Wherefore DLI? (1 JUL 1963)

Courtesy Photo | Leaders of the Army, Navy, and Defense Department gather to celebrate DLI’s first anniversary in July 1964.  

UNITED STATES

07.01.2024

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

by Cameron Binkley, DLIFLC Command Historian, with research assistance from Dr. Joseph Ryan, and Pathways Intern Nora Phillips

WHEREFORE DLI?
On 1 July 1963, the Department of Defense (DoD) officially created the Defense Language Institute – DLI as it soon became known. The purpose of this unique outfit was to provide training required by the four military departments when their personnel needed to understand a foreign language to do their jobs. Military Intelligence mainly drove the need for linguists who could analyze intercepted communications, interrogate captured prisoners, or assist with liaison activities. While the work of a military linguist is quite specific, each service had almost the same type of work it needed linguists to do. Despite this commonality, the services separately conducted their own foreign language programs until the creation of DLI. What changed?

The Army and the Navy emerged from World War II with Japanese language training programs of proven importance. However, each service had taken a different approach to meet its training needs. Having fewer requirements than the Army, the Navy sent Caucasian officers to various universities for contracted instruction in Japanese. With budget cuts following the war, the Naval Intelligence School at Anacostia Naval Station in Washington, D.C., assumed this mission, but lacked the depth of experience the Army had gained by its approach – an in-house model.

The Army’s approach was driven both by expediency and opportunity, having drafted thousands of “Nisei” or Japanese American soldiers into its ranks since 1940. The Military Intelligence Service recruited the best Japanese speakers and funneled them through its in-house language school, ultimately sending thousands of linguists to the Pacific and Indochina theaters. With victory, the Army continued to need linguists to administer occupied Japan, but the Cold War brought new requirements and the Japanese program evolved into a multilanguage school. Newly created in 1947, the Air Force at first contracted its foreign language requirements with the Army Language School or the Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute, while Navy foreign language students who could not be accommodated at Anacostia were also sent to the Army’s school.

In 1958, the Air Force announced plans to contract all language training to universities. The Army realized it would lose half its student load and face major faculty layoffs. Congressional inquiries ensued, and the influential Senator Hubert Humphrey took an interest in the issue after visiting the Army’s school in Monterey, California. His visit became a search for efficiency.

In 1959, after a series of studies, hearings, and site visits, Senator Humphrey published his findings in the Congressional Record. To wit, no high-level direction of language training existed in the DoD; the services were proceeding independently in several directions; and such programs were not economical. Humphrey probably also realized military language training had requirements and timelines inconsistent with academic methods. Basically, he had asked the secretary of defense to postpone the withdrawal of Air Force students from the Army Language School and to create an “Armed Services Foreign Language Institute.” This was done. In 1963, after due consideration, Secretary Robert McNamara directed the formal establishment of the Defense Language Institute to manage all DoD language training programs except for the service academies and the overseas dependent schools.

An in-house approach had primed the Army to oversee the newly organized Defense Foreign Language Program. In assigning this responsibility, DoD gave the DLI commandant far greater authority than any equivalent brigade-level command. Centralized management was only the first step in producing proficient linguists for the total force, but it was a key event. Sixty years later, DLI holds broad sway on language, regional expertise, and culture issues. It provides contract unmatchable force wide training and resources for initial, intermediate, advanced, sustainment and military professional foreign language training and is responsible for the Defense Language Proficiency Test required for linguist qualification.

Since 1974, the Defense Language Institute consists of a Foreign Language Center run by the Army and an English Language Center run by the Air Force. Technically, the Army’s program is referred to as the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center or DLIFLC. Nevertheless, the Army’s school is universally known as DLI.


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• Date Taken: 07.01.2024
• Date Posted: 07.01.2024 10:40
• Story ID: 475273
• Location: US