The 10 horrific atrocities carried out by Japan’s secret police, the Kempeitai, during World War II reveal a terrifying chapter of history that rivals even the most infamous Nazi crimes. From gruesome mass drownings to secret medical experiments, each episode showcases the ruthless efficiency and brutal imagination of this shadowy force.
10 Pig Basket Massacre
After the Japanese occupied the Dutch East Indies, roughly 200 British servicemen found themselves stranded in Java. They resorted to guerrilla warfare from the hills, only to be captured and subjected to cruel torture by the Kempeitai. According to over 60 eyewitnesses who testified at the Hague after the war, the men were forced into one‑meter‑long bamboo cages—normally used for transporting pigs. The cages were loaded onto trucks and open rail cars, steaming under a scorching 38 °C (100 °F) sun. Dehydrated and desperate, the prisoners were then crammed onto waiting boats, taken out to sea off Surabaya, and the cages were tossed into the ocean. The men drowned or were devoured by sharks.
One Dutch witness, just 11 years old at the time, recounted the horror to a magazine: “One day around noon, the hottest time of day, a convoy of four or five army trucks passed the street where we were playing, loaded with so‑called ‘pig baskets.’ These were usually used to stack pigs for slaughter. In Indonesia, a Muslim country, pigs were only for European and Chinese customers; Muslims considered them filthy. To our astonishment the pig baskets were crammed with Australian soldiers, some still in uniform, some even with their distinctive hats. They were tied in pairs, facing each other, stacked like pigs, lying down. Some were in a terrible state, crying for water; I saw a Japanese guard urinate on them. The trucks drove through town as a show of humiliation for the white race, finally dumping the cages into the harbor to drown.”
Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura, commander‑in‑chief of Japanese forces in Java, was acquitted of war crimes by a Dutch court due to insufficient evidence, but later convicted by an Australian military court and sentenced to ten years in prison, which he served from 1946‑54 in Sugamo, Japan.
9 Operation Sook Ching
Following the Japanese capture of Singapore, the city was renamed Syonan (“Light of the South”) and its clocks were set to Tokyo time. The Japanese launched a sweeping program to eliminate Chinese residents deemed dangerous or undesirable. Every Chinese male aged 15‑50 was ordered to report to registration points across the island for intensive interrogation to assess loyalty. Those who passed were stamped with the word “examined” on their faces, arms, or clothing. Those who failed—communists, nationalists, secret society members, English speakers, civil servants, teachers, veterans, and criminals—were taken to holding areas. A simple decorative tattoo could be enough to brand a man as a member of an anti‑Japanese secret society.
For two weeks after the screenings, the “undesirables” were executed at plantations or coastal sites such as Changi Beach, Ponggol Foreshore, and Tanah Merah Besar Beach, where their bodies were washed out to sea. Execution methods varied with the whims of four section commanders: some victims were marched into the sea and machine‑gunned, others were tied together before being shot, bayoneted, or decapitated. Japanese authorities claimed about 5,000 victims, but local estimates range from 20,000 to 50,000.
After the massacre, the Kempeitai instituted a reign of terror and torture, including a punishment where victims were forced to ingest water from a fire hose and then kicked in the stomach. One administrator, Shinozaki Mamoru, was so appalled by the cruelty that he issued thousands of “good citizen” and safe‑passage certificates—normally reserved for collaborators—to protect Chinese civilians. He issued nearly 30,000 such passes, saving many lives, and earned the moniker “Singapore’s Schindler.”
8 Sandakan Death Marches
The Japanese occupation of Borneo gave them access to valuable offshore oil fields, which they guarded by constructing a military airfield at Sandakan using slave labor supplied by prisoners of war. Approximately 1,500 POWs—mostly Australians captured after the fall of Singapore—were sent to Sandakan, where they endured appalling conditions, meager rations of vegetables and dirty rice, and forced labor on an airstrip. British POWs joined them in early 1943.
Early escape attempts triggered a brutal crackdown. Prisoners were beaten or locked in open‑air cages under the scorching sun for offenses such as collecting coconuts or failing to bow deeply enough to a passing guard. Those suspected of operating radios or smuggling medicine were tortured by the Kempeitai, who burned flesh with cigarette lighters or drove metal tacks into their nails. One victim described the torture: “The interrogator produced a small piece of wood like a meat skewer, pushed it into my left ear, and hammered it in. I fainted, was revived with a bucket of water, and the pain was excruciating. I never heard again.”
Despite the crackdown, Australian Captain L.C. Matthews organized an underground intelligence ring, smuggling medical supplies, food, and money to prisoners while maintaining radio contact with the Allies. Arrested and tortured, Matthews never revealed his collaborators and was executed by the Kempeitai in 1944.
In January 1945, Allied bombing forced the Japanese to abandon Sandakan, prompting three death marches between January and May. The first wave, composed of the fittest prisoners, was loaded with Japanese equipment and forced to march through jungle for nine days with only four days’ rations of rice, dried fish, and salt. Those who fell were shot or beaten to death. Survivors were forced to build a new camp. The remaining prisoners were later marched south in two additional waves, while those left behind at Sandakan perished as the camp was torched. Only six Australians survived the entire ordeal.
