Sayaka Chatani

Cute episodes from the Nakano School Book

I am reading a book on the Nakano School, which was almost the only professional spy school in Japan established in the Army during the WWII. The book is not an academic research, so it's more anecdotal and easy-reading though we have no clue about how correct or incorrect the information is. I noticed that the author is a sort of old nationalist who implicitly supports a revision of the Japanese war history. It is understandable and does not annoy me as much as these kinds of books could; actually (ironically for me) such a nationalistic and heroic narrative makes the book easy to read.

The book is full of fun stories (Again, I don't know how true/untrue they are);

The Japanese Navy wanted to have an encoding machine back in 1928. Kazuo Tanabe was asked to invent one. This guy was a well-known genius-type scientist, and set a very high standard for the quality by himself, saying "I need to make a machine whose encoding is impossible to decode even after the enemy successfully steals and possesses the very same machine." He actually created super complicated machines. According to the book, the most confidential codes written with his machines were never decoded by the US. Anyways, what is cute about this story is that when he was developing it, he needed to use tons of typewriters, and ordered a lot of typewriters called "underwood" from an American company. So the company which kept receiving the order started to wonder what the guy was developing. And finally the US Navy conducted an investigation (the book doesn't tell if it found it out or not).

I also liked a story of the two Japanese soldiers who were hiding and 'discovered' 10 years after the end of WWII. It was big news when they returned home and got reported as "Two Soldiers Still in War." I was not born yet at the time but I have seen a news program reporting it; the public reaction was "Oh no, they did not have a chance to know when the war was over! But how come they hid for 10 years in that tropical island?!" According to the book, it was their job to remain in the island after combat operations to observe the situation as intelligence operators, and they were briefly trained at the Nakano School though it was not its main function to provide such training. Again, according to the book's emphasis, people trained at that school were the elite of elite.

Posted by sayaka at September 30, 2004 11:31 PM | TrackBack