Japan's Gestapo: Murder, Mayhem and Torture in Wartime Asia

by Mark Felton

Naval Institute Press, 224 pages, $39.95

You have been warned. "This book is not for the fainthearted or easily disgusted," reads the first line.

Japan's military and secret police, the Kempetai, carried out a reign of terror against captive Asian nations, Allied POWs, and Japanese citizens throughout World War II. This history explains the origins, command structure, and role of the Kempetai apparatus, revealing their criminal and collaborationist networks. It examines biological and chemical experiments on live subjects, the gulags for POWs, and slave labor, including the so-called comfort women, as well as their campaign of revenge after the 1942 Doolittle raid on Tokyo. Calling their actions genocide on a grand scale, the author backs up his text with firsthand testimonies from survivors.

Buy it here at Amazon.