that the suspects arrested by the police were not
the true criminals, so they were immediately released.
We discovered next that the culprits in the Muaretebo case were
local employees of the Muaretebo bureau, and bore no relation to the
Jambi case. We arrested these four also, and our investigation con-
firmed that they were indeed the real criminals. Their cases were
dispatched to martial law proceedings.77
Not only was the Japanese military administration able to pre-
serve its dignity in this case, but we Kenpei gave a splendid show of
our investigative abilities to the military police authorities as we re-
solved the entire problem within only fifteen days of beginning the
investigation.
The Wholesale Arrest of Anti-Japanese Chiang
Kai-Shek Sympathizers
The anti-Japanese overseas Chinese in Singapore had instigated
an anti-Japanese movement among overseas Chinese throughout the
entire Southern region even prior to the Greater East Asia War.
77. In the original text, gunritsu kaigi ni jiken-sochi shita.56
They had succeeded in amassing vast sums of capital to support their
cause and send to their Chongqing government, and their strong or-
ganization existed even in Sumatra.
Starting in early 1943, the organization had geared up again,
and an important man in the Chongqing National Government, Zhao
Lian, had infiltrated into central Sumatra and instigated the move-
ment. Having learned about the resurgence of this underground
organization in mid-December 1943, Kenpeitai Commander-in-Chief
Colonel Hirano Toyoji marshalled all his units to mobilize a wholesale
roundup of organization members. The effort was called "Operation
Ka" and was considered to be very important. We arrested 120 over-
seas Chinese. After the investigations, about thirty people who had
clearly committed crimes were dispatched to martial law proceedings.78
None of those arrested turned out to be the big shots whom we
had hoped for, however, and we could not prove the existence of a
definite organization. We failed to arrest the man recognized as the
ringleader of this movement, Zhao Lian, who had found out about the
roundup early and fled.
The Pa Iem bang Army Hospital Director Scandal
Army physician Colonel Kitazawa Yoshitaka took over the posi-
tion of director of the Palembang Hospital in Sumatra in June 1944.
Ever since his arrival, he had been prone to illness. Confined to his
sickbed, he had summoned live-in nurses from the hospital to attend
to him in the billet one at a time. In due course he proceeded to
abuse the nurses. He had actually abused five nurses, none of whom
had ever spoken up for fear of retaliation because he was the direc-
tor of the hospital.
[1048] Coincidentally, a certain Lance Corporal Kotani from
Yamanishi prefecture, who was an influential politician in his home-
town and had worked for the Imperial Rule Assistance Association79
before enlisting, was on close terms with the nurses. Kotani was
suspicious of the director, who continued to employ the nurses even
though he was not seriously ill. He confirmed his suspicions of abuse
through one of the nurses. While the story was being leaked to the
relaying Kenpeitai, word of the slander spread within the hospital to
Kotani's colleagues and to other employees.
78.	Gunritsu kaigi ni jiken sochi-shita.
79.	The Imperial Rule Assistance Association [Taisei Yokusan-kai]
was formed by Konoe and comprised of former Diet leaders. Under
Prime Minister Tojo, it supported and helped to consolidate Tojo's
party. See F. C. Jones, Japan's New Order in Asia: Its Rise and
Fall,	1937-45 (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), pp. 420-21 ,
and Benda, Crescent and the Rising Sun, p. 265, n. 20.57
Palembang unit commander Major Yamane received the report on
this case from the Kenpeitai, and initiated a top-secret investigation.
However, he was transferred to another position before he could con-
firm the incident, and the matter was left pending.
The new Palembang unit commander, Major Yokoyama Kentaro,
ordered the judicial chief80 to resume the investigation in early Feb-
ruary 1945. Yokoyama could hardly permit a commanding officer of
such high standing to get away with such an offense.
On his round to the Palembang unit, Kenpeitai Commander-in-
Chief Hirano told Major Yokoyama that he shared the opinion of
Colonel Furukawa, chief of the martial law department, who felt that
only moderate action should be taken under the circumstances, since
it is always difficult in such situations to distinguish between real
abuse and mutual consent. He also feared that if too much were made
of the incident, military discipline in similar situations might be too
much of a problem. Major Yokoyama respected his superior, Com-
mander-in-Chief Colonel Hirano Toyoji, but his sense of justice pre-
vailed. Yokoyama believed there was sufficient evidence of abuse and
that a judicial punishment should be meted out, for such immorality
certainly was unacceptable in such a high-ranking military man.
