WHICH WAY DID THEY GO?

Created: 12/1/1967

OCR scan of the original document, errors are possible

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STUDIES IN

INTELLIGENCE

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The further employmenl of Japan! World Warpiet.

CIA Hffiraffi?

way did they go?

Takeml Miyagi

Now that more than twenty years have passed, it isertain wry interest to consider what happened to the members of thewhich made up Imperial JaparvtseMIntelltgencc. When the war ended, its officers, spread rather widely about the world, came homeand that had no further use for their services and to an immediate future In which, were they to continue to exercise their considerable professional talents, they could find employment only as mercenaries of the occupying power. After the Initial period of resettlement and inevitable interrogation, many of them chose tn do hut that.

Chiefs and Indiana

As the hot dust of combat began to settle into the frigid landscapes of the cold war, the, feeling needetterinsight into areas recently occupied by the Japanese armies than he was able to command with his own resources, began to press many of the Japanese professionals back into service. Theirtook the form of little private units, referred to by the Japanese as ktUn. Taxgetted mainly against China, Korea, and the USSR, the senior intelligence officers composing them engaged mostly In attempting to recover reporting assets they had controlled during the war. Many of the oldsters were thus able to secure theirhat of immediate subordinates who still wanted to play.

The hordes of lower-level operatives who were returned to Japan lived largely by their wits or, where possible, as notably for officials of the former Home Ministry, by reverting to police activity of some sort. As the cold war moved closer towards open hostilities in the Far East, however, the opportunities for intelligence employmentmarkedly until, with the outbreak of the Korean War and the reestabushment of Japanese internal security systemseller's market for professional services During this period, in parallel with the buildup of intelbgence organizations in thegovernment, several new such agencies began to emerge in

setREr

Spiel

Jtpao. In their present forms these are (he National Police Agency, the Public Safety Investigation Agency, the Ground Self Defense Force, the Cabinet Research Chamber, and the Foreign Office.'burgeoning Japanesethe main consumers of intelligence on the outer world.

Thus the ill Korean wind blew good to both groups, the oldsters who continued as Independent contractors, operators of kikan, and those, often the wartimef the first, who went directly into Japanese government employment as civil servants. The kikan operators probably reached, their^greatest. productivity just before and during the beginnings of the Korean War. In this breathless period they were in touch with |ust about everyone on the intelligence scene, both American and Japanese,

Old Pros' Decline and Rescue

As the war increased American intelligence activity and sophistlca-boo, the quality of the Allen product began to look considerably less attractive by comparison. The oldsters were now forced either onto strictly Japanese resources or to work, with some rare exceptions, in eiraiinstances of reduced funds and influence for American agencies, mainly military. But there were two new developments at thb time which gave theontinued lease on life.

Japanese industry, which owed its first postwar boom mainly to the Korean War offshore procurement program, was beginning to look abroad to its Asian market andertain amount ofreportage. This revived the kikan in the form ofInstitutes" and "Area Problem Study Centers" of one kind or another. The Japanese government security agencies, as theylikewise began to feel the same need, largely in order not to appear ignorant when questioned by other government agencies with interests abroad, and the wartime subordinates of the kikan proprietors now generally manning the security agencies turned naturally to their former seniors with requests for studies,

Japanese Spies

problems, were led roundabout into supporting once again with funds and assistance the collection schemes that the kikan men were oSering their former junior officers.

Jobs for Juniors

As indicated above, many junior members of the wartime legion had gone into civil service. Possibly more had gone into business, either for themselves as traders in the areas of their wartime Interest or as employees of the geographic divisions of the large Japanese trusts,"which by now were fuDy back in operation" and in need ofoverseas hands. Those in the government, by and Urge, followed predictable professional lines. The police went back to being police officers, most following the CE/Cl persuasion.ew of the non-commissioned military officers went into CI work with the Public Safety Investigation Agency, where they formed the backbone of its internal subversive investigative talent. (Theirsather doleful lot, for they had grown up on the good times of occupied China, whereergeant lived pretty well, and now were forced to drink the cold teaheome militaryespecially those that had been in communicationswelcomed into the revived Army, called the Cround Self Defense Force; but some of these, with training in radio direction finding, went into the policeontinuation of theirew others found employment in the Cabinet Research Chamber, where theygreat sponsors of tbe kikan operators both for the CPC itself and for the Americans. The Foreign Office alsoew and maintained some contact with other kikan.

The Creats

The few Japanesebe Onoderas and others who racked up Impressive personal records as operators during World War II,withdrew from the scene, finding more profitable if less glamor-ous employment in other fields. It would have been tittle joy for them, after their former glories, to work in the pinched circumstances of Japans postwar intelligence. Nevertheless, there must be some hereditary tendencies to the profession, for inewecond generation of the famous names has reappeared on the stage of Japanese intelligence, bidding fair, as this year's Rising Sun casts

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