Second World War / Japanese Canadian Military Service / Enlistment for Pacific Service
In 1944, the Allies were intensifying their campaign in the South Pacific, as the European War was winding down. Demand for Japanese Canadians in the Forces came from outside Canada rather than from Canada. Australia and Britain were in dire need of Japanese-speaking translators in Southeast Asia to question Japanese POWs and to translate Japanese documents. Canada was the only country in the British Empire with any substantial Japanese-speaking population. Many locations around the Pacific Ocean needed the services of Canadian nisei.
Three years earlier, the US army had set up a Japanese-language training school (Military Intelligence Service Language School, MISLS) for interpreters and translators at Fort Savage, Minnesota, and later at Fort Snelling, Minnesota (Nakamura, 2024, Denfield, 2015). By 1946, approximately 6000 students, mostly nisei, had trained at the school (Ito, 1984, p. 162). They served at many locations around southeast Asia, translating captured documents, interrogating prisoners, intercepting radio messages, and communicating with civilians and soldiers. They were essential in the post-war occupation of Japan.
Fifteen Canadians (of non-Japanese ancestry) enrolled in the one-year language course. Most of the fifteen were found to be unsuitable students. Their lack of education and long absence from study made it impossible for them to learn the language quickly (Lamarsh, 1967).
General Charles Willoughby, G-2 intelligence chief, described the language training American nisei received: “The nisei saved countless Allied lives and shortened the war by two years. General Douglas MacArthur said, “Never in military history did an army know so much about the enemy prior to actual engagement (National Japanese American Historical Society, undated)”.
General Douglas MacArthur set up the Allied Translator and Interpreter Service (ATIS) in 1942. ATIS became the largest military intelligence centre assisting in the war against Japan. It was based, at consecutive times during the war, in Australia, Dutch New Guinea, and the Philippines. ATIS translated seized Japanese items and provided interpreters for the interrogation of prisoners. A large proportion of ATIS staff were American nisei (seayourhistory, undated). In 1944, the Southeast Asia Translation interrogation Centre (SEATIC) was established to interrogate Japanese prisoners-of-war and to translate captured Japanese documents. SEATIC urgently required qualified linguists in order to become fully operational (Ito, 1984, p.163). Allied and Canadian forces were enrolling non-Japanese in their 12-month Japanese language school and attempting to graduate them as expert interpreters and translators (Theurer and Oue, 2021, p. 231).