Before long Furukawa, chief of the martial law department, was
transferred to Taiwan and was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Naga-
buchi Yoshio, who came to Palembang from Bukittinggi. Major Yoko-
yama paid a call on Lieutenant Colonel Nagabuchi to make an appeal
for those involved in the incident. In this conference, they decided
to bring the matter to court martial,81 even if it meant risking their
jobs.
Lance Corporal Kotani of the army hospital was an in-law of the
wife of Prime Minister Tojo, and had secretly reported this incident in
a letter to her. Prime Minister Tojo had learned about this and in-
quired about the incident in a telegram to Twenty-fifth Army Com-
mander Lieutenant General Tanabe. Once this had happened, Lieu-
tenant General Tanabe could no longer ignore the incident, and the
affair was immediately brought before a court martial.82
Once the incident came to trial and one of the nurses had testi-
fied concerning the intent of the accused, Yokoyama won over the co-
operation of two or three other nurses who had deliberately decided
to obfuscate the incident to protect their future. The nurses testi-
fied as witnesses.
Hospital director Kitazawa argued that when Major Yokoyama
had once visited the hospital to ask him about the rumor of viola-
tions, he had denied the rumor. He insisted that even if such a
80.	Shiho shunin in Japanese.
81.	Gunpo kaigi.
82.	Gunpo kaigi.58
thing had happened, it would have been because of the nurses' con-
sent, so that there was no reason for the Kenpeitai to interfere in
the matter.
After this the public prosecutor's office undertook a direct ex-
amination of the case in question. The Kenpeitai received directions
from the public prosecutor's office to assist in the incident. As we
gathered evidence and the investigation proceeded, [1049] we discov-
ered that the hospital director had committed improprieties with the
war relief funds. Written documents concerning these and other in-
stances of misconduct were sent to the court martial by early March
1945.
We Kenpei deliberated over whether or not there was intent in
this case. The issue should be treated no differently in this instance
than in society at large. Also, because all of the victims were un-
married nurses, their cases could all be narrowed down to one per-
son .
The court martial trial began in the Bukittinggi courts towards
the end of April 1945. Presiding were the judge, Army Chief of Staff
Second Lieutenant Tanihagi Hanao, and two commissioned officers of
the court. The public prosecutors were also present. The defendant
claimed that there had been mutual consent from beginning to end,
while the victimized nurse insisted to the end that she had been
abused.
The court's decision was for three years' penal servitude, low-
ering of rank, and revocation of the defendant's medical license. The
defendant was sent off to the Kurume Army Garrison Prison83 and
was released after the end of the war.
The court completely forbade any audience at the hearing. The
audience consisted of Major Yokoyama and an army physician. The
public prosecutor investigated Lance Corporal Kitani for slandering a
senior authority, but treated his case as a minor offense. As for the
nurse, she was sent back to her hometown in Yamagata Prefecture.
At the time, there was a strong feeling among the higher-
ranking officers that the Kenpeitai should not have been involved to
such a degree. But those of us in charge of maintaining military dis-
cipline believed there was no question but that the incident should
not have been overlooked. In the army the higher-ranking officers
always have advantages over the lower-ranking officers, but at the
same time their responsibilities should be heavier. We Kenpei could
certainly not have kept quiet about this case, if only because the
doctor took advantage of the hierarchy existing between himself and
the nurse.
83. Located in Fukuoka prefecture in Japan.[1220] TERMINATION OF THE WAR AND THE JAVA KENPEITAI
On May 24, 1945, the Seventh District Division of the Army
issued the following order to the Sixteenth Army of Java: "Upon the
enemy offensive, you must gradually weaken enemy strength every-
where and use your utmost force to crush their plan. Every effort
must be made to secure the strategic areas of western Java as the
circumstances compel it."	The Sixteenth [1221] Army thus made
plans to reinforce the major resistance encampments in the high plains
around Bandung, build guerrilla bases, and shift to strategic combat
training for the men and officers. Even up to this point the Allied
air and naval forces had been overwhelming—conditions were such
that our coastal encampments would inevitably be thrashed. Under
the circumstances it was imperative for the Sixteenth Army to estab-
lish strong bases in the mountains and other remote areas, for our
only hope was the battle on land. By early June the location of the
bases had been decided upon, and construction began. Soon August
was before us.
