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DLI Alumni
Association
(DLIAA)
Quarterly
Newsletter
IX
Issue 1-06 -
January 2006
"In Support of the Defense Language
Institute"
http://www.dli-alumni.org/ |
_files/DLIAA-Best3.GIF)
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1. Message
from the president
2.
Retirements (Oct to Dec 05)
3. In
memoriam (Oct to Dec 05)
4.
Calendar of events (FY 2006-07)
5. Berlin
Wall dedication ceremony at the Presidio of Monterey
on 2 Nov 05 - Ben De La Selva
6. Russian program still going strong after 60+ years - Dr. James
McNaughton
7. Previous article update - Ben De La Selva
8. Shigeya Kihara (1914-2005) - A Legend of Army Language Training -
Dr. Harold Raugh
9. Learning Japanese in 1955 - The
Army
Language
School - Leonard
Nordgren
10. DLI alumn writes novel set during
the Vietnam War - Main character is a DLI graduate - Richard Galli
11.
What's in a name? Is it DLIFLC or DLI? "... A rose by any other
name..." - Editor's comment
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Message from the DLIAA
president.
Happy
New Year! I hope the new year finds you improving
your English and foreign language skills. Always remember: "if your language proficiency
is not getting better, it is getting worse". As in the
past, I look forward to hearing from you about your thoughts, suggestions
and stories. You can write to me at president@dli-alumni.org.
Benjamin De La
Selva, President.
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2. Retirements/resignations (Oct to Dec05)
Michael Murphy (Public Affairs Officer)
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4. In memoriam (Oct
to Dec 05)
Astrid Mygasiuk (1948 - 2005) (Russian
Teacher and Admin Assistant) - Nov 24th
Toan Van Tran (1926 - 2005) (Vietnamese Teacher) -
Dec 26th
Aris Zavitsanos (1918 - 2005) (Greek Teacher
and Department Chairperson; President of Local NFFE 1263) - Dec 27th
Francis Kaelin
(1922 - 2005) Military Staff, Dec 29th
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3. Calendar of events (FY 05-06)
- Defense Foreign
Language Steering Committee and/or Annual Program Review (DFLSC/APR) Conference
- Tentative ly scheduled for April 2006 - Presidio of Monterey.
- The Digital Stream
Conference - Last week of Mar 06, at
California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB).
Most attendees to the conference are DLI faculty and staff. For information
about last year's conference go to: http://wlc.csumb.edu/ digitalstream/2005/
- Teachers of English to Speakers
of Other Languages (TESOL) Conference - The 40th Annual TESOL
Convention and Exhibit (TESOL 2006) Tampa, Florida, March 15-19, 2006. Many
DLI faculty attend this conference. For more
information see http://www.tesol.org/conv/index-conv.html.
- California Language Teachers
Association (CLTA) Conference - CLTA Conference
2006 - Theme: Take a Chance on Communication. March 23-26, 2006, Fresno
Convention Center and Radisson Hotel,
Fresno,
California. For more information,
visithttp://www.clta.net/conference/confindex.htm
- National Prayer
Breakfast, April 06, exact date
and venue to be announced later. Time: 0630-0800
- Worldwide Language Competition (WLC) – Month of May 06 (Presidio
of Monterey)
- Language Day – Friday,
19 May 06 (Presidio of Monterey)-
For more information visit the DLI Alumni
Association website, at: http://www.dli-alumni.org/LanguageDay/LanguageDay05.htm
- Installation Mid-Summer Party
- Tentatively scheduled for Friday, June 30th.
2006 - Weckerling Center - (live band) More info to be published
later.
- CLPM Seminar and Joint
DoD Language Conference
- Oct 06 - Venue not yet
determined
- The American Council
on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Conference - Nov 06, - For more
information go to http://www.actfl.org/.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Berlin Wall
Dedication Ceremony at the Presidio of Monterey - 2 November
2005
By Ben De La Selva,
President, DLI Alumni Association
In May 2005, five years after Billy (Skip) Johnson’s serendipitous sighting of
three concrete slabs in Walter Scurei’s backyard in
Phoenix,
Arizona, the three
Berlin
wall pieces
were relocated and
made into a historic monument at the Presidio of
Monterey,
California. Six months later,
on November 9th, a spectacular ceremony
was held at the
Presidio to dedicate the monument. The dedication plaque, unveiled by
Col Tucker Mansager and the Scurei family,
contains a commemorative inscription that pays tribute to:
“Those
who fell trying to
reach freedom,
Those
who fell preserving
freedom, and
All
who served defending
freedom.”
As thousands of DLI graduates are represented in the last
two lines, in many
respects this was a dedication to
them, particularly all those who
were assigned to
Berlin during the five
decades of the Cold War. While the Cold War played out around the
world, the
Berlin Wall
was perhaps the most
visible manifestation of that five-decade long conflict. During those years, DLI
graduates - cryptologists, intelligence personnel, Foreign Area Officers and
others - served at U.S. Field Station Berlin as members of the U.S. Military
Liaison Mission Potsdam, East Germany, and in other military and diplomatic
positions requiring language skills around the
world.
The dedication plaque
also contains one of the most
powerful lines uttered
in recent American history, taken from President Reagan’s speech at the
Brandenburg Gate on
June 12,
1987:
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear
down this
wall!” This 2,703
words speech,
addressed to West Berliners, could also be heard on the east side of the Wall.
The ceremony was presided by Col
Tucker Mansager, current Installation Commander
and DLI Commandant, who soon after his
arrival this last August (2005), put the stamp of approval on the event, initiated
during the tenures of Col Jeffrey Cairns, Garrison Commander, and Col Kevin
Rice (ret), the preceding DLI Commandant.
Dozens of dignitaries
were present at the
observance. They included Mr. Edwin Meese, attorney general in President Ronald Reagan’s administration,
the mayors and city managers of the surrounding communities.
Special invitation was extended to Mr.
and Mrs. Walter Scurei, his brother Paul and sister Victoria, as
well as various
members of his family who
flew from
Arizona to attend the
historic event. Mr. Scurei had donated to DLI the
three pieces, which he had bought
from an Arizona warehouse after they
had been stored there and “abandoned by an
Arizona based hotel tycoon, who purchased them
for $100,000 in 1990 as an investment from Stasi –
East German secret police – in Germany, and then failed to pay off the storage
yard fees” (quoted from a
Monterey Herald article). When Skip Johnson, DLI’s
assistant IG, visited his sister in
Phoenix, he met one of her
neighbors, Scurei, and upon seeing the three slabs in
the latter’s backyard discovered their origin and found out that Scurei planned to donate them to an educational institution.
It didn’t take long for Johnson to convince Scurei
that DLI was the perfect final
location for the monument. In his speech to the Institute’s audience, Mr. Scurei stated that “For 28 years, the
Berlin Wall, 93 jagged
miles of concrete and barbed wire, cut the city of
Berlin apart. The
Berlin Wall
was unique: Instead
of keeping adversaries out, it imprisoned
Berlin’s
own citizens and the
citizens of the Eastern Bloc. For 28 years, more than 5,000 people made their
escape, and more than 3,200 were arrested in the
attempt to escape.”
