The Imperial Japanese Army’s Tokumu Kikan – Special Service Organisations: Connections Between Wartime and Peacetime Intelligence Activities

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Imperial Japanese Army’s (IJA) Tokumu Kikan, or Special Service Organisations were special warfare units that specialised in HUMINT collection and fifth column activities. These small well-trained military-civilian elite units were force multipliers for the IJA, operating in China, as well as across Southeast Asia in support of Japan’s southward advance. Under central figures such as former chief of IJA intelligence, Lieutenant General Arisue Seizō, many wartime Tokumu Kikan personnel undertook a suite of new intelligence activities in the post-war period – inside Japan and in neighbouring countries – as Japan sought to manage its defeat and occupation, and rebuild its intelligence capabilities.