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Kempeitai: Japan's Dreaded Military Police Hardcover – November 25, 1998

by Raymond Lamont-Brown (Author)

4.5 30 ratings

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The Kempeitai, Japan's secret military police and counter-espionage service, were one of the most dreaded organizations of the Second World War. Through sheer horror tactics they degraded their victims to demonstrate their superiority over reluctant nations and break the human spirit. First-hand accounts in this book bring the atrocities to life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

For reasons that are very difficult to understand, when the subject of war crimes in World War II comes up, it almost always involves the actions of the Germans. Even though the Japanese were just as brutal to the population of the areas they occupied and even more brutal to enemy POW's, it is a subject that is rarely discussed. In Japan, formal acknowledgements of the war crime actions of the Japanese during the war are rare and tepid. The Kempeitai were the Japanese version of the German Gestapo, feared by all, including their fellow Japanese. While it is impossible to thoroughly chronicle their actions in only 167 pages, Lamont-Brown gives a good overview of the role the Kempeitai played in the war. They routinely executed civilians and captured allied personnel and on occasion even ate their flesh. Japanese medical personnel carried out horrific medical experiments on humans and were later granted immunity by General MacArthur in exchange for the records of their experiments. This book is an example of one that should be read by more people. It is sad and unfortunate that more people do not know and appreciate the actions of the Japanese during the Second World War. Those who suffered through it remember it well, but shortly they will be gone and it is up to historians to keep the memories of their suffering alive. --By Charles Ashbacher -

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0750915668
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sutton Publishing (November 25, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 182 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780750915663
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0750915663
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 0.5 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,170,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #222 in Canadian Military History
- #1,979 in Intelligence & Espionage History
- #20,018 in World War II History (Books)

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4.5 30 ratings

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4.5 out of 5

30 global ratings

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Alexander Curry

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2016

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One person found this helpful

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Captain Sternn

A general introduction to Japan's Gestapo

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2009

A long-neglected topic, we have here a brief chronicle of Japan's military secret-police of World War II.

Seven decades ago, Japan, Italy, and Germany were led down the wrong path by despotic regimes who aspired to world-conquest. Working mostly independantly of one-another, the Axis powers, Japan and Germany, very nearly achieved their goal.

Governments that strive for totalitarian rule require "secret-police" forces. In Western experience, the most recent examples we are familiar with, were the Gestapo and KGB, of Nazi Germany and the U.S.S.R., respectively. There is a vast plethora of books on the political/internal-security units employed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but, as usual, there is very little available about similar units of Imperial Japan.

Lamont-Brown's book is a general introduction at best, but its a good source to utilize as a pre-cursor to more specific reading on the topic.

The Kempeitai was founded in 1881. Like all secret-police units, it was tasked with espionage, counter-intelligence, and enforcement duties aimed at suppressing internal dissent and opposition to Japanese Imperial rule. In addition to establishing and managing of spy-rings, the Kempeitai conducted psychological warfare against the people of occupied nations, and enemy combatants. They ran programs on the research of biological warfare. They ran a series of military brothels in which an untold number of Asian, and even some Western women, were forcibly conscripted to service Japanese military personnel. The Kempeitai were also tasked with interrogation of prisoners, which frequently involved depraved methods of torture. Many Allied aviators were subjected to war-crimes at the hands of Kempeitai agents. The Kempeitai were also involved in collecting slave-labor from the populations of occupied nations, and Koreans seem to have been the most frequent victims.

In truth, this book should have been longer, but I am not aware of any other books available about the Kempeitai. This is a good start, at least.

3 people found this helpful

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Kevin M Quigg

Very dry, and very uninteresting.

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2011

The writer is a serial author, who claims to have close to 50 books published. Although the topic is very important and few writers have tackled this subject, he makes it very uninteresting. The Kempeitai killed many American POWs and experimented on bacterial agents with jailed inmakes. These are also the guys who kidnapped women in conquered countries to serve as comfort women to the Japanese armed forces.

The shortcomings of this book are many. Perhaps a few more established true stories about how and why prisoners suffered. The author tries to tell the organizational side of this terrorist organization and spends more time using the Japanese words to describe the various ranks. This could have been a good to great book.

4 people found this helpful

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fastreader

survey of Japan's "Gestapo"

Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2001

I'm all in favor of books like this. As time goes on and memories fade, more and more Americans have come to regard the Japanese as victims of World War II. Sure, they bombed Pearl Harbor, but was that any reason we should have dropped an atomic bomb on them?
In fact, Imperial Japan and especially the Imperial Japanese Army (it's worthwhile to distinguish between the two) ran a killing and torture machine that in many respects was the equal of Hitler's Germany. The Kempeitai did much of this work. Officially, it was only the army's police force, but it was feared by Japanese civilians, by the captive populations of Asia, and especially by prisoners of war.
Unfortunately, Lamont-Brown is a professional writer of books, with 50-odd to his credit in a bit more than 30 years--a British Martin Caidin, if you like. Nobody can turn out books at that rate and spend the necessary time in research. As a result, this is mostly a collection of anecdotes and unrelated themes--whatever Lamont-Brown turned up, he shaped the book around that, or so it seems. So it fails both as a serious history of the Kempeitai and as an indictment of the Japanese way of making war.
But it's the only one we have, and therefore worth reading. However, if your interest lies mostly with the fate of Anglo-American prisoners of war, then a better book to start with is Gavan Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese.

9 people found this helpful

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rick peacock

kempeitai: japan's dreaded military police

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2000

Japan's military police were as evil as the more well known german geatapo. The daily lives of the military police and their prisoners is glossed over. More detail is put into the administration and organization of the military police. The book is very dry reading and not much of a story. Time moves quickly in this book, with not many pages devoted to any one area or incident, but with only 168 pages i suppose that is to be expected. An interesting title, reduced to very boring reading, i am disappointed.

15 people found this helpful

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William O'Chee

A great opportunity missed

Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2001

This could have been a brilliant book - the subject certainly has spectacular prospects - but it was not to be. Fifty years on there are few survivors of the legions of the Kempeitai, and even fewer survivors of their victims. It could have been a timely piece of scholarship. Instead we are treated a poor collection of anecdotes which lack suffcient breadth and analysis to be evidence of anything other than the incidents they describe, not the Kempeitai as a whole, nor their operations. More disappointing is the author's unconcealed antipathy towards his subject, as a result of his father's wartime experiences. If you need a book on the subject then consider buying it, but otherwise look elsewhere.

15 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Excellent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 5, 2024

Verified Purchase

Exceeded my expectations .. in very good condition well worth the money paid.

Medve

Rather a good book

Reviewed in France on February 4, 2021

Verified Purchase

The author seems to know his Japan.
Perhaps, he may embrace a too occidental point of perspective on some aspect of Japanese policy - after all, Wilson's policies against an allie didn't played in favour for a soft Japanese response. And after the 1929 Krach things went downhill almost by themselve.

AV

if you are into untold history...

Reviewed in Germany on February 26, 2020

Verified Purchase

japan is a mysterious for us in the west. this book tells the horrible story of the kempeitai. as always, the japanese took something from the west, the secret service of the germans and made even better, just like they did with photo cameras.

Faye

Good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 29, 2023

Verified Purchase

Pity I didn’t know it had a message on the inside page to previous owner as a gift. I cut the page out as it’s a birthday gift to my partner.

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