The occasion would not have been
complete without the presence
of the man who inserted the
famous “tear
down this
wall” line in Reagan’s
speech, Mr. Peter Robinson, a research
fellow at the
Hoover Institution
who
was at the time the
president’s speech writer. Robinson
stated that the entire White House apparatus as
well as the State
department wanted the line
expunged from the speech. However, the president
prevailed; the line was left in, and
became history. In describing the story of the famous quote he indicated that
the speech had gone through staffing for several
weeks before the
President delivered it, and that the entire foreign policy apparatus of the
United
States government had
fought it. At one point, he said that the deputy chief of staff, Ken Duberstein
"felt he had no
choice but to take the matter back to the President for a final decision.
He sat the President down in the garden of
an Italian palazzo, picking knee-deep the central passage in the speech,
excising all the arguments against it and then talked it over
with
him. Robinson
wasn’t present at
that meeting, but Ken Duberstein told him
what happened. They
talked about it for a while and then Ken
said he saw a
twinkle of a light
come into the President’s eyes. Ronald Reagan said,
“Now, I’m the President,
aren’t I?”-
"Yes, Mr. President,
we’re clear about
that." -
“So, I get to decide
if that line stays in.”
- "Sir, it is your
decision."
- “Well then, it
stays in”, said Reagan.
Robinson said that on the day the party
flew to Berlin, the
State Department faxed over yet another alternative draft, omitting that one
sentence about tearing down the Wall. In the
limousine on the way to the Wall, to
deliver the speech, the President signified that he
was sticking to the
original language. Then he moved across the limousine and slapped Duberstein on
the knee and said, “The boys at State
aren’t going to like this very much, but it’s the right thing to
do.”
Robinson added that "largely because
Ronald Reagan did the
right thing, we have these three
ugly but beautiful slabs of concrete here today , no longer in Berlin as a
monument to an evil empire, but here in Monterey as a monument to American
determination.”
The Deputy German Consul General in
San
Francisco, Dr. Christian
Seebode, was a special invitee
who also spoke at the
ceremony. He placed the construction of the
wall in historical
perspective, adding that “nobody
would have believed
in fact that this symbol of the Cold War could or
would come
down. One of the
political lessons we, all of us,
Germans and the Americans as well, have learned
from this is that nothing between heaven and earth
is impossible if you firmly believe in your objectives and strive to reach them
at the right time, and with the right
means.”
The 100 person
audience also heard from the DLI Chancellor, Dr. Donald Fischer. From 1989
to 1992, Fischer served a tour as DLI Commandant. Prior to that assignment,
Fischer had commanded a missile air defense battalion in Bad Kreuznach, (West)
Germany,
where he served 16
years of his Army career. Events accelerated in
East
Germany during Fischer’s
DLI tour so that by the time he retired in 1992 the
world had been
transformed in amazing ways. At the
conclusion of his speech, Fischer directed his remarks to current DLI language
students, stating that “The
new generation of
students that has to deal with languages and
cultures is far different and with much different
goals than we had to deal
with. To those
students, I say that the torch is now passed to you. I
envy your youth, I envy your challenge, and it is my hope that in a
few years, there
will be another
monument here to your efforts, complete
with the success and
the provisions of opportunity that these slabs from the
Berlin Wall represent
today.”
In his remarks Col Tucker Mansager stated that he had “served in
Berlin as an infantry
lieutenant from 1986 to 1989, where our nickname
was “the Defenders of
Freedom.” He added that
“in
Berlin, as an incentive to
reenlist Army soldiers in the mid 1980s, the reenlisting soldier
was
allowed to choose the
place where he
would take the oath
to defend the Constitution of the
United
States. Perhaps the most
moving reenlistments I have ever done
were on the platform
overlooking the Wall by the Brandenburg Gate, -- the very
site where President
Reagan stood to deliver his speech. We planted the biggest American flag
we could carry to
reinforce all those around the
U.S. commitment to a
free Berlin by extension of
freedom everywhere. Another moving
reenlistment location was the Freedom
Bridge, over which Cold War
prisoners, such as Francis Gary Powers,
were exchanged and
where the remains of
DLI graduate Maj. Arthur Nicholson, killed by a Soviet soldier in East Germany,
was returned to U.S.
custody. We marched to the middle of this bridge and planted the
U.S. colors on the line
of the middle of the bridge that separated freedom from tyranny. This
was an attempt in a
small way to
show that
we
were indeed “The
Defenders of Freedom.”
As the fall of the Berlin Wall represents a
particular defining moment in two countries
histories, the November ceremony started
with the American and
German national anthems. A senior NCO of German descent, 1st Sergeant Frank
Everson, performed the master of ceremonies duties, and Installation chaplain
Gianstefano Martin gave the invocation in English and
German. After the speeches by
Col Mansager, Mr. Robinson, the Deputy German Consul General,
and Dr. Fischer, the formal ceremony
was
followed by a photo
session and interviews by the local
press.
Subsequently, the DLI
Alumni Association held an informal reception at Nakamura Hall Auditorium,
where the German
department choir sang several German songs and a group of Serbian/Croatian
students entertained the audience with East European
dances. Before and after the entertainment, the cheerful audience could
watch a slide
show portraying the
transport of the slabs from Scurei’s backyard to their
present location at the Presidio of
Monterey. While tasting
light hors d’ouvres and listening to John Philip Sousa
marches, the ceremony concluded as the guests exchanged stories, said goodbye to
each other, and one by one went their separate
ways.
One could tell by
the comments of the gathered guests that this
was one of the most
memorable and impressive ceremonies in their memory. It is quite evident that
the Institute is eternally grateful to Walter, Paul, and Victoria Scurei for this magnificent contribution to the Institute,
representing an everlasting monument to the achievements of the countless alumni
who served in
Europe during the Cold
War. (See
related articles in DLIAA
Newsletter
VII)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. Russian program still going strong after 60+ years.
By Dr. James C. McNaughton, DLIFLC Command Historian during the
1980s-1990s. Article was first published by the DLI Globe in October 1996
Note: As this article was written in 1996, it talks about
the Russian program being the largest program at DLI, which is no longer the
case. A short follow up article updates the last nine years
(1996-2005).
The
Army founded the Defense Language Institute in 1941 as a Japanese language
school, but since the dawn of the Cold War in the late 1940s, its largest
program has been Russian.
The Presidio of
Monterey's early years
In the spring of 1946 the War Department 0-2 moved the Military Intelligence
Service Language School (MISLS) from Fort Snelling,
Minn., to the Presidio of Monterey. In September 1946 the school hired
Gleb Drujina, then a graduate
student at Stanford
University, to join Army
Master Sgt. Alexander Vorobyoff,
who
was already teaching
Japanese at the school, as the first two Russian-language
instructors. Their first class began with eight students
on Jan. 3,
1947.
Over
the next few years, requirements
for Russian linguists grew tremendously to
support increased American intelligence efforts directed against the
Soviet
Union. Within four years,
America became involved in the Korean War which took the lives
of one: of the Russian Department's first graduates, Army Capt.
Robert Pomerene, and one of the
first military language instructors (MLIs), Army Tech.
Sgt. Nicolai Bellegarde. (A building and a
street on the Presidio were later named
after these two men).
Army
Language
School
The
Russian department at the Army
Language
School (as it
was renamed in 1947)
grew rapidly. Student
input for Russian alone soared to almost 1,000 each year. By 1950 the faculty
members numbered 70 and grew to 150 by 1953. All
were native speakers,
many of whom
had lived in exile
for years.
