<Begin Segment 7>

LD: Do you understand why the MIS were kept under wraps so much? I mean, why is it that we know so little about them? Will you start with that subject, "We know very little about the work of the Niseis..."

SM: Unfortunately, the exploits of the Military Intelligence Service group, that is the Japanese Americans, were kept under wraps for much, much too long. And for some strange reason, the Department of Defense, CIA or whatever the authorities they might have been, just would not release the... well, deep secrets, they kept in secret what the Americans of Japanese ancestry were doing in the war against Japan. We find that as the military, as the commander of the Military Intelligence Service stated, I'm trying to think of his name right now, his name skips my mind, but he said that the members of the Military Intelligence, that is, the Japanese Americans, shortened the war by a considerable number of months. I forget exactly.

LD: Willoughby.

SM: Was it Willoughby?

LD: Yeah, he was chief of intelligence for MacArthur.

SM: Oh yes, that's right.

LD: And [inaudible] said the same thing, he said we never, as a whole... that MacArthur in New Guinea and Philippines knew more about the enemy disposition than any general in the history of the military, any world history. But he was talking about --

SM: And, oh yes, I was thinking in terms of Kai Rasmussen, who was the commander of the MIS at that time.

LD: Did you understand why the fellows did not get the proper rank, can you talk about that? It was not only that it was a thorn in their side, it actually made it very difficult for them to do their work. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because they were promised, many of them were promised what they were going to get, commissions, but they did not, of course.

SM: Well, unfortunately, the men of the MIS were not company commanders, platoon commanders, they were just interpreters. And they had, they did not have any slot calling for commissioned officers who were doing the tasks that they were doing. And they should have been given commissions, really, and upon graduation from the kind of work they were doing, they should have been commissioned because non-Japanese Americans were commissioned officers who were attending the Intelligence Service Language School and went overseas as officers. But none of those of Japanese ancestry were commissioned officers. As a matter of fact, even the 100th Infantry Battalion, when we were training at Camp McCoy, there was an order from the War Department that we were not to be promoted beyond the rank of first lieutenant. And so while there were many of us who had spent time in rank and were fully eligible for promotion to captain, by department orders, we were kept down to the rank of first lieutenant. And only those who happened to have been promoted before that order was issued had the rank of, beyond first lieutenant, and there were only two of them at that time. So, well, there again you have prejudice going all the way through. I don't know whether or not it was based on fear, mistrust. But unfortunately for those of us of Japanese ancestry -- and I say unfortunately because that was the basis of the distinction -- we looked foreign to most Americans. We had Oriental faces; others all had European faces, and they constitute the overwhelming majority in control, and that made the difference.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1987 The Center for Educational Telecommunications and Densho. All Rights Reserved.