The Police Reserve Force and the US Army

On September 18, 1950, the day after eighteenyear-old Irikura Shōzō joined the PRF, he entered Camp Kurihama in Kanagawa Prefecture, about a one-hour train ride from Tokyo. The PRF recruitment drive had begun in August, a month after the creation of the force in early July, which was triggered by the outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula in late June. Until Japan’s surrender in September 1945, Kurihama had hosted a navy communications school. In anticipation of an US invasion of the mainland, it became a center where military personnel and civilians, including women and children, prepared to defend the