Air Force Maj.
Nicholas Mitchell,
Raymond Gourley and Vladimir Kopeikin were other leaders in
the Russian department's early years.
When
Russian instruction began, the course length was 47
weeks. Students
attended classes six hours daily. Instructors rotated among classrooms to expose
students to the widest variety of
accents and dialects. Instructors wrote their
own textbook materials
and recorded listening exercises onto 78-rpm records, since commercial materials
weren't available.
The Presidio's Alexander Albov
wrote the first Army
Language Proficiency Test (ALPT) in 1948.
By 1948
the Army
Language
School's Russian program
was the largest in
the country. Other services and government agencies also established their
own smaller programs.
Russian course materials developed during World War II by the Armed Forces
Institute also became available.
Military services also turned to civilian universities. In January 1946 the Army
and Navy sent 10 officers to Columbia
University in
New York
City to begin a special
graduate program of Russian language and area studies
(which eventually
grew in the Army Foreign
Area Officer program).
However, the Air Force
took a different route. In the first years after becoming a separate service in
1947 it was scrambling to
build up its own
worldwide intelligence
network. For the first
few years the Air Force
continued to send its personnel to the
Army
Language
School. In 1950 it
persuaded the school to offer a special six-month accelerated Russian "monitors"
course for voice intercept operators, which became
known as Ru-6,
while the original
basic course was designated RU-12.
For the next 20 years, Nicolas
Romanoff ran the RU-6
department.
To meet its growing needs, the Air
Force Institute of Technology signed a contract
with
Syracuse university in new
York to establish a
Russian program for several hundred airmen each year beginning in early 1951.
Overall, the Air Force found this more cost effective than training at the
Army school. Syracuse University later pioneered language aptitude testing using
the Carroll Language Aptitude Test, the forerunner of today's Defense Language
Aptitude Battery (DLAB).
The Kopeikin-Albov years
Kopeikin served as director
of the Russian Language Division from 1950 to 1960, the height of the Cold War.
In 1952 the Soviet Literary Gazette blasted the
Army
Language
School as "a nest of
intelligence agents in Monterey." When the school
adopted an official crest in 1956, it included the Rosetta Stone as a subtle reminder of
how secrets of an
earlier "oriental" despotism had once been deciphered by skilled Western
linguists.
In those days before overhead surveillance systems, communications
intelligence was
America's first line of
defense against the Soviet threat. Student input in Russian continued to climb
after the end of the Korean War in 1953, reaching a peak of 985 students in
fiscal 1957.
Before long, Presidio instructors had formed their
own little community
on the Monterey
Peninsula. Teaching at the
Army
Language
School became a family
affair as instructors' wives
were repeatedly hired
as short-term temporaries to teach the Cyrillic alphabet at the start of each
class and to help with international
cookery.
The Presidio's library held one of the largest collections of Russian
publications in the country, many donated by faculty members themselves. In 1955
small classes were also started in
Ukrainian and Lithuanian. In 1955 the school
was hit by the first
big reduction-in-force (RIF) in its short
history: 57 of 165 Russian instructors were laid off
without
warning. A further
blow came in 1958
when the Air Force
Institute of Technology awarded a
new contract to
Indiana
University for the training of
several hundred airmen in Russian each year. The existing program for airmen at
Syracuse
University continued. The Air
Force withdrew all its students
from the Army school. Despite these setbacks, the services had continued
requirements for Russian language training. In the late 1950s a team headed by
Anatol Flaume
wrote a
new Russian basic
course which
would remain in use
for more than two decades. By 1958,
the "monitors" course was extended to nine
months and in 1959 the first nonresident courses in Russian and in several other
languages were developed under
contract.
A
new 18-month basic
course and a special six-week scientific
Russian course were developed in
1961. Phonograph record players gave way to reel-to-reel
tape recorders and the first language labs were installed.
Within a few years the Russian
faculty could boast of four language labs with 260 positions.
At the same, time, the federal government stepped up funding of academic centers
that offered instruction in Russian language and area studies under the National
Defense Education Act of 1958.
After the Air Force withdrew its students,
Albov, then chair of the
Russian-12 department, wrote a personal
letter to the secretary of defense and congressional leaders urging the
consolidation of armed forces language training. "At the present
time," he wrote,
"foreign-language instruction for armed forces personnel is conducted in several
places without any
coordination, with constant
overlapping and duplication of effort at the cost of many millions of
dollars."
The Senate held hearings on the proposal while the Defense
Department conducted a major study. In 1960 Albov became the director
of the renamed East Slavic Language Division. In 1962 his idea
became reality when a
new Defense Language
Institute (DLI) was established
with headquarters in
Washington,
D.C. The
Army
Language
School became the West
Coast Branch. The small language department of the
Navy
Intelligence
School,
whose largest
department, Russian, had only 12 instructors, became the East Coast Branch.
By that time, the school's graduates were playing
important roles throughout the
United
States military,
intelligence agencies and in the academic world. The Russian
faculty adapted to needs of the services. When the American and Soviet
governments first established the "hotline," or MOLINK, in 1963, special
training for these officer translators was conducted by the
East Coast Russian Department.
In 1965 the Russian-9 course at the West Coast branch
was retooled into an
"aural comprehension course." For several years the Russian and Chinese
departments had the only aural comprehension programs in the school. For a short
time the Russian department even taught a Russian stenotype course for the Army
Security Agency.
After 1965 the Vietnam War dominated service planning. Many Russian graduates
served in that conflict or were retrained in
Vietnamese. Overall service input for Russian language training dropped from a
high of 1,663 in fiscal 1965 to 814 in fiscal 1971. The contract programs at
Syracuse and
Indiana universities
were phased out by
1970. By then the West Coast branch of DLI was
down to
fewer than 100 Russian
instructors and the East Coast branch was
down to
six.
The time of troubles
The Russian faculty's reputation for excellence also suffered a decline.
When the Center for Applied Linguistics evaluated the West Coast Russian
departments in 1965-1966, it found their materials did not measure up to
then-current academic standards. Few instructors
were familiar
with current language
usage in the Soviet
Union. In 1971 course
development responsibilities were removed from the
language departments and placed in a short-lived DLI Systems Development
Agency.
In 1967 the school began a special basic course extension
knows as "LeFox." The first technical language assistants (TLAs),
were experienced
cryptologic noncommissioned officers from the Army
Security Agency. Later these NCOs were redesignated foreign language training NCOS (FLTNs) and finally as military language instructors (MLIs).
The Educational Testing Service developed a
new-style Russian
Defense Language Proficiency Test II (DLPT II) during this period. A comparison
between DLI Russian
basic-course graduates and Russian majors at civilian universities found the DLI
graduates were far ahead.
During the same years, the Army built a new seven-building
"Russian
Village" (Bldg. 631-637),
moving the Russian departments out of their preWorId War I barracks.
Military security service requirements became Il}ore onerous in the 1970s. In 1971 the National Security
Agency (NSA) set new "terminal skill
objectives" (TSOs) for basic courses. The school
responded by developing the Basic Course Enrichment Program (BCEP). Development
of a new Russian Aural
Comprehension Course for "listeners" was begun in 1974
based on the innovative work of
Dr.