On August 12, the Sixteenth Army Command in Batavia learned
in utter amazement that the Japanese government had accepted the
Potsdam Declaration. For the army command, the most painful aspect
of the surrender was that the Southern Army had already promised
independence to the Indonesian volunteer army. Army Commander-in-
Chief Lieutenant General Nagano Yuichiro immediately assembled the
Chief of Staff Major General Yamamoto Moichiro's staff in an emer-
gency conference. He decided to withhold the news of the surrender
for the time being, before it actually took place. He did this because
he was worried about the possibility of an insurrection by the Indo-
nesian volunteer army. He wanted to eke out even a little time to
take measures to maintain law and order after the surrender.
Kenpeitai Commander-in-Chief Major General Nishida Shozo re-
ceived the order from the army command. _ He immediately directed
Captain lizuka Kinjiro of the Batavia Tokko division to communicate
the army commander's order to the unit commanders in every region.
Captain lizuka first looked up the times at which the train would stop
at each station before Surabaya, and then telegrammed the command-
ers of each unit to let them know when to stand by at the station.
This way the Captain was able to transmit the order to each unit
leader at the respective station platform, as he headed by train to-
ward the Surabaya unit. He returned to Batavia on the evening of
August 14.
The next day everyone gathered even in the Sixteenth Army
headquarters to listen attentively to the Emperor's broadcast of the
5960
imperial edict. The following day, August 16, the Sixteenth Army
convened a staff officers' meeting and decided reverently to obey the
imperial edict.84 Army Commander-in-Chief Nagano was concerned
about possible disruptions by the Indonesian volunteer army and dis-
turbances of the public peace. He gave strict orders to each Kenpei
unit to uphold law and order. However, as noted above, the South-
ern Army Supreme Command had already granted independence to the
two leaders of the Indonesian volunteer army: Sukarno (later Presi-
dent), whose homecoming had just been celebrated in Jakarta85 on
August 14, and Hatta. Before dawn on August 16, Sukarno and
Hatta were suddenly kidnapped by extremists in the volunteer army.
Now that the leaders had been taken by force, an armed uprising by
the high-spirited volunteer army was inevitable. The Army Command
immediately ordered the Kenpeitai to extricate Sukarno.
To obtain information on Sukarno, the Kenpeitai headquarters
used primarily Tokko division chief Captain lizuka Kinjiro, but even
resorted to using the radio-probe squads. Unfortunately however his
whereabouts remained unclear. Sukarno and Hatta had been taken to
some volunteer army barracks in Rengasdengklok, some eighty kilome-
ters east of Jakarta. Then, on the night of August 16, under pres-
sure from the extremist faction in the volunteer army, Sukarno and
Hatta had returned to Jakarta and negotiated the pronouncement of a
declaration of independence with the central military administration.
Even Rear Admiral Maeda Tadashi of the Naval Office [1222] se-
cretly cooperated in the matter of Sukarno. That evening Sukarno
and Hatta had met with Nishimura, chief of the General Affairs Divi-
sion of the central military administration, to demand approval of the
declaration of independence, and the immediate convening of an inde-
pendent committee for the preparation of independence. Major Gen-
eral Nishimura had refused them, explaining that "Now that the war
has terminated and we have the responsibility for maintaining the
present state of affairs with respect to the Allied armies, I cannot
possibly formally authorize this without orders from central command."
At that point Sukarno and Hatta returned to the official residence of
Rear Admiral Maeda, who was sympathetic to the independence move-
ment, and on the morning of August 17 drafted their proclamation of
independence.
On the next day, August 18, the Committee for the Preparation
of Independence convened. The committee agreed on a provisional
constitution, which had been drafted earlier, and approved the as-
sumption of the office of the president by Sukarno. What we would
like to point out here is that, like Rear Admiral Major General Maeda,
the army and the Kenpeitai also favored independence for Indonesia,
84.	In Sumatra, three Kenpeitai units and several groups of Kenpei
resisted surrender. Others committed suicide upon hearing the news.
(Gaishi, p. 1147.)
85.	Still known as Batavia during the Japanese occupation.61
and also wanted to render assistance if we could.86 The Kenpeitai
was also vaguely aware that Navy Major General Maeda was contribu-
ting to the independence movement. However, we were under orders
from the Southern Army Supreme Command to turn over all arms to
the occupying British and Dutch armies. Thus, until this task was
accomplished, the army's mission was to preserve peace and order. If
the volunteer army were to revolt, we would have to suppress them,
no matter how nasty it might be.
