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The Rikugun Nakano Gakkō was the primary training center for military intelligence operations by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.
In July 1938, after a number of attempts to penetrate the military of the Soviet Union had failed, and efforts to recruit White movement had failed, Army leadership felt that a more "systematic" approach to the training of intelligence operatives was required. 秋草 俊 was instructed to organize the curriculum of a special training school, to be located in 4 Chome Nakano of Nakano, Tokyo. The sign on the school read "Army Correspondence Research Center" to make the public believe that the school was focused on correspondence and not top secret training
The Nakano School was initially focused on Russia, teaching primarily Russian language as a foreign language. In 1940, administration of the school was handed over to 上田昌雄, who in 1938 had provided considerable intelligence on Russia from his post as military attaché (a common position for Nakano graduates) in Poland.See Allen 1987
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the start of World War II, the Nakano School changed its focus to southern targets. After the firebombing of Tokyo, it was relocated to Tomioka-machi, Gunma prefecture.
While small, its graduates occasionally had dramatic successes, such as the intact capture of oil facilities in Palembang, Netherlands East Indies, by Nakano School-trained .Mercado, Nakano, The Shadow Warriors. Pp.40 Nakano graduates were also very active in Burma, India, and Okinawa campaigns.
F Kikan, I Kikan and Minami Kikan were heavily staffed with Nakano graduates.Fujiwara, F. Kikan: Japanese Army Intelligence Operations in Southeast Asia During World War II F Kikan and I Kikan were directed against British India, and were instrumental in forming the Indian National Army and supporting the Azad Hind movement in Japanese-occupied British Malaya and Singapore. It also worked with Indonesian nationalists seeking the independence of the Netherlands East Indies.Lebra, Japanese trained Armies in South-East Asia Its efforts to promote anti-British and anti-Dutch movements lasted past the end of the war, and played a role in the independence of India and Indonesia.Fay, The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence, 1942-1945.
Minami Kikan supplied and led the Burmese National Army to engage in anti-British subversion, intelligence-gathering and later direct combat against British forces in Burma.Latimer, Burma: The Forgotten War
In China, one Nakano School operation was the unsuccessful attempt to weaken China's Kuomintang by introducing large quantities of forged Chinese currency using stolen from Hong Kong."Chūkoku shihei gizō jiken no zenshō" ("The forgery of Chinese paper currency"), Yoshimasa Okada. pages 42–51, October 1980 Rekishi to jinbutsu.
Towards the end of the war, graduates of the Nakano School expanded their activities within Japan itself, where their training in guerilla warfare were needed to help organize civilian resistance against the prospective American invasion of the Japanese home islands.See Boyd 2003
At the start of the U. S. occupation of Japan in 1945, the four line companies and headquarters detachment of the Eighth Army's 720th Military Police Battalion was sent to Tokyo from the South Pacific and quartered in the abandoned Nakano School. In 1948, the facility was renamed Camp Burness in memory of a Battalion member who had died in a plane crash near New Guinea during the Pacific War. Later that year, after a fire destroyed the "B" Company barracks, the Battalion was moved to the former Japanese Imperial Navy Academy in the Tsukiji area of Tokyo.
Nakano School graduate Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda did not surrender until 1974 on Lubang Island in the Philippines. Nakano School graduate Second Lieutenant Kikuo Tanimoto volunteered for the Vietnam Independence War as an adviser in the Quang Ngai Army Academy ().
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