Valerian Postovsky, chief of the
Slavic Group from 1971 to 1974. In 1976 development began on
an entirely new basic course for"
speakers. "
Military services, intelligence agencies and DLI suffered cutbacks and
turmoil when the Vietnam War
ended. Many of DLI's faculty members had accrued 20
years of federal service during this period and had become eligible for
retirement or, like Albov, had reached mandatory
retirement age under then-current Civil Service rules.
In 1974 DLI headquarters relocated to
Monterey and merged
with the West Coast
branch to became the
Defense
Language
Institute
Foreign
Language
Center (DLIFLC). The
following year the East
Coast branch closed. Oleh Muzychenko, chairman of its
Russian department, transferred to the West Coast to become chairman of a
new Russian Advanced
Department. He left behind the MOLINK training section as part of the DLIFLC
Washington Liaison Office,
where it has remained
to this day. This move and the termination of university contracts left the
DLIFLC Russian departments as the Defense Department's sole source of basic
Russian language training.
As the decade continued, students and faculty became more dissatisfied
with the Institute
and its training. In 1974 more than 100 Air Force students
resigned en mass in protest of the aural comprehension approach. By 1975
faculty complaints led to a major investigation of the DLIFLC's administration by the Army's Training and Doctrine
Command (TRADOC)(which had taken
control of the Institute in 1973). The school later adapted
TRADOC's" instructional technology" teaching
method.
More turmoil followed in 1976
when 26 Army students
filed a federal lawsuit against the
Institute accusing the Army of breach of contract for training them to be
"listeners," not "linguists." As one student complained to a local reporter, "I
enlisted to be trained as an interpreter-translator. I expected to be speaking
the language, interpreting for people. Now the Army is
training me for some job where I sit in a room
wearing earphones all
day long. That isn't
what I signed up
for."
Rebirth of Russian
language importance
By the end of the 1970s, the military services
were experiencing
another rapid growth in Russian
requirements. From fiscal 1978 to fiscal 1981 the annual student input for
Russian jumped from 50 percent to more than 1,500, reflecting a further
deterioration of superpower relations
following the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan and the continued
build-up of Soviet military power. The Russian
department under Slavic Group chief Serge Issakow (1979-1984) hired
scores of temporary instructors to meet the demand and expanded to five
departments. Meanwhile, the Russian
faculty developed several new nonresident
courses, such as the Foreign Language Maintenance and Refresher Course
(FLAMRIC), and the Training Extension Course (TEC), later renamed the
Professional Development Program Extension Course (PDPEC).
When the Presidio facilities reached full capacity in 1980, the Institute
established the Lackland Operating Detachment at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, to teach the Russian basic
course for up to 600 airmen at a time. When Congress gave the Defense Department
more money for new construction,
DLIFLC began constructing a new
"Russian
Village." Its centerpiece,
the general instructional facility, was named after Army
Maj. Arthur Nicholson Jr.,
a Russian basic
course graduate killed in the line of duty in 1985 by a , Soviet guard in East
Germany.
The Russian departments also began a new period of
curricular change marked by a gradual shift away from
achievement-oriented and toward
proficiency-oriented instruction. The two-track systems of
"listeners" and "speakers" courses ended in 1981. A
new basic course
was implemented in
1982.
The departments even tried a small-scale total-immersion experiment, the
Russian Cultural House in Carmel, from 1983 to 1985.
But the sins of the past, such as a high student-teacher ratio and random
teacher assignments, continued to haunt the school. When the
new DLPT III
was implemented in
the mid-1980s based on Interagency Language Roundtable standards,
fewer than 10 percent
of Russian basic-course graduates were reaching Level 2
in listening and reading. They were doing even
worse on the
new speaking
component.
DLIFLC closed the Lackland Operating Detachment
in 1986 and transferred 50 instructors to
Monterey. In the same year
the Institute reorganized the Russian program and created
two schools
with 10 departments
and more than 200 instructors. Luba Solgalow
(Grant)
was named dean of the
School of the Russian Language (later Russian I), and Dr.
Alex Vorobiov
was named dean of the
School of
Russian
Studies (later Russian
II).
A third department opened in 1987 at the Presidio of
San
Francisco, but this
was phased out a year
later. By 1989 the student load had grown to the point that
two Russian
departments (later three) were shifted to the
new
School of
Slavic
Languages under its dean,
Betty Lou
Leaver.
In 1986 the Institute increased its staffing ratio from the traditional
1.3 instructors for every 10-student section to 2.0 per section. In 1987 the
Institute hired 80 new Russian instructors
and began to form five-and six-instructor teaching teams to promote bonding
between students and
instructors. These reforms, together
with the shift to a
new
proficiency-oriented Russian basic course and aggressive
new leadership, paid
off in steadily rising Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) scores. By 1989
more than 60 percent of DLIFLC's Russian basic course
students were reaching Level 2
in listening and reading.
In 1988 the DLIFLC Russian program again gained national prominence
when it began
advanced training for On-Site Inspection Agency (OSIA) interpreters to
participate in arms control treaty verification efforts. Since that time, the
schools have worked actively to
take advantage of educational technology, bringing computers and live Russian
television broadcasts via satellite into classrooms. In-house course development
work brought more
current authentic materials to students.
Russian instructors worked
with MLIs to develop materials to meet
new final learning
objectives (FLOs) set by the National Security Agency
(NSA) in 1987. They also developed nonresident courses such as the Special
Forces Functional Language Course (SFFLC), the Proficiency Improvement Course
(PIC) and the Basic Military Language Course (BMLC) for Special Operations
Forces. A new-style DLPT IV
was
written and student
proficiency results continued to climb, with more than 80
percent of students reaching Level 2 in listening and reading by fiscal 1991.
In 1991 the Soviet
Union finally dissolved
into a state of economic, social and political collapse after more than four
decades of Cold War with Western
democracies. As a result, the American military rapidly scaled
down its training
requirements for the Russian language. The Institute dismissed 49 Russian
instructors in 1992. The next year it eliminated more than 100 instructor
positions in Russian and other languages.
Through it all, student proficiency continued to rise, and average DLPT scores
in listening, reading and speaking reached new levels. In March
1992 a large team of outside experts conducted the Russian Curriculum
Review and praised the
Russian, former Warsaw Pact languages
faculty for its efforts.
In 1993 the Institute provided Russian language instruction to American
astronauts and other National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
personnel. Some of the former RIFed instructors found
new
work teaching Belorussian, Ukrainian or SerbianCroatian to many of
their former students returning to DLIFLC for conversion courses.
With change came reorganization and new leadership. In 1992
the Slavic
School
was closed,
Dr.
Neil Granoien took over Russian I
and Luba
Grant took over Russian
II schools. The next year, the schools were renamed
East
European
School I (under
Charles
Cole) and East European
School II (under Benjamin De La
Selva). In 1996 both
schools were renamed and
changed deans: European
School I (under
De
La Selva) and European
School II (under Dr. Mahmood Taba-Tabai).
The Russian programs played a distinguished role in the national security of the
United
States and its allies
during their long struggle with the Soviet
colossus. Now DLIFLC stands ready
to meet future needs of the nation and its allies as their relationship
with their former
adversary undergoes further changes in the years ahead.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. Russian article update
By Ben De
La Selva
As
stated in the previous article, in 1993 there
was a drop in the
Russian student input and the program was reduced to a
third of what it had been in
its heyday. About 100 Russian instructors
were riffed, leaving
the Russian program with about 200
instructors.
