Before the time of the First Sino-Japanese War, Japanese operatives, posing as businessmen, and Buddhist missionaries in China, Manchuria and Russia established detailed intelligence networks for the production of maps, recruiting local support, and gathering information on opposing forces.
In 1940, administration of the school was handed over to Lt. Col. Masao Ueda (上田昌雄), who in 1938 had provided considerable intelligence on Russia from his post as military attaché (a common position for Nakano graduates) in Poland.
Extended courses were provided on a wide variety of topics including philosophy, history, current events, martial arts, propaganda, and various facets of covert action.
[11] Towards the end of the war, graduates of the Nakano School expanded their activities within Japan itself, where their training in guerilla warfare were needed to help organize civilian resistance against the prospective American invasion of the Japanese home islands.
[13] At the start of the U. S. occupation of Japan in 1945, the four line companies and headquarters detachment of the Eighth Army's 720th Military Police Battalion was sent to Tokyo from the South Pacific and quartered in the abandoned Nakano School.
Nakano School graduate Second Lieutenant Kikuo Tanimoto volunteered for the Vietnam Independence War as an adviser in the Quang Ngai Army Academy (Vietnamese: Trường Lục quân trung học Quảng Ngãi).