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gky: You said they recruited four instructors.

JM: Yeah.

gky: And they had sixty students.

JM: Right.

gky: How did the students come to the school, and how were the instructors, how well versed were the instructors in Japanese?

JM: The instructors knew nothing about teaching Japanese. They knew Japanese. They had no experience as teachers. What they had was the leadership of John Aiso. Even though John Aiso had never taught Japanese, he was a very well educated man himself and he tackled that problem like every other problem he had encountered in his life, and he applied self discipline and energy and his own intellect, and designed that course. What they used was the Tokuhan readers that had been developed at the embassy in Tokyo, that was the, what was his name, the instructor at the American embassy, Naganuma, the Naganuma readers.

gky: You want to start that over?

JM: Yeah, yeah. What they had to start with was the Naganuma readers, which in fact they, they used the actual set of readers that Captain Rasmussen had brought back from Tokyo with him. These had been developed over a period of years by the Japanese instructor for the U.S. embassy in Tokyo. Rasmussen brought those things back and handed them to the first four instructors, and they then had to actually copy them onto stencils, and that was the beginning of the curriculum.

gky: So what do you think the, what role do you think race played in this? Yes, they're Nisei, because of their ethnic heritage they had to be there, but in terms of race, you do have Caucasian Americans, or non Nisei, non Japanese Americans trusting, in a way, Japanese Americans, and you're talking about a war with Japan.

JM: That's right.

gky: It's sort of a complicated mix.

JM: It took a lot of independence of mind for people like John Weckerling and Kai Rasmussen to trust the Nisei students and the instructors, because they had to swim against the tide of prejudice that overwhelmed the rest of America, certainly the West Coast. They had to know these young men personally. They, after a period of weeks or months when they got to know these students and the instructors, they knew them as Americans, as patriotic as they come. But they had firsthand knowledge of the patriotism and loyalty of these young men, but their superiors didn't. People like General DeWitt had no firsthand knowledge of the Nisei soldiers. He was just going on the common prejudice that was prevalent in America at the time. So the few language officers like Rasmussen and Weckerling, who trusted the Nisei, were really exceptional, and they had to fight during the war to protect their Nisei. The army as an institution, the War Department, would've been very happy to discharge all Nisei, and a number of them were discharged, or if they weren't discharged after Pearl Harbor they were moved into inland posts and given menial assignments. The army didn't know what to do with them, but the Intelligence officers knew two things for sure. They knew, first of all, that the Nisei that they had as students were loyal and patriotic, and number two, they knew that the army damn well needed them, could not fight a war and win without the capability that those Nisei had, so they trusted 'em.

gky: Was it more looking like the enemy or being able to speak Japanese?

JM: What do you mean?

gky: For the Nisei to play a pivotal role in the war in the Pacific.

JM: What was critical was the ability to speak Japanese, the ability to quickly learn Japanese and to use it. Remember, it wasn't just the language capability. It wasn't just the ability to translate or speak Japanese. What the Nisei had was a real knowledge of Japanese culture and Japanese psychology, so they could use their own judgment when it came to interrogating a prisoner. Should they be tough with him? Should they go easy on him? Should they offer him a cigarette, or should they shout at them and make them stand at attention? They had a real knowledge of Japanese psychology because they'd grown up with Issei parents, and the Kibei had spent time in Japan, and they could use that. And no Caucasian who just sat in a classroom for a year could learn that kind of sophisticated understanding of the Japanese culture.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.