Benkei Island Training Facility

The Benkei Island Arasaka Training Facility is located on a small tropical island that owned by Japan somewhere in the vicinity of Indonesia. Its exact location is kept a secret, for although it's used to train very few people at a time, it's very important to the corporation's covert operations. Because of this secrecy, access to Benkei Island is highly restricted. People and supplies are brought to the island by submarine.

Overview
The Arasaka facility itself is a tunnel complex built into the rock that forms the island. There are some surface buildings, largely for training, but they are camouflaged to look like an unimportant native fishing village. The tunnel construction serves the dual purpose of disguising the installation and protecting it from attack.

Its defenses are formidable. The installation deploys a complete set of detection sensors to scan surface and deep ocean to detect intruders. In addition, there are remote sensors scattered all over the island; if someone sets foot on it without permission, they'll be detected. The guards are always issued full combat gear SP20 armor & assault rifles, and train rigorously to know every square centimeter of the island. In the event of an attack, their strategy is to draw the enemy into one of the many fake tunnel entrances and blow the tunnel, burying the foe. In the event of lesser attack, the garrison has 4 AV-~S, 4 AV-Gs, and 2 cargo Ospreys at its disposal. In case of naval or aerial onslaught, the garrison commander has the option of using a highly secret number of anti-ship/sub/aircraft missile launchers concealed about the island.

Benkei Island administrative staff and guards wear normal Arasaka uniforms and follow standard corporate procedures. To them, Benkei Island is no different from any other Arasaka covert facility: it's hardship duty with an absolute secrecy clause (and Arasaka is adamant about enforcing said secrecy). The training staff wear standard black martial arts training uniforms with sandals or sneakers. Assistant instructors wear masks to conceal their identities. Trainees also wear the same uniform.

Arasaka is aware of the danger of infiltration, so internal security is maintained by a social "cell" system--everyone on Benkei Island is assigned to a team, which is the work and social unit for all personnel. Each person in each team is to get to know the other members of the team, memorizing them and developing gestalt awareness for the other team members. This way, should an infiltrator enter the picture, the other members of the team are quite likely to pick up on the substitution. Naturally, everyone who goes to Benkei Island is rigorously screened by Arasaka security before they're even cleared to go there.

Training Staff
The main instruction staff at the Benkei Training Facility consists of commandant Obu Satomei, classroom instructor Metane Tekara, and general instructors Kissimi Morokasi and Kagekaze. There is, of course, a general administration staff of 23, including administrators, maintenance personnel, cooks, technicians, etc. A separate cadre of 40 guards is in permanent residence to safeguard the installation. Finally, there is a variable group of assistant instructors on hand to assist the training process.

Most of the trainees' experiences with the staff will be with their primary instructors. The assistant instructors wear facemasks around trainees and do not fraternize with them. Likewise, the administration staff is instructed to avoid contact with the trainees outside of normal daily procedure.

This policy of ostracizing the trainees is part of their psychological conditioning. Denying them the comforts of human contact encourages the trainees to turn to each other and bond as a team. It also helps foster paranoia and caution, two properties Arasaka considers essential for covert operations.

This practice of building paranoia is a major part of Arasaka training. Trainees are never safe the whole time; assistant instructors can ambush and harass them any time, any place. Often commandant Satomei actively participates in this, students soon learn not to turn their backs to him, for fear of being whacked upside the head. When students start maneuvering themselves to always have a wall behind them, and start rigging their sleeping quarters with alarms and booby traps, the staff knows that their efforts have paid off.

Trivia

 * The island is named after Saitō Musashibō Benkei, more commonly known as Benkei, who was a Japanese warrior monk who lived in the latter years of the Heian Period. He serve the famous warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune.

Reference

 * Firestorm Stormfront (pg. 121)