The Kempeitai, Japan's secret military police and counter-espionage service, were one of the most dreaded organizations of the Second World War. First-hand accounts in this book bring the atrocities to life.

"Based on extensive archival research in Malaysia, Great Britain, Japan and the United States, Red Star Over Malay provides an account of the way the Japanese occupation reshaped colonial Malaya, and of the tension-filled months that followed surrender. This book, now in its third edition, is fundamental to an understanding of social and political developments in Malaysia during the second half of the 20th century."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Traces five hundred years of Japanese espionage, recounts the Kempe tai's most memorable successes, and shows how commercial spying has superseded military espionage

"From spy missions to code breaking, this richly illustrated account of the covert operations of World War II takes readers behind the battle lines and deep into the undercover war effort that changed the course of history. From the authors who created Eyewitness to World War II and numerous other best-selling illustrated reference books, this is the shocking story behind the covert activity that shaped the outcome of one of the world's greatest conflicts--and the destiny of millions of people. National Geographic's landmark book illuminates World War II as never before by taking you inside the secret lives of spies and spy masters; secret agents and secret armies; Enigma machines and code breakers; psychological warfare and black propaganda; secret weapons and secret battle strategies. Seven heavily illustrated narrative chapters reveal the truth behind the lies and deception that shaped the 'secret war'; eight essays showcase hundreds of rare photos and artifacts (many never before seen); more than 50 specially created sidebars tell the stories of spies and secret operations. Renowned historian and top-selling author Stephen Hyslop reveals this little-known side of the war in captivating detail, weaving in extraordinary eyewitness accounts and information only recently declassified. Rare photographs, artifacts, and illuminating graphics enrich this absorbing reference book"--

This is the most comprehensive, and most comprehensively chilling, study of modern torture yet written. Darius Rejali, one of the world's leading experts on torture, takes the reader from the late nineteenth century to the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, from slavery and the electric chair to electrotorture in American inner cities, and from French and British colonial prison cells and the Spanish-American War to the fields of Vietnam, the wars of the Middle East, and the new democracies of Latin America and Europe. As Rejali traces the development and application of one torture technique after another in these settings, he reaches startling conclusions. As the twentieth century progressed, he argues, democracies not only tortured, but set the international pace for torture. Dictatorships may have tortured more, and more indiscriminately, but the United States, Britain, and France pioneered and exported techniques that have become the lingua franca of modern torture: methods that leave no marks. Under the watchful eyes of reporters and human rights activists, low-level authorities in the world's oldest democracies were the first to learn that to scar a victim was to advertise iniquity and invite scandal. Long before the CIA even existed, police and soldiers turned instead to "clean" techniques, such as torture by electricity, ice, water, noise, drugs, and stress positions. As democracy and human rights spread after World War II, so too did these methods. Rejali makes this troubling case in fluid, arresting prose and on the basis of unprecedented research--conducted in multiple languages and on several continents--begun years before most of us had ever heard of Osama bin Laden or Abu Ghraib. The author of a major study of Iranian torture, Rejali also tackles the controversial question of whether torture really works, answering the new apologists for torture point by point. A brave and disturbing book, this is the benchmark against which all future studies of modern torture will be measured.

From the author of Children of the Camps, a look at the disturbing activities of the Kempeitai, Japan’s feared military and secret police. The book opens by explaining the origins, organization, and roles of the Kempeitai apparatus, which exercised virtually unlimited power throughout the Japanese Empire. Author Mark Felton reveals their criminal and collaborationist networks that extorted huge sums of money from hapless citizens and businesses. They ran the Allied POW gulag system that treated captives with merciless and murderous brutality. Other Kempeitai activities included biological and chemical experiments on live subjects, the Maruta vivisection campaign, and widespread slave labor, including “Comfort Women” drawn from all races. Their record of reprisals against military and civilians was unrelenting. For example, Colonel Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo in 1942 resulted in a campaign of revenge not just against captured airmen but thousands of Chinese civilians. Their actions amounted to genocide on a grand scale. Felton backs up his text with firsthand testimonies from survivors who suffered at the hands of this evil organization. He examines how the guilty were brought to justice and the resulting claims for compensation. As a result, Japan’s Gestapo provides comprehensive evidence of the ruthlessness of the Kempeitai against the white and Asian peoples under their control.

Unthinking Collaboration uncovers the little-known history of Japanese Americans who weathered the years of World War II on Japanese soil. Severed from the country of their birth when the attack on Pearl Harbor abruptly halted all passenger traffic on the Pacific, these Nisei faced the years of total war as members of the Japanese populace, yet as the target of anti-American propaganda and suspicion. Whereas their white American counterparts were sequestered by Japanese authorities, placed on house arrest, or sent home on exchange ships during the war, American Nisei in Japan were left to contribute to the war effort alongside their Japanese neighbors as soldiers, cryptographers, interpreters, and in farming and manufacturing. When the dust of air raid bombings cleared, many such Nisei transitioned into roles in service of the Allied occupation and its goals of democratization and demilitarization. As censors, translators, interpreters, and administrative staff, they played integral roles in facilitating American-Japanese interaction, as well as in shaping policies and public opinion in the postwar era. Weaving archival data with oral histories, personal narratives, material culture, and fiction, Unthinking Collaboration emphasizes the heterogeneity of Japanese immigrant experiences, and sheds light on broader issues of identity, race, and performance of individuals growing up in a bicultural or multicultural context. By distancing “collaboration” from its default elision with moral judgment, and by incorporating contemporary findings from psychology and behavioral science about the power of the subconscious mind to influence human behavior, author A. Carly Buxton offers an alternative approach to history—one that posits historical subjects as deeply embedded in the realities of their physical and discursive environment. Walking beside Nisei as they navigate their everyday lives in transwar Japan, readers “un-think” long-held assumptions about the actions and decisions of individuals as represented in history. The result is an ambitious historical study that speaks to readers who are interested in broader questions of race and trust, empire-building, World War II and its legacy on both the Western and Pacific fronts, and to all who consider questions of loyalty, treason, assimilation, and collaboration.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched an attack against United States naval forces stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. But what if the Japanese followed up their air assault with an invasion and occupation of Hawaii? With American military forces subjugated and civilians living in fear of their conquerors, there is no one to stop the Japanese from using the islands' resources to launch an offensive against America's western coast.