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10 Horrific Atrocities Committed By Japan's Secret Police In World War II.10 of the Bloodiest Coups Ever Attempted 10 Astounding Ways Spy Agencies Hid in Plain Sight Top 10 Famous Minds Changed by Psychedelics 10 Little-Known Unsettling Urban Legends 10 Books That Were Allegedly Written by Ghosts 10 Overlooked People Who Accidentally Changed the World 10 Fascinating Explanations for Cosmic Mysteries 10 Insane Covert Operations from WWII 10 Massive Landmarks Built to Bury Dark Historical Secrets 10 Instances of Lithobolia That Had People Running for Cover 10 of the Bloodiest Coups Ever Attempted 10 Astounding Ways Spy Agencies Hid in Plain Sight Who's Behind Listverse?Jamie Frater Head Editor Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts.He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author.More About UsTop 10 Famous Minds Changed by Psychedelics 10 Little-Known Unsettling Urban Legends 10 Books That Were Allegedly Written by Ghosts 10 Overlooked People Who Accidentally Changed the World 10 Fascinating Explanations for Cosmic Mysteries 10 Insane Covert Operations from WWII 10 Massive Landmarks Built to Bury Dark Historical Secrets 10 Horrific Atrocities Committed By Japan’s Secret Police In World War II Most people are familiar with the feared Gestapo, the secret police of the Nazi regime, but their acts of terror and repression were more than matched by their Japanese counterpart, the Kempeitai.Founded in 1881 as the military police of the modernizing Imperial Japanese Army, they were largely unremarkable until the rise of expansionist Japanese imperialism after World War I.The Kempeitai became a brutal organ of the state, holding jurisdiction over the occupied territories, captured prisoners of war, and subject peoples.The Kempeitai worked as both spies and counterintelligence agents.They used torture and extrajudicial execution to maintain their power over millions of innocent people.When Japan surrendered, many documents were deliberately destroyed by the Kempeitai, so the true scale of their atrocities may never be known.10 Pig Basket Massacre After the Japanese occupied the Dutch East Indies, a group of about 200 British servicemen found themselves stuck in Java during the invasion.They took to the hills to fight as a guerrilla resistance force, but they were captured and tortured by the Kempeitai.According to over 60 eyewitnesses testifying at the Hague following the war, these men were then forced into 1-meter-long (3 ft) bamboo cages meant to transport pigs.They were then transported via trucks and open rail cars to the coast, in temperatures reaching 38 degrees Celsius (100 °F).The prisoners, already suffering from severe dehydration, were then placed on waiting boats, which sailed off the coast of Surabaya, whereupon the cages were thrown into the ocean.The prisoners were drowned or eaten alive by sharks.One Dutch witness, only 11 years old at the time, described the incident to a magazine: One day around noon, the hottest time of the day, a convoy of about four or five Army trucks passed the street where we were playing, loaded with so-called “pig baskets,” which were normally used to stack pigs during transport to the slaughterhouse or the market.Indonesia being a Moslem country, pigs were only for European and Chinese customers in the market.Moslems (Javanese) were not allowed to eat them and considered pigs (same as dogs) as “dirty animals” from which contact should be avoided.In other words: any connection with pigs and dogs was shameful.To our astonishment the pig baskets were crammed with Australian soldiers, some of them still wearing parts of their uniform, a few even their special hat.They were tied in pairs, two to each other, facing each other, and stacked, like pigs, in the baskets, lying down.Some were in a terrible state, crying for water, I saw one of the Japanese guards opening his fly and urinate on them.I remember being terrified and I can never forget this picture in my mind.Later my father told me the trucks were driven through the town as a show to the Indonesians for utter humiliation of the white race, finally being dumped into the harbour to drown.Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura, commander in chief of the Japanese forces in Java, was acquitted on war crimes charges by a Netherlands court due to lack of evidence but was later charged by an Australian military court and sentenced to 10 years in prison, which he served from 1946–54 in Sugamo, Japan.9 Operation Sook Ching After the Japanese captured Singapore, they renamed the city Syonan (“Light of the South”) and set the clocks to Tokyo time.They then initiated a program to clear the city of Chinese whom they considered dangerous or undesirable.Every Chinese male between the ages of 15 and 50 was ordered to report to registration points throughout the island for screening, where they would be closely questioned to determine their loyalties and political inclinations.Those who passed the tests were stamped on their face, arms, or clothing with the word “examined.” Those who failed the tests—communists, nationalists, secret society members, English speakers, civil servants, teachers, veterans, and criminals—were taken to holding areas.For many, simply having a decorative tattoo was enough to be branded as a member of an anti-Japanese secret society.For two weeks after the screening, those marked as undesirable were taken to be executed at plantations or coastal areas like Changi beach, Ponggol foreshore, and Tanah Merah Besar beach, where the bodies would be washed out to sea.Methods of execution varied according to the whims of four section commanders.Some were marched into the sea and then machine-gunned, while others were tied together before being shot, bayoneted, or decapitated.At later war crimes trials, the Japanese claimed that there were around 5,000 victims, while local estimates range from 20,000 to 50,000.Following the massacre, the Kempeitai maintained a rule of terror and torture, including a form of punishment in which a victim was forced to ingest water by fire hose and then kicked in the stomach.One administrator, Shinozaki Mamoru, was so horrified by the torture that he issued thousands of “good citizen” and safe passage passes, which were usually intended only for those collaborating with the Japanese.He issued almost 30,000 of them, saving many Chinese lives, much to the fury of the Kempeitai.He is remembered today as “Singapore’s Schindler.” 8 Sandakan Death Marches The occupation of Borneo gave the Japanese access to valuable offshore oil fields, which they decided to protect by military airfield at the port of Sandakan with slave labor provided by prisoners of war.About 1,500 POWs, mostly Australians captured in the fall of Singapore, were sent to Sandakan, where they endured horrible conditions and meager rations of minimal vegetables and some dirty rice.They were later joined by British POWs in early 1943.The POWs were forced to labor on an airstrip while suffering from starvation, tropical ulcers, and malnutrition.Some early escapes led to a crackdown at the camp.POWs were beaten or imprisoned in open-air cages in the Sun for crimes such as collecting coconuts or failing to bow deeply enough to a passing camp guard.Those who were suspected of operating or building a radio or smuggling medicine into the camp were tortured by the Kempeitai, who burned their flesh with cigarette lighters or drove metal tacks into their nails.One victim would later describe the Kempeitai methods: The interviewer produced a small piece of wood like a meat skewer, pushed that into my left ear, and tapped it in with a small hammer.I think I fainted some time after it went through the drum.I remember the last excruciating sort of pain, and I must have gone out for some time because I was revived with a bucket of water.Eventually it healed but of course I couldn’t hear with it.