Here is an article from the Hawaii Herald on the efforts to preserve the building where Japanese-American U.S. Army MIS members were trained.
Hawai‘i fundraising chair Andrew Sato (left) with Herbert Yanamura, both MIS veterans.
Stories and images are courtesy of the Hawai`i Herald.
PRESERVING HISTORY AT BUILDING 640
San Francisco Building Will Honor Wartime Work of the Military Intelligence Service
Joe Udell
The Hawai‘i Herald (November 4, 2011)
In 1991, on the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Military Intelligence Service, the National Japanese American Historical Society advocated for preserving an old warehouse structure known as Building 640 in the Presidio of San Francisco. It was in that now-historic building that the first Japanese American U.S. Army members were trained as linguists to serve in the Pacific theater.
Twenty years later, NJAHS’ vision is very close to becoming a reality. If all goes according to plan, the organization will open the MIS Historic Learning Center next November, culminating years of “arduous” work in honor of the MIS, whose service as interpreters, translators and interrogators in the Asia Pacific theater in World War II was credited by Gen. Charles Willoughby, G-2 chief in the Pacific, with saving a million lives and shortening the war with Japan by two years.
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