Nakano School

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The Nakano School (陸軍中野学校 Rikugun Nakano Gakkō?) operated in northwestern Tokyo during World War II Japan from 1938 to 1945. It was established by the Imperial Japanese Army.The address before is the vicinity of Tokyo Nakano Ward Nakano 4. The alias title is the 33rd unit in east part. A small school, it would teach over 2500 young men over its existence in a variety of subject matters related to counterintelligence and military intelligence and covert operations, such as foreign languages, aikido,[1] and unconventional military techniques in general like guerrilla warfare.[2]

The school was the successor of Lt. Col. Shun Akigusa's "No. 4 Section at GHQ", which eventually became the Nakano School in July 1938. Shun had been heavily involved in attempts to penetrate the Soviet Union and had organized a number of expeditions of White Russians, which had failed. The failure of his efforts convinced him that a more "systematic" approach was needed and so he set up the school. It initially was focused on Russia, teaching primarily Russian as a foreign language, for example, but as a result of World War II, it changed its focus to southern targets. In 1940, administration of the school was handed over to Lt. Col. Masa Ueda, who in 1938 had provided considerable intelligence on Russia from his post as military attache (a common position for Nakano graduates) in Poland.[3]

While small, graduates occasionally had dramatic successes, such as the intact capture of oil facilities in Netherlands East Indies by Nakano School paratroopers (foiling the prepared Dutch demolition teams). They were also very active in Burma, India, and Okinawa. Towards the end of the war, they expanded their activities within Japan itself (which had primarily focused on checking for loyalty and sedition) and began organizing civilian resistance to the prospective American invasion "training guerilla units for the defense of Kyushu and Tokyo";[4] one of the more quixotic activities graduates were involved in was the unsuccessful attempt to weaken China's Nationalists by introducing large quantities of forged Chinese currency into China using stolen printing plates from Hong Kong.[5]

F Kikan ("F Organization") and Minami Kikan were also heavily staffed with Nakano graduates. F Kikan was lead by Major Fujiwara, and operated in India. There they fomented an anti-British movement which lasted past the war, and motivated by the execution of 5 leaders in 1945, played a role in Indian independence in 1947.[3]

Minami Kikan supplied and led Burmese nationalists to engage in anti-British subversion, and more critic ally from the Japanese perspective, obstruct Chinese traffic along the Burma Road. The indigenous groups likewise persisted after the war and "provide[d] the nucleus of post-war Burma's equivalent of a government and army."[3]

After the war, many graduates continued to play significant roles in Japan's military intelligence hierarchy and the wider business community, a result of a general deal between the head of Japanese intelligence, Seizo Arisue and General MacArthur (who wanted the Japanese intelligence on Russia)[6]

It was later the subject of a 1967 Japanese movie called Rikugun Nakano Gakko: Mitsumei ("Nakano Army School: Top Secret Command"), a 1968 one called Rikugun Nakano gakko: Kaisen zenya ("Army Nakano School: War Broke Out Last Night"), and a 1966 Rikugun Nakano gakko: Kumoichigô shirei ("Army Nakano School: Cloud #1 Directive Japan")

[edit] References

  1. ^ Interview with Gozo Shioda
  2. ^ "Extended courses were provided on a wide variety of topics including languages, philosophy, history, current events, martial arts, propaganda, counter intelligence and the facets of covert action." from "Nakano agents and the Japanese forces in New Guinea, 1942-1945." 01-SEP-04, Sabretache. Richmond, Keith[1]
  3. ^ a b c See Allen 1987
  4. ^ See Boyd 2003
  5. ^ "Chūkoku shihei gizō jiken no zenshō" ("The forgery of Chinese paper currency"), Yoshimasa Okada. pages 42-51 of October 1980 Rekishi to jinbutsu
  6. ^ "Here the author offers a rich description of how the chief of Japanese military intelligence, Lieutenant General Arisue Seizo, used his information about the Soviet Union as a bargaining chip with MacArthur's intelligence forces. The result was a special intelligence partnership that had considerable relevance during the early rounds of the Cold War. In all likelihood, this particular Japanese-American cooperation was much more admissible than the initial affair American authorities had with Japanese biological warfare specialists." from "The Shadow Warriors of Nakano: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army's Elite Intelligence School" by Stephen C. Mercado. Review authors: Carl Boyd in The Journal of Military History, Vol. 67, No. 1. (Jan., 2003), pp. 274-275. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0899-3718%28200301%2967%3A1%3C274%3ATSWONA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C

[edit] Further reading

Note that Allen 1987 characterizes Hatakayama's books as "journalistic" and "inaccurate", so they are omitted.

  • The Shadow Warriors of Nakano: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army's Elite Intelligence School, Stephen C. Mercado. August 2002, ISBN 1-574-88443-3
  • Rikugun Nakano Gakko no Zensho ("Portrait of the Army Nakano School"), Kato Masao. Tokyo: Tendensha, 1998.
  • Nakano Koyukai, ed., Rikugun Nakano Gakko Army Nakano School (Tokyo: Nakano Koyukai, 1978), 176, and Moore, "Open Sources," 104.
  • Louis Allen, "The Nakano School," Japan Society Proceedings, 10, 1985, 9-15
  • Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1974
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