7 Kikosaku
During the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, controlling the Eurasian (mixed Dutch‑Indonesian) population proved difficult. These individuals often occupied influential positions and resisted the Japanese version of Pan‑Asianism. In response, the Kempeitai introduced a policy called kikosaku, a neologism fusing “kosen” (a Buddhist reference to the land of the dead, “yellow spring”) and “saku” (engineering or maneuvering). It has been translated as “Operation Hades” or “Hellcraft.” In practice, it denoted extrajudicial executions and punishments leading to death.
The Japanese labeled mixed‑blood Indonesians as “kontetsu,” suspecting them of loyalty to the Netherlands, espionage, and sabotage. They also feared communist or Islamic insurgency. Believing judicial processes inefficient, the Kempeitai adopted kikosaku to imprison suspects indefinitely without charge or to execute them summarily.
When the Kempeitai believed only the most extreme interrogation methods would elicit a confession—even at the cost of life—they employed kikosaku. A former Kempeitai member later told the New York Times, “Even crying babies would shut up at the mention of the Kempeitai. Everybody was afraid of us. Prisoners entered by the front gate but left by the back gate—as corpses.”
6 Jesselton Revolt
The city now known as Kota Kinabalu was founded as Jesselton in 1899 by the British North Borneo Company, serving as a rubber hub until the Japanese captured it in January 1942 and renamed it Api. On 9 October 1943, an uprising of ethnic Chinese and native Suluks assaulted the Japanese Military Administration, attacking offices, police stations, military hotels, warehouses, and the main wharf. Armed only with a few hunting rifles, spears, and long parang knives, the rebels managed to kill 60‑90 Japanese and Taiwanese soldiers before retreating into the hills.
In retaliation, two Japanese army companies and the Kempeitai were dispatched to unleash vicious reprisals aimed not only at the rebels but at the civilian population at large. Hundreds of ethnic Chinese were executed merely for suspected support of the revolt. The Japanese also targeted Suluk natives on offshore islands such as Sulug, Udar, Dinawan, Mantanani, and Mengalum. The entire male population of Dinawan was annihilated, while women and children were forcibly relocated. Similar massacres occurred on Suluk and Udar. Japanese estimates claimed only 500 deaths, but other sources suggest closer to 3,000, with the treatment of the Suluks described by some historians as genocidal.
5 Double Tenth Incident
In October 1943, a group of Anglo‑Australian commandos known as Special Z infiltrated Singapore harbor aboard an old fishing boat and folding canoes. They placed limpet mines that sank or disabled seven Japanese vessels, including an oil tanker. The operation went unnoticed, prompting the Japanese to believe the attack had been orchestrated by British guerrillas from Malaya, with intel allegedly supplied by civilians and Changi prison inmates.
On 10 October, the Kempeitai raided the prison, conducting a day‑long search for evidence and arresting suspects. A total of 57 internees were detained for alleged involvement, including an Anglican bishop and a former British colonial secretary. The detainees endured five months of confinement in brightly lit cells without bedding, forced to stand or kneel for interrogation, and subjected to starvation and brutal torture. One suspect was executed for alleged sabotage, while fifteen others died as a direct result of Kempeitai torture.
During the 1946 trial of those involved, British prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Colin Sleeman described the Japanese mindset: “It is with no little diffidence and misgiving that I approach my description of the facts and events in this case… The keynote of the whole of this case can be epitomized by two words—unspeakable horror. Horror stark and naked permeates every corner and angle of this case from beginning to end, devoid of relief or palliation. I have searched, I have searched diligently amongst a vast mass of evidence to discover some redeeming feature… I confess I have failed.”
4 Bridge House
The Kempeitai maintained a presence in Shanghai since the Imperial Japanese Army occupied the city in 1937, with their headquarters located in a building known as Bridge House. Shanghai’s foreign presence and intellectual culture gave rise to resistance publications opposing the Japanese. The Kempeitai, together with the collaborationist Reformed Government, employed a paramilitary group of Chinese criminals called the Huangdao hui (Yellow Way Organization) to commit murders and terrorist actions against anti‑Japanese elements in foreign settlements. In a notable incident, Cai Diaotu, editor of an anti‑Japanese tabloid, was beheaded and his head was displayed on a lamppost in the French Concession with a placard that read, “Look! Look! The result of anti‑Japanese elements.”
After Japan’s entry into World II, the Kempeitai turned loose on Shanghai’s foreign population, arresting individuals on charges of anti‑Japanese activity or espionage and imprisoning them in Bridge House. Detainees were confined in steel cages and subjected to beatings and torture. Conditions were horrendous: “Rats and disease‑infested lice were everywhere, and no‑one was allowed to bathe or shower, so diseases from dysentery to typhus and leprosy ran rampant.”
