<Begin Segment 13>

gky: How do you feel about what you did for the war effort?

SK: Oh, an unanticipated opportunity to serve my country had opened up for me even though I was unqualified, but Colonel Rasmussen and John Aiso had confidence in me and wanted me to be a supervisor, so all during my service in San Francisco, in Minnesota, and at the Army Language School here and at the DLI, was a wonderful career for me. I taught Japanese from 1941 until 1958 when I was asked to report to headquarters and become the single civilian expert, so to speak, in foreign language administration. So at the headquarters at Army Language School I did all the staffing concerning academic and language matters for Colonel Kraus, for Colonel Long, for Colonel Collins, who later became a general, and for Colonel Horne. And then a separate activity was set up for me in what is known as the research and development area where I have, where I was given charge of a government printing press, the textbook warehouse for over fifty different languages, and all the teacher training for all of the languages being trained at, language training being handled in about fifty languages at the school. As new instructors were hired they had to be trained in the methodology used at the school, so I had one expert, a former Romanian instructor, who did all the faculty training for the newly hired employees. I had a testing measurements officer who helped the language departments develop their language tests. I ran the training aids, the studios for developing records and tapes for language training. And so my job was expanded over the entire gamut of foreign languages taught at the school, and it was a wonderful experience for me.

gky: So you never planned to become a teacher and yet you wound up teaching thousands of people.

SK: Yes. At the original schools in Minnesota and California, I participated in my group, my small group of twenty-five instructors teaching six thousand graduates. Then at the language school here I continued to train thousands more, but in my job as the director of research and development I was involved in the training of hundreds of thousands of students and dealing with all of the foreign languages at the school.

gky: So the MIS really had a big effect on your life?

SK: This is the only permanent job I've had. I've had one career, and that is Japanese language and foreign languages, and though I was totally unprepared for it, I learned as I went along and I must've done a satisfactory job of it.

gky: The work that you did with the original MIS Language School here in the Presidio was really the groundwork for what later became the Defense Language Institute.

SK: Yes, I had a small part in it. When I reported to headquarters in 1958 there was nobody in the operations and training branch that knew anything or had any experience in foreign languages or academic matters, so all the correspondents that came in to the commandant having to do with foreign language training and academics I staffed for the commandant's signature. So my work with the successive commandants from 1958 until I retired was a wonderful opportunity for me.

gky: When the Defense Language Institute moved to the Presidio, was that very different from when you moved out there in the first place, out to Minnesota in the first place?

SK: It was exactly the same. Everywhere we moved it was an abandoned facility. The Presidio of San Francisco was an empty corrugated tin airplane hangar. In Minnesota it was an abandoned old folks', old men's home, summer grass blowing in the wind. And when we moved to the Presidio of Monterey in June of 1946 it was the same thing. The Presidio was abandoned as an empty army post, and the summer grass was three feet high. And in the summer there's fog here in Monterey, and the foghorns were blaring away. The buildings were all peeling with old, old paint. There was no building suitable for conducting classes. We were told to set up classes in abandoned mess halls, and in June of 1946 it was cold, so we fiddled around and there was a kitchen range in one of the faculty rooms up the hill here, and we turned the gas on and it hissed. There was gas in the buildings. So we lit a match and set the, tried to set the stove on to begin heating, but the kitchen range was filled with loose gas and almost blew the door over, and somehow or the other we were able to put the fire out and then restart it so we could get some warmth in the offices.

gky: Wow.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.