First Class - Nisei Linguists in World War II (Hard Copy)

David W. Swift Jr., son of Military Intelligence Service Language School first class graduate David Swift, Sr., has compiled a wonderful collection of memoirs and memories; writings by the veterans classmates, and reminiscences by their family and friends telling the story of the origins of the first US Army military language program. Trained secretly in what was originally an abandoned postal airplane hanger, Building 640, under the US Army's 4th Headquarters in the Presidio of San Francisco's, the first class of graduates included forty Nisei (Second Generation Japanese Americans) and two Caucasian soldiers, one month prior to Pearl Harbor. The MIS Language School (MISLS) would later move to Camp Savage, then Fort Snelling in Minnesota due to the infamous Executive Order 9066-which sent their Nisei parents into American incarceration camps. The MISLS would eventually become the Defense Language Institute and Foreign Language Center, training over 6,000 linguists for service in World War II and the post-war occupation of Japan and through the Korea War. 320 pp.