Nonetheless, the independence movement inevitably wanted
weapons, and saw this as an ideal opportunity to expand its power.
They had their eyes on the ammunition magazines, the smaller sta-
tioned units, and the Kenpeitai. The volunteer armies attacked those
stationed units in great force. If our units had only calmly turned
over their weapons, nothing would have happened,8' but the units
refused, resulting in a tragedy in which they were aM massacred. As
a matter of fact. Second Lieutenant Odamura Genzo and his twelve
men in the small Madiun detachment were all slaughtered.
Reverently obeying the imperial edict, the Sixteenth Army
found itself caught in a dilemma between following orders from on
high and the independence movement. This unfortunately led to many
men being sacrificed after the surrender.88
On September 15, a high-spirited Sukarno announced the decla-
ration of independence before a crowd of 60,000 gathered in Batavia's
Gambir Plaza.89 The Kenpeitai tried to do something to stop
86.	There is little evidence to suggest the Kenpeitai were truly
committed to the cause of independence. For instance Kanahele points
out that "Perhaps more than any other group in the Japanese military
administration, the Kenpeitai betrayed the most exaggerated fears of
Putera's capacity to stir up nationalist excitement." (Kanahele,
"Japanese Occupation of Indonesia," p. 76.)
87.	It was in the interest of the Kenpeitai to cooperate with the
volunteer armies. As the Gaishi points out, "If we Kenpei were to
come face to face with the people, the general Japanese populace
would be moaning in pain throughout the land, and it would mean real
trouble." [Gaishi, p. 1116.)
88.	By the end of the war about 100 Kenpei, mostly in the smaller
units, had been killed by Indonesians. (Gaishi, p. 1126.) After the
war, the Japanese army lost 1 ,057 men, 544 of whom were killed in
action. (Ibid., p. 1129.) The smaller Kenpeitai units continued to
suffer the most. Many Kenpei deeply resented being used by the
Allied armies to suppress the Indonesian people after the war.
(Ibid., pp. 1125-26.)
89.	On August 17, the date of the original proclamation of indepen-
dence, Sukarno avoided using Gambir Plaza, so as not to clash with
Japanese troops. Therefore the reference to September 15 here is
possibly to the massive rally held on September 19 in Ikada Square62
Sukarno, who had arrived guarded by the volunteer army, but we
were cut off by Lieutenant Colonel Miyamoto, an army staff officer.
On September 18, an Allied advance force landed in Jakarta.
On the 25th, the British army landed, and on September 27 occupa-
tion by the principal Allied forces began. After this, the volunteer
armies broke into revolt everywhere, and began fighting with the
British and Dutch armies. Tragically, the Sixteenth Army became
embroiled in all of this.
On November 3, all members of the Sixteenth Army assembled in
Batavia and did what they could to survive on their own, as they
awaited orders from the Allied armies. [1223] The Kenpeitai espe-
cially was used to suppress the Indonesian independence movement,90
a fact which was tragically magnified at the end in the vengeful war
crimes trials. As we mentioned before, the Java Kenpeitai became
embroiled in the Indonesian independence struggle at the war's end,
and sacrificed a great many. Here we shall simply summarize the sit-
uation of each unit.
As for the Jakarta (formerly Batavia) unit, the_ Bntish army
advance party immediately arrested commander Major Cho Konosuke as
a war crimes suspect.9* Thereafter, Captain lizuka Kinjiro com-
manded the unit.
On January 3, 1946 the Jakarta unit was disarmed in Bogor
city. All members were immediately placed in custody as war crimes
suspects in Glodok prison in Jakarta. 2
During the seventy-five days following the end of the war we
kept our distress over the defeat to ourselves, and fulfilled our duty
to maintain peace and order and suppress the dangerous rioters.
During this time, two auxiliary Kenpei were sacrificed.
The independence volunteer army surrounded our Surakarta
unit at the end of the war, but our unit commander refused to hand
over our weapons. The situation immediately exploded into a battle,
and three Kenpei were shot. We men knew there was a danger that
we would all be killed if the battle continued, so we persuaded our
(now known as Medan Merdeka). For an account of this, see Ander-
son, Java in a Time of Revolution, pp. 119-24.
