Tokubetsu Keisatsutai
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The Tokkeitai (特警隊, short for 特別警察隊, Tokubetsu Keisatsutai, "Special Police Corps", or Naval Secret Police) was the Imperial Japanese Navy's military police, equivalent to the Imperial Japanese Army's Kempeitai. It was also the smallest military police service.[citation needed]
The original Tokkeitai was known as the and concerned itself with police and personnel work within the Navy: personnel, discipline and records. It took a more active role, partly to keep the Kempeitai and the Army from meddling in Navy affairs. Smaller and more low-key than its rival, it was no less brutal.
It was especially active in the areas of the South Pacific and the and was as pervasive as the Kempeitai. It had the same commissar roles in relation to exterior enemies or suspicious persons, and it watched inside units for possible defectors or traitors under the security doctrine of .
Attached to navy units, they served as in some occupied Pacific areas. Later accusations of war crimes were made against them in that role for such acts as coercion of women from Indonesia, Indochina and China into sexual slavery.
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In addition to its police responsibilities, it was the operative branch of the Secret Service Branch of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Information Office (情報局, ), which was responsible for recovering and analyzing information and for the execution of undercover operations. Its members also provided local security near naval bases. In the final weeks of the Pacific War, it was among the security units prepared for combat against the proposed Allied invasion of Japan.
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- Defunct law enforcement agencies of Japan
- Defunct Japanese intelligence agencies
- Imperial Japanese Navy
- Political repression in Japan
- Defunct military provosts
- National security institutions