<Begin Segment 16>

MU: Tell us what John Aiso was like.

MM: Oh, he was a great Nisei leader and to me a mentor, a role model and a professional in every sense of the word. He was (an) intellectual with a brilliant, brilliant background. I was real proud to serve, and to know him, and to serve under him. But at the same time, he was a sort of a father figure and mentor to the students. And he was a person of courage, integrity, dedication, and he was self-confident as a speaker. As you know, public speaking was his forte from way back when. And he showed leadership qualities through good rapport with the civilian and military faculty as well as the administrative staff, and really commanded full respect in that way. And in fact, as I recall, he set up his own standards and pace, and used himself as a personal example. With his strength of character, he was able to draw the best out of the Kibei and Nisei faculty members that I recall. He was wonderful, and of course as the war progressed, there was ever increasing workload. There was such a demand that the course or the curricula had to be accelerated. Where (over) six months they may have had to graduate the students in say three to four months because of the great demand out in the field. But he was able to carry out the program very effectively. There were problems, of course, but he never lost his cool and I admire him for that. And he always undertook his various tasks with passionate devotion and demanded a lot out of the instructors, too.

MU: Instructors and students.

MM: Yeah, because certain goals had to be met.

MU: He must have had --

MM: And he worked very well under pressure. And in fact, he was the driving force of the school, as I recall.

MU: He must have had terrific pressure from topside.

MM: Up above, that's right, from the higher echelon: "Gotta get more interpreters and interrogators and translators out in the field." At the beginning, the field commanders were sort of skeptical. They really didn't know what to do with them, but as they captured military documents and such, and started translating them, the commanders knew how important a role they were playing and so they were asking the school to send out more and more of these types, linguists.

MU: Graduates of MIS?

MM: Yeah, graduates, and of course, in the end, the school graduated six thousand...

MU: Six thousand?

MM: Six thousand students, some of them, of course, went on to serve in the Occupation of Japan.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.