90.	In the words of Sergeant Major Ishida, the Kenpei felt it their
duty to "resolutely take up the challenge of blasting apart the radical
elements in the independence movement." [Gaishi, p. 1116.)
91.	Cho Konosuke was executed in Glodok Prison on December 30,
1947. In a letter written to his mother the day he received his death
sentence, he speaks of "having the confidence to be able to say that
I have lived by love." (Isho, pp. 376-78.)
92.	Seven Batavia Kenpei, including unit commander Cho, were sen-
tenced to death, and twenty-three received prison terms.	(Isho, p.
377.)63
commander Captain Sato Hyokichi to turn over our weapons to the
volunteer army. We were all taken into custody in Solo prison.93
Two auxiliary Kenpei died from illness while we were in prison.9if
In the Madiun detachment, commander Second Lieutenant Oda-
mura Cenzo and eleven Kenpei were all massacred, as noted earlier.95
The Indonesian volunteer army imprisoned Semarang Kenpei unit
commander Wada Kunishige and more than twenty of his Kenpei. But
Japanese in the army transport bureau came to the rescue and, after
a battle, succeeded in capturing the prison. Forty Japanese in the
prison had already been massacred, but they rescued thirty survivors
and about a dozen Dutch. After rescuing two other Japanese and
several Dutch in another prison, we reached reconciliation with the
volunteer army.
In Pekalongan province near Tegal, Chief Warrant Officer
Hoshino Katsushige's pacification efforts and management at the end
of the war had been most appropriate. The natives had not even
caused the slightest disruption, and had good feelings toward the
Kenpei. When we left, they gave us a farewell party.They even
provided a guarded train for us to travel to our assembly area in;
this was very rare.
93.	During the confrontation with the mob of volunteer fighters, one
Kenpei who had tried earlier to persuade his commander not to resort
to violence, ran out "in a rain of bullets," waving a white flag on his
pistol and calling for surrender, in defiance of his commander's
orders. The crowd ceased fire at once. The Kenpei unit then nego-
tiated among themselves before surrendering to the volunteer army.
This incident is described in detail in Gaishi, pp. 1116-17.
94.	"The Kenpei imprisoned in Solo jail inside the city were loathed
by the city people. The people had their revenge with the food they
gave us. Conditions were miserable. The Kenpeitai prisoners had
one egg and one rotten banana for every two men each day. Instead
of tea there was mosquito larvae-infested water. The main meal con-
sisted of two sweet potatoes. Because of this, two assistant Kenpei
died within two short months of being imprisoned, and others became
sick with tuberculosis or starvation. The Surakarta unit was dimin-
ishing again." (Gaishi, p. 1117.)
95.	The figures in the text are contradictory on this point. On
page 61 (page 1222 of the original), the authors indicate that Oda-
mura and twelve Kenpei were slaughtered.
96.	This scene recalls the send-off the Kenpei claim to have received
on December 24, 1949, the day those who were serving sentences for
war crimes left Batavia harbor for Japan. In the words of the ex-
Kenpei: "That day many higher-ups in the Indonesian government of
the new president Sukarno, who had won independence, turned out in
great numbers to see the Japanese war criminals off and to thank
them." (Gaishi, p. 1159.)64
The Kediri unit assembled in the Watts [ ?]97 coffee plantation
in Kediri prefecture, but was seized by the volunteer army, dis-
armed, and interned in the Badilok [?]98 sugar factory in Kediri. We
were made to live under the worst conditions without supplies. Next,
we were moved to Toloagon [?] prison where we joined the Surabaya
unit. The Surabaya unit maintained law and order in the Surabaya
district after the war as ordered by the Allied armies. In early Sep-
tember, the volunteer army had resisted the coming of the Allied oc-
cupation armies, believing that they would obstruct independence. It
attacked the Allied army barracks, and in October blew up the Amal
powder magazine on Mao island which led to a violent battle with the
British and Dutch armies. In the midst of this maelstrom, the unit
was disarmed and sent, guarded by the Indonesian army, to Toloagon
prison in Kediri state.
In February 1946 we left Pontianak harbor for the [1224] Riau
archipelago, where the Southern Army was assembling. From there,
we were all taken into custody as war crimes suspects and interned in
Singapore’s Changi prison.
