Counter Intelligence Corps Training School Opens in Tokyo (12 NOV 1945)

On Nov. 12, 1945, the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) Training School opened in Tokyo. The school provided intelligence instruction on the specific roles and responsibilities of the CIC in occupied Japan.

The CIC School in Brisbane, Australia, opened in 1943 to recruit and train CIC personnel for the specific intelligence requirements of operations in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA). This included training in jungle warfare, Japanese military tactics, enemy intelligence organization, tactical intelligence collection, field security, and investigative techniques. The school closed in October 1944, and training moved to CIC headquarters in Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea (https://www.dvidshub.net/news/432373). As the CIC moved throughout the SWPA during 1945, so too did the training school.

At the end of the war in the Pacific, CIC training briefly occurred at CIC headquarters in Manila, Philippines, before the school moved to the former Kempeitai (Japanese military police) headquarters in Tokyo, which had been repurposed as headquarters for the 441st CIC Detachment. On Nov. 12, 1945, the first class of the CIC Training School began on the building’s top floor and included twenty-nine enlisted soldiers who had recently arrived from the United States. Unlike the combat-orientated training of the previous schools in the SWPA, the new fifteen-day course covered the CIC’s jurisdictions and limitations during occupation, investigative responsibilities, and report writing, as well as basic instruction on the recently defeated nation’s social, political, and economic landscape, its court system, intelligence agencies, and national media.

Between 1945 and 1946, the standards for CIC recruitment “had suffered drastically,” according to History of the Counter Intelligence Corps. Due to military downsizing during the first year of occupation, few agents arriving from the CIC School at Fort Holabird, Maryland, had a college education or any intelligence field experience. This posed a serious problem for the strong demand for agents in the Pacific. Brig. Gen. Elliot Thorpe, chief of the G-2 Civil Intelligence Section (CIS) that controlled the 441st CIC Detachment, recommended the recruitment of occupation troops in non-CIC assignments to fill this demand. By late 1946, approximately one-fourth of the detachment’s personnel had been recruited this way. Because these “locally procured” agents had limited or no prior intelligence training, more course hours were added at the Tokyo school for instruction on basic English writing, intelligence functions, and surveillance, extending the course to four weeks. This practice of obtaining non-intelligence soldiers for intelligence work was discontinued in November 1947 once the Holabird school began producing enough skilled graduates to meet the demand in the Pacific.

Having students with prior intelligence training and experience allowed the Tokyo school to resume focus on specific aspects of Japanese occupation. New lessons were developed focusing on Japanese industry, health and welfare, education, and natural resources; lectures were provided by Japanese government officials and naval intelligence personnel; and field trips were organized to the CIS and its subordinate Civil Censorship Detachment. In December 1947, the school also began conducting a one-week agent refresher course intended for personnel who had spent at least one year in Japan. The Tokyo school further advised Fort Holabird on courses it should include prior to deployment, such as extending its studies on basic English, the communist party, and surveillance; adding more weapons qualification courses; and implementing driving tests.

As the situation on the Korean peninsula became more volatile in late 1949, 441st CIC Detachment commander Col. Lawrence G. Smith directed the CIC to begin more intensive combat field training for provisional combat teams and tactical intelligence units. This new direction of CIC training in Tokyo continued through the Korean conflict. After American occupation of Japan came to an end in April 1952, the 441st CIC Detachment ceased operating as an occupation force and instead became an advisory intelligence agency to the new Japanese government. When exactly the Tokyo CIC Training School closed is unknown.

Article by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian. New issues of This Week in MI History are published each week. To report story errors, ask questions, request previous articles, or be added to our distribution list, please contact: TR-ICoE-Command-Historian@army.mil.

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