Mercado, Stephen C. Japanese Spy Gear and Special Weapons

How Noborito's Scientists and Technicians served in the Second World War and the Cold War

The technicians at the 9th Military Technical Research Institute, known as the Noborito Research Institute, worked in the shadow of World War II to develop espionage equipment and special weapons for the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA). Their espionage equipment, including invisible ink, listening devices and mini cameras, helped the army's feared Kempeitai and the secretive Yama Agency combat foreign spies and track down domestic dissidents. Agents from the IJA's Nakano School for intelligence officers and commandos took the equipment into the field. The counterfeiters at Noborito reproduced Chinese currency in an operation designed to ruin the Chinese economy. Scientists and engineers tested biological weapons on Chinese prisoners as part of a top-secret project run by the notorious Unit 731 of the IJA and developed a virus into a weapon to infect America's cattle herds. Others developed balloon bombs to attack the American heartland, a target far beyond Japan's reach by conventional means. In this first English-language book about an intelligence organisation little known outside Japan, Stephen Mercado provides a thrilling account of Noborito's activities.