The Kempeitai paid particular attention to British and American journalists who reported Japanese atrocities. John B. Powell, editor of the China Weekly Review, recounted his ordeal: “When the questioning began, we had to strip and kneel before our captors. When our answers failed to satisfy them, we were beaten on the back and legs with four‑foot bamboo sticks until blood flowed.” Powell was repatriated but later died after an amputation of a gangrenous leg; many other reporters were permanently injured or driven insane.
In 1942, a group of Allied civilians tortured at Bridge House were released as part of a repatriation deal brokered through the Swiss embassy. The journey was deliberately unpleasant: internees were packed below decks in overcrowded, sweltering conditions as the ship collected more prisoners from Yokohama and Hong Kong before making a slow, grueling voyage to the neutral Portuguese port of Lourenço Marques in Mozambique.
3 Occupation Of Guam
Along with the Alaskan islands of Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians (whose populations were evacuated before invasion), Guam was the only populated United States territory occupied by the Japanese during World II. Seized in 1941, the island was renamed Omiya Jime (Great Shrine Island), while the capital Agana became Akashi (Red City). Initially, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Keibitai supervised the island, but in 1944 the Kempeitai assumed control as the war turned against Japan.
The Japanese employed brutal methods to eradicate American influence and force the native Chamorro people into compliance with the Greater East Asia Co‑Prosperity Sphere. Forced labor, initially imposed on Chamorro men in 1943, was expanded to include women, children, and elders. The Kempeitai, convinced that pro‑American Chamorros were engaged in espionage and sabotage, cracked down harshly. Civilians were raped, shot, or beheaded as discipline collapsed. One survivor, Jose Lizama Charfauros, encountered a Japanese patrol while foraging for food, was forced to kneel, and then had his neck chopped with a sword. He was later found by friends; maggots had entered his wounds, keeping him alive by clearing infection. He survived the war with a massive scar on his neck.
2 Comfort Women
The issue of “comfort women,” who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World II, remains a source of political tension and historical revisionism in East Asia. Officially, the Kempeitai oversaw organized prostitution from 1904 onward. Initially, brothels were subcontracted to the military police, who supervised them under the belief that some prostitutes might act as spies gathering military intelligence from talkative clients.
In 1932, the Kempeitai assumed full control of military‑run brothels, constructing facilities in barracks or tents to house women forced into service. These women were imprisoned behind barbed wire and guarded by Japanese or Korean yakuza. Railway cars were also used as mobile brothels. Girls as young as 13 were coerced into prostitution, with prices varying by ethnicity and rank of the client. Japanese women fetched the highest fees, followed by Koreans, Okinawans, Chinese, and Southeast Asians; Caucasian women were also forced into service. It is estimated that up to 200,000 women were compelled to serve up to 3.5 million Japanese soldiers. Conditions were appalling, and the women received little to no compensation despite promises of 800 yen per month for their “service.”
Many questions remain about Japan’s use of comfort women, owing to a high degree of secrecy and the destruction of evidence. In 1945, British Royal Marines captured Kempeitai documents in Taiwan that outlined a chilling policy for dealing with the women in emergencies: “Whether they are destroyed individually or in groups, or however it is done, with mass bombing, poisonous smoke, drowning, decapitation, or what… it is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all and not to leave any traces.”
1 Epidemic Prevention Department
While Unit 731’s human experiments are widely known, the full scale of Japan’s biological warfare program is often underappreciated, with at least 17 related facilities spread across Asia. The Kempeitai was placed in charge of Unit 173, located in the Manchurian city of Pingfang. To build the complex, eight villages were razed, making way for research labs, underground bunkers, a large crematorium, and Kempeitai barracks. The facility’s euphemistic label was “Epidemic Prevention Department.”
Shiro Ishii, the program’s director, introduced his staff with a grim statement: “A doctor’s God‑given mission is to block and treat disease, but the work on which we are now to embark is the complete opposite of those principles.” Prisoners sent to Pingfang were typically labeled “incorrigible,” “die‑hard anti‑Japanese,” or “of no value or use.” The majority were Chinese, but Koreans, White Russians, and later Allied POWs from the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia were also incarcerated. The Japanese staff referred to the prisoners as murata (“logs”) and described the facility as a lumber mill.
At these facilities, live human subjects were used to test biological and chemical weapons, as well as exposure to deadly diseases such as bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, tuberculosis, and typhoid. Vivisections were performed without anesthesia. One researcher recounted a gruesome procedure on a 30‑year‑old Chinese male: “The fellow knew it was over for him, so he didn’t struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down. When I picked up the scalpel, he began screaming. I cut him from chest to stomach, and his face twisted in agony. He screamed terribly, then finally stopped. It was a day’s work for the surgeons, but it left a lasting impression on me.”
Other Kempeitai‑supervised facilities existed throughout China and Asia. Unit 100 in Changchun developed vaccines for Japanese livestock and biological weapons to decimate Chinese and Soviet livestock, while Unit 8604 in Guangzhou bred rats designed to carry bubonic plague. Additional facilities researching malaria and plague were established in Singapore and Thailand, though many records were destroyed before Allied capture.
For further inquiries, David Tormsen can be contacted at [email protected].