Because it did not yield to the independence army's stubborn
demand for weapons, our Surabaya wharf detachment was attacked in
early October, but was saved through the efforts of the Navy Harbor
Office. The detachment escaped by boat and, after throwing its am-
munition overboard, was reunited with the Surabaya unit. Cho
Keiyo," a Taiwanese interpreter, was killed during this episode by
the independence army.
Our Bandung unit also assumed responsibility for maintaining
law and order after the end of the war. The Indonesian volunteer
army began attacking the Japanese army platoons in the Bandung area
to get hold of weapons to expand its power. In late September it
suddenly attacked the Japanese army sanitorium in Garut,100 and
Warrant Officer Fukuda of the Medical Department and ten of his men
were killed. The volunteer army also often attacked Kenpei who were
guarding Allied army commissioned officers and other important
people.
On October 10th a group of volunteer armies attacked the
Bandung Kenpei unit in one fell swoop to obtain weapons, but we
Kenpei fought back and repelled the attack in two hours.
In late November, the Allied army disarmed the Bandung unit
and incarcerated the Kenpei in Jakarta's Glodok prison.
97.	Wattasu in romaji.
98.	Baderoku in romaji.
99.	Zhang Qingyu in Chinese.
100.	Garu in romaji.65
The Purwokerto unit also attempted to guard the civil peace af-
ter the war, but the independence movement was violent and the Jap-
anese army had moved elsewhere, so the unit primarily engaged in
farming. The Purwokerto area was generally tranquil, and there
were no Japanese casualties. Around May 1946, the unit left Java,
guarded by the local volunteer army, and headed for Singapore.
The Serang unit was surrounded and attacked by a native mob,
but suffered no casualties and was able to withdraw to Batavia. As
mentioned above, the majority of the Java Kenpei was incarcerated as
war crimes suspects.
The Kenpei from every unit in eastern Java left Java towards
the end of 1945 or first half of 1946. Extremely few of the demobil-
ized Kenpei went directly back to the homeland. Just about everyone
was incarcerated in Changi prison in Singapore. Then, towards the
end of 1946, most victims were transferred on the basis of interroga-
tions to Cipinan prison on the outskirts of Batavia, where we under-
went war crimes trials.[1225] THE TWENTY-FIFTH ARMY KENPEITAI AND
MAJOR GENERAL HIRANO
Major General Hirano Toyoji, Commander-in-Chief of the
Twenty-fifth Army Kenpeitai, arrived at his post in Singapore in
March of 1943. When the Twenty-fifth Army Headquarters was moved
to Bukittinggi in Sumatra, he was also transferred there as
Commanding Officer of the Sumatra Kenpeitai, and was in charge of
collecting intelligence, maintaining civil peace, and order within the
army. His most notable accomplishments were "Operation Su" and
"Operation Ka.1,101
When Japan met defeat on August 15, 1945, the Major General,
unable to bear the fact that his subordinates would be convicted as
war criminals for incidents that he himself had directed, and unwilling
to be incarcerated himself as a war crime suspect, resolved to assume
responsibility for the defeat and in his quarters calmly committed sui-
cide. In his final moments he was completely composed like an old-
fashioned samurai. All those in the military command deeply trusted
the General. He was a great officer, deeply revered by his subordi-
nates for his integrity of character.
In the middle of October 1945, the volunteer army in Tarutung
province seized a lot of military equipment and ammunition from the
local police department. The chief provincial official immediately de-
manded that the Kenpeitai unit commanders and the garrison102 com-
mander handle the incident. Captain Hayashi Asao, the Sibolga
Kenpei unit leader, promptly conferred with the garrison leader, who
insisted on using force to recapture the arms. Captain Hayashi ex-
plained that it would be disadvantageous to work with troops who no
longer had any fighting spirit and, now that the war was over, he
was requesting the Kenpei to take charge. The Captain then re-
turned to his unit.
The next morning he went to the volunteer army barracks with
a dozen or more of his men, and was able to persuade the local com-
mander to turn over the stolen weapons. He was able to confiscate
two truckloads full of equipment, ammunition, and other goods.
Later, after the war was over, a native army known as the In-
dependence volunteer army103 was organized in Sibolga in Sumatra.
101.	See chapter on Sumatra Kenpeitai above.
102.	Keibichutai in Japanese.
103.	Dokuritsu giyugun
6667
The army expanded gradually, plundering weapons, ammunition, and
other resources in Japanese custody on an almost daily basis.
