Courtesy Photo | WAC Detachment personnel at the Military Intelligence Service Language School, Fort...... read more read more
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by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian
In early February 1946, the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) Detachment for the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, was inactivated. The short-lived detachment had provided oversight of the one and only class of female—primarily second-generation Japanese American (Nisei)—translators trained at the school during World War II.
As early as the fall of 1941, the U.S. Army began recruiting male Nisei for specialized Japanese language training, sending them to a newly created school at the Presidio of San Francisco. Recruitment of Japanese Americans ended in early 1942, however, and was not reinstated until early 1943. Women of Japanese heritage were excluded until the WAC director, Col. Oveta C. Hobby, began lobbying for their recruitment.
While WAC personnel were limited to non-combatant positions, they were particularly suited for some intelligence positions, such as working in cryptology, censorship, and translation. The latter seemed as ideal a role for Japanese American women as it was for the many Nisei men attending the MISLS, which had moved from California to Minnesota in mid-1942. With their noncombatant status, however, women could serve as translators but not as interrogators or interpreters in the combat zones.
In March 1943, Colonel Hobby sent recruiters to Japanese American relocation camps throughout the western states to find 500 Nisei women to serve as translators. Initially, interest was high, especially by women whose brothers were already serving in the MIS or with the 442d Regimental Combat Team. Many of the women were college graduates working as teachers or in business and, after testing their language skills, recruiters claimed they were better qualified than many of their male counterparts. The War Department, however, delayed their enlistment until November, by which time, most had been dissuaded from Army service by their parents. Hobby recalled, “only thirteen could be obtained in the first six months, and negligible numbers thereafter.”
Up to this time, the MISLS leadership had resisted adding women to its staff because it lacked facilities to accommodate women but, also, they believed the military aspects of the Japanese language could be better taught by men. In August 1944, however, when the school relocated from Camp Savage to roomier accommodations at Fort Snelling, an abandoned hospital ward was converted into a barracks, and the first contingent of women arrived at MISLS on November 8. Capt. Marion E. Nestor, a 32-year-old New Jersey native who had been serving as the school’s intelligence officer since September 1943, took on additional duty as commander of the newly established WAC Detachment. Soon, the female population at Snelling swelled to fifty-one and included eighteen Nisei from Hawaii, twenty-nine Nisei from the continental United States, three Caucasian women, and one Chinese American.
The enlisted WACs initially served in clerical positions at the school until their class began 28 May 1945. The class used the same curriculum as the male students, except the women focused on the written instead of the spoken language. Of the forty-six students who started the class, forty-one graduated on November 17, 1945. Maj. Paul Rusch, director of personnel procurement, declared the top ten graduates “on par or a shade above par, in comparison with the Nisei male linguists.”
Three of the graduates remained as MISLS as instructors. Twenty-one transferred to the Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section (PACMIRS) at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. The final 13 received assignments in occupied Japan, flying to Tokyo on 23 January 1946. By the time they arrived, however, the War Department had ordered all WACs out of the Pacific Theater. The female linguists opted for immediate discharges from Army service and accepted civilian positions in Tokyo instead.
Thereafter, only four enlisted women remained in the detachment at MISLS. Commandant Col. Kai Rasmussen recommended the remaining women be transferred to PACMIRS and the War Department G-2 agreed on January 28, 1946. By early February, the detachment was inactivated and only Captain Nestor remained. She became the school’s director of personnel and moved with the school to Monterey, California, in June. She retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1967.
| Date Taken: | 02.06.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 02.06.2023 10:28 |
| Story ID: | 437897 |
| Location: | FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZONA, US |
| Web Views: | 194 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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