Japanese Spy Gear & Special Weapons

By Stephen C. Mercado

This new hardback book details for the first time in English the activities of the Noborito Research Institute which is little known outside Japan. The technicians of the 9th Army Technical Research Institute, known as the Noborito Research Institute, toiled in the shadows of the WWII to develop spy gear and special weapons for the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA). Their espionage devices, including secret inks, bugging devices, and miniature cameras, helped the Army's dreaded Kempeitai and the shadowy Yama Agency counter foreign spies and track domestic dissent. Noborito's forgers reproduced Chinese currency in an operation to wreck China's economy. Scientists and technicians tested biological weapons on Chinese prisoners as part of a top-secret project fielded by the IJA's infamous Unit 731 and developed a virus into a weapon to strike at America's cattle herds. Others developed bombing balloons to attack the American heartland, a target that lay far beyond Japan’s reach by conventional means. Japanese Spy Gear And Special Weapons provides an absorbing account of the Japanese activities in WWII and beyond.

Size: 155 x 236mm, 208 pages, Hardback ISBN: 9781036107987