Kempeitai

The Kempeitai was the military police of the Imperial Japanese Army, founded in January 1881 in the Meiji era on the model of France's National Gendarmerie. It began as an elite corps of 349 men enforcing the new conscription laws and grew with Japanese militarism into a force that also worked as a secret police and gendarmerie, operating in Korea, Manchuria and the territories Japan occupied. Its duties covered military discipline, the security of vital military zones, counterintelligence and, in occupied areas, the policing of civilians. During World War II it ran prisoner-of-war and civilian internment camps and became notorious for torture and reprisals against civilians. It reached about 35,000 personnel at its peak and was disbanded after the war, with many of its leaders tried for war crimes.