In December 1998,
De La
Selva
was asked to head the
European and Latin American School and Deanna
Tovar
took over the leadership of European School I,
with the Basic,
Intermediate and Advanced Russian courses, while Taba-Tabai continued in European School II
with the Basic
course, the On Site Inspection Agency (OSIA), and the Russian LeFox program, the latter being discontinued during this
period. Subsequently, OSIA was renamed the
Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).
After
September 11,
2001, Taba-Tabai
was asked to head the
Emerging Languages Task Force, and John Dege took over the
leadership of European II.
In December 2003, in
light of a DLIFLC reorganization, the Intermediate and
Advanced Russian courses were reassigned to
the newly formed School for
Continuing Education, located at the Ord Military
Community, OMC, former Fort
Ord.
At the same time, as the number of Russian
students was declining, DLIFLC
saw the opportunity to
consolidate the Russian basic program in the WWI buildings by Soldier’s field,
where the Russian
program had began in 1947.
Furthermore, in February 2004, as the number of Russian and Spanish
students reached their lowest levels in decades,
a decision was made to combine
these two programs into one
school by moving the Spanish program with the Russian program
by Soldier's Field. This last action was completed in December
2004. In the new year, the Russian School was renamed European Language School, or ELS. Furthermore, in December
2005 the French and Serbian/Croatian programs also joined ELS "down the hill", a relocation
caused by the ever expanding Arabic and Persian Farsi programs. Currently
the European Language School is comprised of the French, Russian, Serbian/Croatian,
and Spanish programs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8
“Shigeya
Kihara (1914-2005), A Legend of Army Language Training
This article first
appeared in the Summer 2005 edition of the DLI Globe and is published here
with permission from Dr.
Harold E. Raugh Jr., DLIFLC and POM Command
Historian
Shigeya Kihara, the last of the original four Japanese language
instructors of the Fourth Army Intelligence School, the precursor of the Defense
Language Institute Foreign Language Center, passed
away on Jan.16, 2005.
Kihara served admirably as an Army language instructor
and administrator from 1941 to 1974. He leaves behind an unparalleled reputation
as a loyal servant of the
United
States, champion of its
ideals, and master of Army language training.
Shigeya Kihara was born in
Suisun-Fairfield, Calif., on Sept. 27, 1914. He
was a Nisei, meaning
“second generation,” a child born and educated in the
United
States of Japanese immigrant
parents. His family moved to Oakland
when he
was very young, and
Kihara first
went to school at
Lincoln
Elementary
School in
Oakland. He later recalled
that there was a strong
undercurrent of prejudice and discrimination against Asians at the time. School
classes were segregated,
with Japanese and
Chinese students in one class and Caucasian children in a separate class. Kihara did not have a Caucasian classmate until he
was in the seventh
grade.
Kihara
began college during the height of the Great Depression. After his father became
ill, Kihara had to drop out of college and supported
his family for three years. When his father regained his health, Kihara
went to the
University of
California at
Berkeley and received a
bachelor’s degree in political science in 1938. With unemployment rampant, Kihara was unable to get a job,
so he returned to Berkeley and earned a master’s
degree in international relations the
following
year.
The lack of economic opportunities
during the Great Depression hurt many people, especially minorities. After
receiving his master’s degree in 1939, Kihara
worked in the family
grocery store for a few months, but he
was frustrated by his
inability to get a decent job. Kihara’s father
recommended he go to
Japan and use his English
language skills with a Japanese
newspaper or a similar
organization. After promising his father that he
would stay in Japan for
two years, Kihara departed for the land of his ancestors in October
1940.
After having been subject to
discrimination in the
United
States, Kihara was appalled
when he arrived in
Yokohama and
was condescendingly
asked if he was the “son of an
emigrant.” This situation, combined
with eroding freedoms
and increasing militarism in Japan, caused Kihara to
realize that, “I better get out of here [Japan] before
war breaks out and I get
conscripted into the Japanese army and spend a lifetime marching all over
China.”
Kihara
wrote to his mother and
informed her of the growing bellicosity and
escalating rearmament in
Japan. Discerning her son’s
desire to return home, she responded by
writing, “Papa says that
if you come back to the
United
States before you stay
two years as you
promised, you will have no home in the
United
States.” Undeterred, Kihara sold his
few possessions, including
his typewriter, shoes, and
overcoats, and bought a return ticket to the
United
States on board a Japanese
vessel. When the ship docked in
San
Francisco harbor, around the end
of July 1941, Kihara
was met by his brother,
who declared, “Papa
wants you to come home.
You’re not kicked out of the family.
Even though he
was reconciled
with his father, Kihara still faced employment difficulties. In September
1941, he received a phone call from one of his former university instructors,
professor Florence Walne, chairman of the Oriental
Department at the UC-Berkeley. Walne informed Kihara that the United States Army
was looking for Japanese
language instructors at a new language school it
was establishing, and
that he should arrange an interview
with Lt. Col. John Weckerling, assistant chief of staff, Intelligence (G-2),
Fourth Army, at the Presidio of San Francisco.
By this time,
war
with
Japan
was looming on the
horizon. It had become obvious that Japanese linguists
would be needed to serve
in intelligence, interpreter, interrogator, and related positions in a potential
Pacific Theater of Operations. There
was a marked shortage of
Caucasian Japanese linguists, and it
was decided to make up
the shortage by using Nisei. This was considered a gamble
at the time, as it was not
known if the Nisei
would be loyal to the
United
States on the battlefield
fighting against soldiers of their
own race and
blood.
It
was thought that enough
Nisei who
were proficient in the
Japanese language could be identified and
would require only a
few
weeks of refresher
training in Japanese military terminology and combat intelligence before being
sent to operational units. Nisei soldiers conscripted through Selective Service
and stationed on West Coast military installations
were screened for their
Japanese language abilities. The expectations of Japanese language proficiency
had been extremely optimistic. Of the first 3,700 Nisei soldiers screened for
their Japanese language ability, “only 3 percent
were accomplished
linguists, only about another 4 percent
were proficient and a
further 3 percent could be useful only after a prolonged period of training.”
When this information became known, the War Department
directed the Fourth Army to establish a Japanese language
school.
Kihara
received a letter from Weckerling on Oct. 1, 1941,
offering him a position as a Japanese language instructor
with a salary of $175 a
month. Kihara
knew that there
were many Kibei (children born in the United States of Japanese
immigrant parents but educated largely in Japan) better qualified for the
position, but many of them believed the rumors “going around in the Japanese
communities, . . . that the army was looking for Japanese
language instructors in order to serve as spies for the United States Army
against individuals in the Japanese communities” and
were very reluctant to
apply for the jobs.
On about
Oct. 15,
1941, Kihara reported to Weckerling to
begin his new assignment. Weckerling took him to a room in the basement of the Fourth
Army Headquarters that contained “no chairs, no tables – nothing except a
wooden orange crate
with a set of Japanese
books and dictionaries that Capt. Kai Rasmussen had brought home after four
years of Japanese language study as assistant military attache at the American Embassy in
Tokyo.”