One day the local volunteer army suddenly kidnapped Colonel
Okada Tetsuo, commander of the Sibolga garrison, and blockaded the
Kenpei unit. The scheme was to plunder the equipment and ammuni-
tion in Japanese custody without causing any bloodshed.
In January of 1946, a hundred and forty or so members of the
local volunteer army approached the unit commander's quarters, ran-
domly firing their light machine-guns and waving their spears and
barbarian swords. We Kenpei had gotten wind of the attack earlier
and took advantage of our knowledge to make a sortie on the volun-
teer army. With the cooperation of the garrison, which arrived thirty
minutes later, we succeeded in capturing about a hundred volunteer
soldiers and rebuffed the others.
Since the war had terminated, we turned the prisoners over to
the local police for management. This was the best thing to do from
the standpoint of maintaining civil order.
As mentioned above, the Kenpei were assigned along with the
stationed units to maintaining peace and order until the Allied army
arrived. But during this period there were some Kenpei who would
not willingly be seized as war criminals, and left their units to join
the Indonesian independence armies. [1226] All of us other Kenpei
were then interned as war crimes suspects in Medan prison towards
the end of 1945 or thereafter. We were all interrogated and, in a
severe judgment, a great many Kenpei fell victim.
About thirty Sumatra Kenpei of warrant officer or lesser rank,
who were unwilling to be incarcerated as war crimes suspects after
the war, left their units and joined the Indonesian war for indepen-
dence, as mentioned above. After the war for independence they
managed to overcome countless dangers and difficulties, and survived
to take Indonesian citizenship, and find various forms of employment.
We have verified at least seven former Kenpei, all of whom have as-
sumed leadership roles in the community.
It can also be presumed that many died in the struggle for In-
donesian independence, along with the seventy or so other military
men from other units who died in the independence struggle. We
have identified at least twelve of the Kenpei who are buried near
Bukittinggi on the western coast, whose distinguished service has
been recognized by the Indonesian government.104
104. The Gaishi notes that the Indonesian government holds a memo-
rial service every year for the Japanese soldiers who died in the war
for independence. (Gaishi, p. 1160.)[1294] THE SPECIFIC CHARACTER OF THE DUTCH
WAR CRIMES TRIALS
When looking at the war crimes trials in the Netherlands East
Indies, we should keep in mind that after the war the Indonesian in-
dependence army revolted in every district and Holland's army got
scorched trying to suppress it. Ultimately the Dutch were unable to
suppress the Indonesians and ended up granting independence.
However, in the interim, the war crimes trials were being held.
The Dutch authorities insisted that the Japanese army had assisted in
the independence movement. Our arrested criminals were blamed with
hatred for Holland's own decline, and there was no attempt to dis-
guise this bias in the trials. Thus the trial became a cruel, even
reckless, reprisal trial, and there were many of us who fought back
tears as we brooked the unfounded insults.
Looking back on world history, Holland was once a champion of
the aggressor nations. Of the many Dutch colonies, the Netherlands
East Indies occupied an extremely important position economically.
One has only to look at the natural resource oil, as one example, for
it to be very clear what sort of economic role Indonesia shouldered
for Holland's prosperity.
It is also an historical fact that Indonesia took advantage of the
end of the Greater East Asia War to gain independence. However,
another fact which cannot be denied is that one group of soldiers in
the Japanese army did side with the Indonesian independence move-
ment. It may be quite natural then for Holland—which sacrificed the
lives of many Dutch soldiers and a large budget as a result of the
Indonesian revolt for independence, and then lost its greatest colony
when the colony became independent—to hate the Japanese army.
But that is a different problem of altogether another dimension from
that of those convicted at the war crimes trials.
Luckily for Holland, she was in a victor's position. The Dutch
designated [1295] as many as 1,033 war criminals, of whom 389 were
Kenpei war criminals.105 The number sentenced to death reached 85
men, and there were more Kenpei victims than in other regions.
These are the realities of the Netherlands East Indies war crimes
trials.
105. These are total figures for all the Dutch trials in Batavia,
Medan, Tanjungpinang, Pontianak, Banjarmasin, Balikpapan, Makasar,
Kupang, Ambon, Manado, Porranja [?], and Morotai. There were 199
Kenpei convicted in the Java trials, and 55 Kenpei convicted in the
Sumatra trials.	[Seishi, p. 1323.)
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