Heading: (1946 Rare Album of Japanese-American Army Intelligence officers in World War II)
Author:
Title: 1946 Military Intelligence Language School Album of Japanese-American Army linguists in World War II
Place Published: St. Paul, Minnesota
Publisher:
Date Published: 1946
Description:

The MISLS [Military Intelligence Service Language School] Album [St. Paul, Minn., 1946] First Edition. Original binding of brown, gold-embossed leatherette. 136pp. Illustrated with several hundred photos and drawings. With two original ephemeral items tipped in: Program for the MISLS Commencement ceremony in January 1946 and the Baccalaureate Program ceremony of February 1946, 4pp. each. Ownership signature of MISLS graduate Yoneo Sagawa, a 20 year-old from Hawaii who later became a world-renowned Botanist. The great rarity of this book is belied by the common error of many institutional catalogues confusing a 1990 Nashville reprint with this original imprint.

Rare military album - for obvious security reasons, issued just after war's end - of the School established in San Francisco weeks before Pearl Harbor (over racist objections in Washington) to train Japanese-Americans to be Army Intelligence translators and linguists. Ironically, the School had to be moved to Minnesota to distance the first 60 Nisei students from forced internment of Japanese-American residents on the west coast. This book, a photographic record and history of the School, includes the names of the thousands of its graduates who broke codes, conducted interrogations and served on the front lines, prompting General MacArthur's Intelligence chief to credit them with shortening the Pacific War and possibly saving the lives of a million American soldiers.