Kihara also met his
fellow Japanese language
instructors. They were Pfc. John Aiso, a successful Harvard
law School graduate
who had been drafted in
April 1941, and was designated chief
instructor; Akira Oshida; and Pfc. Arthur Kaneko.
Kaneko reportedly declined the Japanese language teaching position a
few days later, and
was replaced by Tetsuo
Imagawa.
Weckerling took his
new Japanese language
instructors across old railroad tracks to another part of the Presidio of San
Francisco, and “the group ended up at an abandoned, corrugated-tin airplane
hangar at Crissy Field on the Presidio along the
shores of San
Francisco
Bay.” The decrepit hangar,
which
was to be the classroom
for the new
Fourth
Army
Intelligence
School,
was almost as barren as
the basement room they had met in earlier. Weckerling
told Aiso that, “Sixty students
will be reporting to the
school in two
weeks. Be ready to start
training.” He then departed the hangar.
The
following
two
weeks
were filled
with frantic activity
and long days. Aiso demonstrated his fine leadership
abilities during this period. He sent his three instructors on various
preparatory tasks, including finding office supplies and a printer to reproduce
some of Rasmussen’s Japanese books and dictionaries. Kihara was sent to local
university bookstores in search of additional textbooks and to a Japanese
bookseller in San
Francisco to buy all of the
Japanese dictionaries available. The three instructors translated U.S. Army
Technical Manual (TM) 30-480, Handbook on Japanese Military Forces, to use as a
textbook.
Aiso
developed an hour-by-hour program of instruction and scheduling system for the
new Japanese language
course as the carpenters hammered away, creating three
classrooms and administrative offices in the former hanger-turned-schoolhouse.
Kihara later recalled Aiso’s
guidance and training concept at the time: “Instruction
will start at 0800 hours
with the readers.
Reading and translation until
1000 hours with a ten minute break
at 0850. How about
Kanji (Chinese characters) at
1100. Tests every day. English to Japanese translation
will be at 1300. Each
instructor will prepare materials
for his class based on the reader lesson each day. Heigo (Military Terminology)
will
be at 1400. We’ll have faculty
workshops for the next
two
weeks to translate the
US Army Training Manual
into Japanese and keep it up during lunch and after classes; after that
we’ll do the Japanese
Army, Navy and Air Force. Aki [Akira Oshida], you have
the best Japanese writing, so you’ll cut
the stencils for the text. Readers will be at 1500 hours
again. Instructors will carefully introduce
the next day’s lesson, the reading, the meaning, the translation, the
Kanji and the grammar. Sound OK? Any comments, suggestions?” Intensive language training began
with the very first
course.
On
Nov. 1,
1941, 60 students (58 Nisei
and two Caucasians) reported
to the new
Fourth
Army
Intelligence
School to begin their
Japanese language training. Aiso divided the class
into three sections, A, B, and C. Kihara was designated the
instructor for Section C. With a sense of irony, humor, and pride, they called
themselves, “Yankee Samurai.”
The Japanese attack on
Pearl
Harbor,
Dec. 7,
1941, sparked an even
greater sense of urgency in the Japanese language training. It did,
however, have considerable
negative repercussions, causing confusion, paranoia,
widespread hysteria, and
sensational accusations. Japanese Americans
were frequently
considered potential spies or saboteurs.
In this charged atmosphere,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on
Feb. 19,
1942. This ultimately
resulted in the forced relocation of about 112,000 Japanese Americans from
California,
western
Oregon and
Washington, and southern
Arizona to 10 “relocation
centers” in the western and midwestern
United
States. Kihara and his
fellow Nisei instructors at
the Fourth Army Intelligence School
were exempted from this
relocation, but his family and his wife’s family
were ordered to the
Tanforan Assembly Center at the Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno, about 12 miles south of San
Francisco. They were later sent to the
Topaz
Relocation
Center in
Utah,
where they spent the
duration of the war.
After the first Japanese language
class graduated in May 1942 and its 45 graduates
were retained as
instructors or sent to operational units in the
Guadalcanal and Alaskan areas, the
Fourth
Army
Intelligence
School
was inactivated. This
was due to Executive
Order 9066, anti-Japanese sentiment on the West Coast, and a need for larger
facilities. Kihara and Aiso
and their wives, along
with Captain Eugene
Wright and his family, drove from San Francisco to the
new Japanese language
school site, Camp Savage, Minn.
On
June 1,
1942, the successor school,
named the Military
Intelligence
Service
Language
School,
was opened at
Camp
Savage, under the direct
control of the War Department. Camp Savage had earlier served as a home for
homeless men, and had been abandoned for some time. Kihara later recalled that “one of the operations at
Camp
Savage
was [as a] manufacturer
of mattresses, something productive to do for the homeless men. And in this big
warehouse there
were hoboes living there
and there were cockroaches and
fleas and lice, filthy. So our 10 best enlisted men
were ordered to clean
out the place, drag all the mattresses out, put them in a big pile, pour
kerosene on them and burn them. And then fumigate the mattress factory,
which later became the
faculty office at Camp
Savage.”
About 200 students
were in the first
Camp
Savage Japanese language
course. The program of instruction was changed only
slightly, to emphasize Japanese military terminology. Kihara continued to serve as a Japanese language instructor
in Section C, although only half-time, and due to the increased number of
instructors and students, he also served as an administrator
half-time.
As the pace of operations in the
Pacific Theater of Operations increased, and intelligence and translating staff
sections became busier, more Japanese linguists
were needed. A special
three-month class was held for linguists
who
would be assigned to the
newly formed Allied
Translator and Interpreter Section, and
prisoner-of-war interrogation
techniques training was added to the
courses. The Pentagon sent screening and recruiting teams to the 10 Japanese
American relocations centers to recruit more Nisei instructors and soldiers for
the Military Intelligence Service. In the summer of 1943, Kihara and Imagawa
were sent to
Camp
Shelby,
Miss.,
where the Nisei 442nd
Regimental Combat team was training. They
returned to Camp
Savage
with 250 high-quality
volunteer students for the MISLS.
In the summer of 1943, the
school system was reorganized into
three divisions, upper, middle, and
lower, according to the
language student’s individual abilities. Kihara became
a Division Director, and was also responsible for
officer candidate training. The fourth and last Japanese language class at
Camp
Savage began in January 1944,
and strained the installation infrastructure. As of July 1944, there
were 27 civilian and 65
enlisted instructors and about 1,100 students (including 107 officer candidates)
in 52 academic sections at the MISLS.
The MISLS
outgrew its facilities again,
and was moved on
Aug. 15,
1944, to nearby
Fort Snelling,
Minn., on the outskirts of
Minneapolis overlooking the
Mississippi
River.
Fort
Snelling had earlier provided
logistical support to the MISLS when it
was located at
Camp
Savage, and according to
Kihara, it
was “a fine installation
with good offices,
classrooms, a hospital and a PX.”
The MISLS continued teaching
Japanese at Fort Snelling, and added a Chinese
Division in February 1945 and one Women’s Army Corps (WAC) Japanese language
training section in June 1945. After the Japanese surrendered
on Sept. 2,
1945, the language training
emphasis shifted “from Military Japanese to general Japanese, and in particular,
to Civil Affairs Japanese,” to use during the occupation of
Japan. A Korean language
class was begun in October
1945, and during the same month, the MISLS reached it peak enrollment of 1,836
students in 103 sections. The final and 21st graduation of the school
was held on
June 8,
1946, and a total of about
6,000 soldiers had graduated from the MISLS during its
existence.
