They were among the first US commanders to establish language programs offering classes for both officers and interested enlisted soldiers, teaching rudimentary spoken Chinese and Japanese.

US Army G-2 intelligence staff first surveyed colleges for Japanese language students and came to the realization that in all of America, only 60 military aged Caucasian males had any interest in Japan, mostly for purely academic reasons.

[4][8][9] Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, some 5,000 Nisei were serving in the US military in various capacities, often assigned to menial tasks and labor units despite their qualifications.

Eighteen National Guard and Reserve officers drifted through the class, most failing due to limited comprehension ability and the complexity of the Japanese written language.

[3] Anti-Japanese sentiment pushed President Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 9066, forcing the removal of anyone with as little as 1/16th Japanese ancestry from West Coast of the United States.

Minnesota's Governor Harold Stassen offered up Camp Savage, a former Works Progress Administration facility (WPA) to host the MIS Language School.

The school moved to Minnesota in June 1942, offering larger facilities without the complications of training Japanese-American students in the coastal areas they were prohibited from, and faced less anti-Japanese prejudice.

In March 1941, CIC agent Major Jack Gilbert recruited two former students from his previous position as military advisor at McKinley High School in Honolulu, Richard Sakakida and Arthur Komori, as Japanese sailors who jumped ship in the Philippines to avoid the draft.

Sakakida would eventually be captured and tortured by the Japanese following the fall of Corregidor, and help lead an escape of 500 Philippine guerrillas held at Mantinlupa Prison.

Upon arrival, Burden and his Nisei predictably found themselves assigned to menial tasks translating non-sensitive personal letters far from the front due to the lack of trust.

[7][14] MIS servicemen would then be present at every major battle against Japanese forces following Midway, and those who served in combat faced extremely dangerous and difficult conditions, facing prejudice from soldiers who believed they couldn't be trusted, sometimes coming under friendly fire from U.S. soldiers unable to distinguish them from the Japanese, and even dealing with the psychological conflict of encountering former friends and family on the battlefield.

Admiral Yamamoto had directed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 after which the United States entered World War II in both the Pacific and Atlantic Theaters of Operation.

[7][2] When Merrill's Marauders were organized to conduct long range penetration special operations jungle warfare deep behind Japanese lines in the China-Burma-India Theater in January 1944, fourteen MIS linguists were assigned to the unit, including future Army Rangers and Military Intelligence Hall of Fame inductee Roy Matsumoto.

MIS linguists were also assigned to the Office of War Information to help create propaganda and other psychological warfare campaigns, with the Signal Intelligence Service to decipher Japanese Army codes, and even involved with the Manhattan Project, translating technical documents and scientific papers on nuclear physics.

(At the end of the war, MIS linguists had translated 20.5 million pages, 18,000 enemy documents, created 16,000 propaganda leaflets and interrogated over 10,000 Japanese POWs.

ATIS commander Col Sidney Mashbir would write in his memoir, "I Was an American Spy", "The United States of America owes a debt to these men and to their families which it can never fully repay.

[22] Arthur T. Morimitsu was the only MIS member in the detachment commanded by Major Richard Irby and 1st Lt. Jeffrey Smith to observe the surrender ceremony of 60,000 Japanese troops under Gen.

[24] Journalist Don Caswell was accompanied by a Nisei interpreter to Fuchū Prison, where the Japanese government imprisoned communists Tokuda Kyuichi, Yoshio Shiga, and Shiro Mitamura.

George Koshi contributed in the creation of the Constitution of Japan, while Raymond Aka and Harry Fukuhara assisted in creating the Japanese National Police Reserve and the subsequent Defense Agency.

What began as an experimental military intelligence language-training program launched on a budget of $2,000 eventually became the forerunner of today's Defense Language Institute for the tens of thousands of linguists who serve American interests throughout the world.

[33] Individual MIS members have been honored with the Distinguished Service Cross, Distinguished Service Medal, Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Navy Cross, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Order of the Rising Sun, Order of National Glory, Philippine Legion of Honor, and the British Empire Medal.

[41] The Go for Broke Monument in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, California, commemorates the Japanese Americans who served in the United States Army during World War II.

General Douglas MacArthur is quoted on the monument in reference to the MIS saying, "Never in military history did an army know as much about the enemy prior to actual engagement".

Hood River has previously made attempts to make amends to Nisei veterans, including replacing the names after great outcry in the immediate aftermath of the war.

[3] In 2001, filmmaker Gayle Yamada produced the documentary Uncommon Courage: Patriotism and Civil Liberties, telling the stories of Nisei intelligence specialists during the war for PBS.

[43] Author Pamela Rotner Sakamoto published the book Midnight in Broad Daylight in 2016, about the experiences of Harry K. Fukuhara and his family during World War II.

[46] In the second season of 2019 AMC Series, The Terror: Infamy, the characters Chester Nakayama and Arthur Ogawa join the fictional "Japanese Linguist Program", based on the MIS.