MIS history Army historians hope to finish late this year the first official Army history of the work of specially trained Japanese-American linguists, who fought in every major battle in the Pacific campaign in World War II.
expected by
year end
The work will be the first
official Army history of the
Military Intelligence ServiceBy Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.comBut historian James McNaughton, who has been working on this project since 1994, said it may take another few years before it is actually published since it still has to be reviewed by scholars, Army officers and some of the veterans who served in the Military Intelligence Service.
More than 6,000 of these nisei, or second-generation Japanese Americans from Hawaii and the mainland, served as interpreters and linguists.
McNaughton, now command historian for U.S. Army Pacific at Fort Shafter, said the hardest part of his job was putting together the story of the MIS because, unlike their brethren in the famed 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, these soldiers never served in one unit.
"The problem was that the MIS was scattered in so many different battles and campaigns," McNaughton said. "They went out in small teams or worked individually.
"My biggest challenge was to track down their story since it was so diverse. They were not a part of one unit like the 100th and the 442nd, which fought in the same battles and in the same campaigns."
McNaughton started this project seven years ago under federal legislation authored by U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, which requested the Army prepare an official history of the MIS.
McNaughton said he has completed seven of the manuscript's nine chapters, and predicts the project will be turned over to the U.S. Army Center of Military History in December.
Last year, with Akaka's help, the MIS was awarded a presidential unit citation for World War II heroics and will be honored by a special banquet at the Hawai'i Convention Center on Aug. 11.
On Tuesday some of the MIS veterans will share their experiences in the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii's new "Living History Series." The program will begin at 7 p.m. and include a partial showing of a new 90-minute documentary, "Uncommon Courage: Patriotism and Civil Liberties."
MIS veterans Takejiro Higa, Hideto Kono and Ted Tsukiyama will share their experiences after the film. The panel will be moderated by former local anchor Barbara Tanabe, whose father is an MIS veteran.
The full 90-minute film will air on Hawaii Public Television at 8 a.m. Aug. 16.
Higa was born in Hawaii and raised on Okinawa, returning home when he was 16. He was a member of the U.S. invasion forces and accompanied soldiers when they landed on Okinawa on April 1, 1945.
Kono volunteered for the 442nd but was later transferred to the MIS and saw action on Iwo Jima.
Tsukiyama, who is the MIS historian, also volunteered for the 442nd but was transferred to the MIS and served in Burma. In the film, Tsukiyama recalls the intensity of the language training he undertook at Camp Savage, Minn.
The film traces the history of the MIS from the spring of 1941, when the Army formed the first Japanese language school in anticipation of a war with Japan. It details the problems Japanese Americans faced after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when 100,000 of them were ordered from their homes on the West Coast and sent to 10 internment camps throughout the United States.
U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye said in the film that after visiting one such camp in Arkansas when he was going through boot training, he wondered how anyone could volunteer to fight for a country that had imprisoned them and their families.
Throughout the Pacific campaign, MIS soldiers interrogated prisoners; translated documents, diaries and maps; infiltrated enemy lines; intercepted messages; and flushed out enemy soldiers and civilians from caves. During the occupation of Japan, MIS soldiers helped in the war crimes trials and in other ways to help restore order.
McNaughton, at the end of the film, noted: "The niseis put their hearts into it. They were fighting with their hearts and minds. It was a personal battle to prove their loyalty. It was a personal battle to win the war."