The Shadow Warriors of Nakano: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army's Elite Intelligence School

Despite impressive exploits during World War II, Imperial Japan's military intelligence services remain virtually unknown. Stephen C. Mercado has written a pioneering study of the Imperial Japanese Army's elite Nakano School, which trained more than 2,000 men from 1938 to 1945 in the arts of espionage, propaganda, and irregular warfare.
Working in the shadows during World War II, these dedicated warriors of the Nakano School executed a range of missions. They played major roles in attempting to subvert British rule in India, captured oil fields in the Dutch East Indies, fought U.S. forces in the Philippines and on Okinawa, and organized Japanese guerrilla units that could have made the invasion of Japan a bloodbath.
In the postwar period, Nakano veterans became valuable U.S. allies by providing American intelligence with a wealth of information on the Soviet Far East, China, and Korea. Many would also influence postwar Japan through prominent positions in the government and the private sector.
Based on archival research and the memoirs of Japanese veterans, The Shadow Warriors of Nakano sheds much-needed light on Japan's wartime military and intelligence history as well as postwar Japanese affairs.