With the
war over, many of the
instructors were eager to return
home to California,
which also provided
ports for the embarkation of linguists and soldiers bound for the occupation of
Japan.
Fort
Snelling became a veteran’s
hospital, and the Presidio of Monterey
was chosen for the
new home of the Japanese
language school. Kihara later recalled that his
reaction upon the hearing the news
was, “Oh boy!
Minnesota had many nice things
but California
was our
home.”
The MISLS officially
closed at Fort
Snelling at “2400, CST,
10 June
1946,” and opened at the
Presidio of Monterey “at 0001, PST,
11 June
1946.” Kihara, his wife, their 2-year-old
son Ronald, and Kihara’s parents
(who had earlier joined
their son from the Topaz
Relocation
Center), traveled by car from
Minnesota to the
Monterey
Peninsula and arrived at the
Presidio of Monterey in late May 1946. As
had been the case at Camp
Savage, Kihara later reflected that,
“we
were again
welcomed by a sea of
waving summer grass. A
few horses looked at us
curiously, remnants of the 11th Cavalry
which had been stationed
there since after World War I. Sickly green paint peeled from the
warping
buildings and barracks, built a half century before
at the time of the Philippine Insurrection. Their emptiness fostered feelings of
sadness and desolation, heightened by the mournful
wails of the Point Pinos fog horn.”
Kihara
received government quarters at nearby Fort Ord.
The main body of troops from Fort
Snelling, consisting of 15 officers and 925 enlisted
men, arrived in Monterey on three special
trains on June 25, 1946. Textbooks and classroom equipment alone filled nine
boxcars. After a number of the old buildings
were renovated, language
training again began on July 15, 1946. The end of World War II and the advent of
the Cold War gave the MISLS a new mission and
new languages to teach.
Russian began to be taught in late 1946,
followed by Spanish in
January 1947. Eight more departments
were established later
in 1947: Arabic, French, Greek, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, and
Turkish.
On
June 23,
1947, Kihara was appointed associate
professor of Japanese. A few months later,
recognizing its increased postwar role in teaching
multiple languages, the MISLS was redesignated the
Army
Language
School on
Sept. 1,
1947. Kihara remained Language Division Director (Chairman) in
charge of instruction until 1960. He
was chosen in 1960 to
head the first Research and Development activity at the Presidio of
Monterey, and he
was jokingly told, “If
you do not prove useful, back you go to the Japanese department.” Kihara was, as one
would expect, extremely
useful, supervising the language training programs of 30 foreign language
departments, revamping much of the instructional material and instituting the
first organized faculty-training program.
In 1971, by
which time the
Army
Language
School had been renamed the
Defense
Language
Institute-West
Coast Branch, Kihara’s outstanding performance
was again recognized
with another promotion
and increased responsibilities. He became chief of the Support Division of the
Systems Development Agency. He was then responsible for
the printing plant; the media branch,
which included the
artists who prepared
instructional material illustrations; the sound recording specialists,
who made instructional
materials, and the supply personnel
who distributed all
course materials.
In 1974, after 33 years of
outstanding and devoted service to the Army, Kihara
retired. In retirement, Kihara
was very active in the
Military Intelligence Service Association of
Northern
California. In 1977, he
was asked to assist
Joseph D. Harrington to research and
write “Yankee Samurai:
The Secret Role of Nisei in America’s Pacific Victory”
which began a
new avocation of recording
and publicizing the MIS story through books, television documentaries, building
memorials, and museum exhibits in the United States and Japan. (See
below for a listing of Kihara’s DLIFLC Globe and related articles.) For the
National Japanese American Historical Society of San Francisco, Kihara coordinated the “Yankee Samurai” exhibits at Nakamura
Hall, DLIFLC; the County Museum, Los Angeles; U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii; Adm. Nimitz Museum, Fredricksburg,
Texas; and the MacArthur Memorial, Norfolk, Va., from
1980 to 1987. Kihara chaired a Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center
(DLIFLC) committee that dedicated the Hachiya, the
Mizutari, and the Nakamura Halls at the Presidio of
Monterey in
1980. In 1988, he
was instrumental in
dedicating the Aiso Library at the DLIFLC, and
worked indefatigably to
support the award of the Presidential
Unit Citation to the Military Intelligence Service for its World War II
service.
Kihara’s
long and distinguished career spanned the days before World War II to the end of
the Vietnam War; he served under 11 commandants; and he
was responsible for
training and supporting thousands of military linguists. Kihara, the last of the original four language instructors
at the Fourth Army Intelligence School,
was a true patriot and
the model of the military language instructor and administrator. He
was especially proud of
his role as a “founding father” of the
Fourth
Army
Intelligence
School, and of the 6,000 MIS
Japanese language course graduates during the World War II era. Maj. Gen.
Charles Willoughby, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur’s wartime G-2, declared,
“The Nisei saved a million lives and shortened the
war by
two years.”
On
Feb. 28,
2005, a memorial service
was held in
Oakland,
Calif., to recognize and
remember Kihara’s unsurpassed contributions to and
outstanding accomplishments in Army language training. Col. Daniel Scott,
assistant commandant, and Dr. Stephen Payne, senior vice chancellor, officially
represented the DLIFLC at this memorial service. After delivering a moving
tribute to Kihara, Col. Scott presented a United
States flag, which had been
flown over the Defense
Language Institute and Presidio of Monterey especially to honor Kihara, to Kihara’s
widow, Aya, with these
words:
“This flag is presented on behalf
of a grateful nation as a token of appreciation for the honorable and faithful
service rendered by your loved one.”
Publications of Shigeya
Kihara
“Yutaka
Munataka: A Lifetime of Breathing, Living DLI,”
“Globe” 3 (September 11,
1981):
1.
“The Beginning: Mustering Linguists,” Globe 14 (November 1,
1991):
4-7.
“The First Linguists: From Behind Barbed Wire,”
Globe 14 (November 1,
1991):
8.
“Minnesota Welcomes a School Full
of Nisei,” Globe 15
(October 29,
1992):
6-7.
“LTC John Weckerling Founds
a Language
School,” Globe 16 (January 19,
1993):
11-12.
“Fort Snelling,
Minnesota Logistical Lifeline
for MIS,” Globe 16
(November 30,
1993):
4.
“MIS Recruit Training Top Priority at
Camp
Shelby,” Globe 16 (November 30,
1993):
5.
“50th Anniversary Reunites MIS Veterans,” Globe 16 (November 30,
1993):
6.
“Base Closure Threat Not First Time for DLI,” Globe 16 (November 30,
1993):
7.
“The Legacy of Frank Hachiya,” Globe 17 (October 1994):
5.
“Nisei War Effort Recalled,” Globe 18 (May 1995): 11.
“MISLS Presidio of
San
Francisco,
Camp
Savage and
Fort
Snelling.” In Unsung Heroes:The
Military Intelligence Service, Past – Present –
Future, by the Military Intelligence
Service –
Northwest Association.
Seattle,
WA: Military Intelligence
Service – Northwest
Association,
1996, 61-66.
“Nisei Instructor Begins Career at Presidio
of San
Francisco,” Globe 19 (December 1996):
10-11.
