From the notes of Gen. S. Currie, X-COM Commander, 1st March 2015:
I don't have the time to organise and type everything down in detail. But since I've at least a couple more hours of doing nothing but to be strapped down here in my seat on a plane towards a secret underground location in Japan, I might as well do this.
My name is Solomon Currie. I am a general in the Canadian army. Somehow or other, I was chosen to head the X-COM project. I don't know why they chose me, but I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with my devilishly good looks. What then? Well, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that I'm here now (or almost there), and I'd better make the best of it.
X-COM is funded by a Council of sixteen nations. Its function is to investigate—and if necessary, to combat—all things of extraterrestrial origin. Similar projects have existed, albeit on a smaller scale, in these various nations since earlier times. But it wasn't until the "Munich Incident" that these nations have come together and combined their efforts to produce a single, unified organisation.
Japan has graciously—or slyly—offered us the use of a subterranean research facility it was building for its own purposes; this will now serve as our primary base of operations, and it is precisely toward this place which I now go. (I'm told the amenities there are pretty basic, but I'm personally looking forward to try their funky automated toilets.)
Postscript:
I have just been informed of an urgent case of people being abducted by aliens in the Japanese city of Sapporo. A small fireteam of four X-COM operatives are already on their way to the scene even as I'm typing this. I hope to God they don't make me look bad.