Military Intelligence Service Language School at the Presidio
During the 1930s, the deterioration in the diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan signaled the possibility of war. As a result, the U.S. Army established the 4th Army Intelligence School at the Presidio of San Francisco in November of 1941. The army converted hangar Building 640, on Crissy Field, into classrooms and a barrack for a language school which trained Nisei – Japanese Americans born to parents who had come to the U.S. from Japan – to act as translators in the war against Japan. Although this secret training program was planned to last a year, the program was shortened to 6 months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7.
The soldiers trained at the Presidio MIS were then sent to all the major battlefields in the Pacific. The MIS Language School moved to a more secure inland location in Minnesota after the first class graduated. The 6,000 graduates from the school went on to work with combat units interrogating prisoners, translate intercepted documents, and to use their knowledge of Japanese culture to assist the U.S. occupation after the war. General Douglas MacArthur’s chief of staff said, “The Nisei [graduates of the MIS Language School] saved countless Allied lives and shortened the war by two years.”
Sequoyah completed his syllabary around 1821. When it was adopted by the Cherokee Nation, they became the first Native Americans to have their own alphabet and writing system.
