MIS AND BUILDING 640 NEWS
Project update
Due to the efforts of the NJAHS Project Team headed by Ken Kaji and Jojiro Takano working with Project Manager Leah Segawa of Westerra Associates and Architect Alan Ohashi of Ohashi Design Studio, we have completed the Construction Documents Phase and are also completing the Due Diligence tasks required to assure the building’s structural integrity. In the coming year we will utilize the $1 Million Federal Appropriation to take steps to stabilize the building structure (preserving the building) and will begin planning and design of the Historic Learning Center’s Permanent Exhibit.

The groundwork is being laid for the national campaign to raise the funds necessary to support construction. In early March 2007 NJAHS submitted an application for a Federal Government Appropriation from the Department of Defense Legacy Fund for this next phase of the project through Congressman Michael Honda and Senator Daniel Akaka. The total of our request amounts to $6 million, roughly 40% of the $15 million needed for construction of the shell, build out of the facility, operational support and an endowment for historic interpretive programming.

First Class: Nisei Linguists in World II – Coming in 2008
David W. Swift Jr., son of Military Intelligence Service Language School first class graduate David Swift, Sr., has compiled a wonderful collection of memoirs and memories; writings by the veterans, and reminiscences by their family and friends telling the story of the origins of the secret MIS Language Program. Trained in what was originally an airplane hangar for the US Postal Service in Building 640 in San Francisco’s Presidio, the first class of graduates included forty Nisei (Second Generation Japanese Americans) and two Caucasian soldiers. The MIS Language School was later moved to Camp Savage, then Fort Snelling in Minnesota and eventually became the Defense Language Institute and Foreign Language Center, training over 6,000 linguists for service in World War II, the occupation of Japan and in the Korea War. The book, to be published by the National Japanese American Historical Society, will be available in early 2008.

“It is a reference for scholars and laymen wishing to learn about a significant but virtually unknown chapter in America’s multicultural history. And the issues are very relevant today.” —David Swift Jr.

Nisei Linguists
A new book has been published by the US Army Center of Military History entitled Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Service during World War II. The book chronicles the establishment and achievements of U.S. Army Military Intelligence Service, the organization that trained and employed uniformed Japanese American linguists. It tells the story of second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) who served as interpreters and translators in World War II. The author is James C. McNaughton, command historian for US European Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

On June 13, 2007 McNaughton and several MIS veterans including MIS veterans Tom Sakamoto, Gene Uratsu and Harry Fukuhara spoke at an event in San Francisco celebrating the release of the book. Co-sponsored by NJAHS, Crissy Field Center of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, Presidio Trust (PT) and the National Park Service (NPS) this event was part of an ongoing public education campaign to tell the story of Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) during World War II and to develop a MIS Historic Learning Center at Presidio Building 640, the site of the first class of MIS students in 1941-42. Click for downloadable order form (Acrobat format).

MIS Exhibit in Auburn, Washington

The White River Valley Museum in Auburn is among the first museums to begin sharing the story of Japanese-American soldiers who served in the U.S. Army MIS as interrogators, linguists and counter-intelligence agents during World War II with the exhibit “Courage Untold” and a series of related events. »READ MORE.