On March 7, 2018, Dr. Shinye Gima and Mr. Mark Matsunaga made separate presentations under the event titled “The Pacific War as seen by the Nisei soldiers of the Military Intelligence Service: (a) the Battle of Okinawa: a personal account & (b) the context.
The event started with a warm welcome by Prof. Masato Ishida at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, who is also Director of the Center for Okinawan Studies (COS). Dr. Gima’s personal account of his experiences as a Nisei Military Intelligence Service (MIS) soldier followed. Dr. Gima, who was born in 1925 in Ewa, O‘ahu, but grew up in Maui, fought as a Nisei soldier with an American Japanese Ancestry (AJA) during the Pacific War. His brother, Noboru, who was born in Hawai‘i was in Okinawa when the war broke out. He was forced to fight against the Allied Forces as a member of Tekketsu kinnōtai (鉄血勤皇隊 = “Iron and Blood Troops of Loyal Followers of the Japanese Emperor”).
(Above Dr. Shinye Gima)
(Above Mr. Mark Matsunaga)
(Fron the Right to Left: Professor Masato Ishida, COS Director; Dr. Shinye Gima; Mr. Albert Katsuyama; Mr. Mark Matsunaga; Sachiko Iwabuchi, Okinawa Studies Librarian)
MIS Related Resources [selected] (Citation in APA style)
- Swift, David W. (2008). First class: Nisei linguists in World War II: origins of the Military Intelligence Service Language Program. San Francisco, Calif. : National Japanese American Historical Society.
- McNaughton, James C. (2006). Nisei linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service during World War II. Washington, DC: Department of the Army.
- The University of Colorado at Boulder’s US Navy Japanese/Oriental Language School Archival Project (JSLP) http://lib-ebook.colorado.edu/sca/archives/interpreters.htm