“Original Japanese Language Instructor Remembers
General Weckerling,” Globe 22 (January 1999):
10-11.
“Nisei Linguists Serve with 25th Inf. Div. in
World War II,” Globe 22
(September/October 1999): 10-11.
“Instructor Remembers
John Aiso,” Globe 22 (January/February 2000):
12.
“Army Chief of Staff Reflects Progress,” Globe 23 (Spring 2000):
20.
“From Presidio to Presidio,” Globe 24 (2001 Special Edition):
5-7.
“Knowledge is
Power,” Globe 24 (2001 Special Edition):
8-11.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9. Learning Japanese in 1955 – The
Army
Language
School
By
Leonard J. Nordgren, Japanese Class of 1955
The following comments were extracted from e-mails sent by Leonard
Nordgren to the DLI Alumni Association President,
on 22 December 2005.
Thanks for your prompt
reply. I guess at 76 years of age there are not too many of us left from the
class of 1955. I do know of other grads from
earlier or later Japanese classes so I may generate a few more members for your
association.
The teachers you named
(Munakata, Oshida, Yamamoto,
Sakai, Imagawa, Tekawa) are very familiar names
to me. When we arrived at the ALS
Japanese department, the first day of class Mr. Munakata called a few of us one by one into
his office, located in one of the old converted warehouses. He was sitting at his desk
with his left side to
me and when I said I was Sgt. Nordgren reporting as ordered, without looking up, he
told "Dozo, koshi kakette kudasai" so I immediately
sat down. That was a fatal misstep since
he was looking through the
new 55 members to find 14
or 16 students with some prior knowledge of Japanese. These
two special classes would be put on an accelerated
course designed to see how far and fast they could
push us before failure. Well, we only lost two which were not replaced but
put down into the regular classes.
It was tough but we covered most of the
18 months advanced course in the regular 47 week year, only to be
told by Mr. Munakata that the school decided the
experiment was not worth repeating. I did
learn a lot and later served three tours in Japan in collection and CIC
work and later was the senior CIC liaison
officer for US Army Japan for the island of Hokkaido (my third tour on that
beautiful island), dealing with high government officials,
so I guess the accelerated course was not a failure for
me.
I had classes from Mr
Oshida, Yamamoto, Imagawa, and I believe Sakai. Our
home room teachers where mainly native Japanese
speakers on visas from Japan. My particular class
had Mr Suzuki as our home room teacher. He was a native of Tokyo (Edoko) and spoke Japanese in that style (very fast), hence
his nickname "Machine gun Suzuki". I was grateful for that
introduction years later when I was stationed in Tokyo. I believe Mr. Tekawa was at that time head
of the Oriental Department and I only met him after our graduation. I found
all our instructors eager to help us and very dedicated to their task. In
that day of course we had no language labs
or computers. It was verbal instruction
six hours a day with a two hour break and then
two to four hours of self-study
daily, with two to eight hours self-study
every weekend. Very difficult for those of us with families.
We were taught of course
proper Japanese of the Tokyo style (so-called hyojun-go) leading me to wonder when I got off the boat
in Yokohama a few months after graduation
whether I had actually
been studying Japanese. But being able to read the signs I knew there had been no error.
However, I also recognized
that my next job was to learn colloquial
Japanese. Since one of my instructors (Mr. Niwa) had told me that he
had learned his colloquial English while a student in Japan
by seeing the same American movie repeatedly, I made arrangements in Sapporo,
Hokkaido, where I was stationed (1956-1958),
to attend the local Shochiku theater and see the same Japanese movie three
to four times a week during its run. That
lasted for four months until my family arrived. I found this a wonderful way to learn how to conduct myself in
typical social settings, body language, etc. while also picking up
conversational Japanese.
I found ALS to be a turning point in my life, leading to confidence in my
learning ability and success in later life. I attribute that mainly to ALS
teaching me how to study in a systemic
fashion while forcing me to develop
self-discipline, a quality I lacked.
Post Army service I worked for a while for the Department
of Army as a civilian in intelligence work but then joined the
Federal Maritime Commission as an investigator and later was made the Pacific District
Director. We investigated malpractices in the foreign and domestic water trade in the Pacific
Area and I found myself dealing with Japanese Steamship
lines and translating Japanese bank statements, etc. So, as I
indicated, learning Japanese was a skill I used until
I finally retired at age 65 and it opened the door to an interesting career
beyond the US Army. Sincerely,
Leonard J. Nordgren
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10. DLI alumn writes novel set during
the Vietnam War - Main character is
a DLI graduate
The
following comments were extracted from an
e-mail sent by Richard Galli to the DLI Alumni Association
President, on 4 November 2005. Richard studied Vietnamese at DLI's
South West Branch in El Paso, Texas, graduating in July
1969. Thereafter he served as a Vietnamese interpreter for a Civil Affairs
unit based in Hue.
Thanks for
returning my note. I have signed up as a member of the Association.
My book "Of Rice and Men" --
whose lead character is
a DLI graduate -- will be coming out in
January 2006. Since you have a newsletter coming out then,
I wonder if you might consider
putting a notice in the newsletter.
I began
to write the book back in 1971, but put it aside for about a third of a century.
I could never get it completely out of my mind, however. The time I spent
as an interpreter in Vietnam made that kind of lasting
impression on me. Well, maybe it wasn't the time; maybe it was the people
I spent the time with.
Anyway,
I decided to make it a "seriously comic" novel, which turned out to be the
right choice. We took our joy to Vietnam, and we deserved to
bring it home with us.
I noticed
in your archived newsletters that they have closed down the Presidio Vietnamese
program. Coincidentally, my book is being published
by the Presidio division at Random House/Ballantine.
Read an excerpt at: http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780891418856&view=excerpt
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11. What is in a name?
DLIFLC or DLI? "... A rose by any other
name ...."
Throughout
these newsletters, you will see the acronyms
DLIFLC and DLI used almost interchangeably. An explanation is in
order. The Army Language School (ALS) (1947-1963), located
at the Presidio of Monterey, California, became the Defense
Language Institute (DLI) in 1963, with headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Years later, when the
DLI headquarters created the East Coast Branch in Washington, D.C. (DLIEC), the Monterey branch became the West
Coast Branch (DLIWC). In 1971 DLI created the Systems Development Agency
(DLISDA) in Monterey to conduct research
and develop foreign language courses; also DLI had Vietnamese taught by contractors
in its South West Texas Branch, DLISW, located
in El Paso, Texas. In 1974, the
DLI headquarters and the East Coast Branch moved with its personnel to
the Presidio of Monterey, soon thereafter becoming
the Defense Language Institute, Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC). This
name distinguished it from the Defense Language Institute English Language Center (DLIELC), located in
Lackland AFB, Texas (www.dlielc.org).
In the 1980s, DLI also had branches operating in Lackland
AFB (DLIL), San Antonio, Texas, where Russian was taught, and in San Francisco, California
(DLISF) where German,
Korean, Spanish and Russian were taught. Also, the DLI liaison office in Washington, D.C., dealing with contract
training, has been known for years as DLI-W. Despite the name changes
from 1963 to the present time, the Institute continues to be known as "DLI"
to its hundred of thousand graduates. As William Shakespeare wisely
stated, "... A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
Accordingly, welcome to the "DLI" Alumni Association.
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