Kempeitai in 1935
The Kempeitai was the military police corps of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945. The kempeitai functioned as a secret police force akin to the gestapo of Nazi Germany, and there were 7,500 of them active during World War II. The groups ran extensive criminal and collaborationist networks, and they also committed some of the greatest atrocities of the Second Sino-Japanese War, massacring thousands of Chinese civilians and captured US airmen after the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. The Kempeitai also abused prisoners of war. In 1945, the corps was disbanded at the end of the war.