[cranks]

Originally Posted by ColinHowell

To an American, the term "military police" implies a group of soldiers whose job it is to police other soldiers. The powers of U.S. military police are strictly limited, and the military is always considered to be subservient to the civilian government, except in extreme circumstances when martial law is declared.

I guess it is more appropriate to call it the French way, National Gendarmerie, instead of military police. Eitherway, except for during the war time when martial law was actually declared, Kempeitai (Thanks for the spell checking) was not the one which was doing the arrests and oppression the OP was talking about. It was Tokko 特高 whose main mission was to counter act the communist spies, and although the oppression was clearly there during the war time, the notion that Kempeitai, or even Tokko in that sense, was wildly arresting and oppressing Japanese citizens at large is incorrect. As I have already pointed out, the deaths were about 1500. While it is not at all acceptable especially by today's standard, considering the size of Japanese population, the number does not support such notion.

Originally Posted by ColinHowell

Those Westerners who have heard of the kempeitai generally also hear of its notorious reputation, which has been widely repeated.

The only thing I am asking is where you heard it from. Westerners "hear" a lot of things about Japan, like Japanese guys put Sushi on naked girls. And a lot of these things are vastly exaggerated or completely incorrect.

Originally Posted by ColinHowell

And it's important to point out that the kempeitai were disbanded after the Japanese surrender,

ALL military organizations were disbanded. And by the way, ex-Tokko members were used for red-purge by the Americans during the occupation.

Originally Posted by ColinHowell

It's also interesting to note that the modern Japanese military police force is called "keimutan"

Why? Japanese military today is called 自衛隊 and its soldiers are 隊員 not 兵. There is nothing that suggests that Japanese were especially sensitive about the name 憲兵.

Originally Posted by ColinHowell

No, they were not. Slavery had ended in 1865…
… Slaves are humans treated as property, as others' work tools, with little or no legal rights of their own.

I may have tried too hard to make my point and been offensive. I apologize, take back "downright" and make the uppercase SLAVES to lowercase, but that's as far as I go. 1865 was 75 years before the war started, and I don't believe the practice of treating colored people "as others' work tools, with little or no legal rights of their own" was completely abolished the next day Yankees won. Takahashi Korekiyo（高橋是清）who was the prime ministor of Japan before the war from 1921 to 1922, was sold to a family called Browns in Oakland for $50 when he went to the states for study, and later bought back by the Japanese consulate. That was in 1867. I'm not saying the US officially supported slavery in 1940, and I didn't, but Jim Crow laws existed until 1965, and non-white people were officially discriminated and their rights were limited. "Colords were slaves not long before WW2" may still be rhetoric, but considering all these points, it is one that is not too far from the fact. Of course I would make more technically accurate remarks, if the debate was more fact based.