Shigeya Kihara, 90, Original Army Language Teacher
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Shigeya Kihara, the last surviving original instructor of the first U.S. Army language school, died in Oakland, Calif., January 16 at age 90.
Kihara was one of the first four civilian instructors at the 4th Army Intelligence School, established in 1941 on the Presidio of San Francisco to teach American soldiers Japanese. It moved to Monterey five years later and became known as the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, the nation’s premier language school.
A second generation Japanese American, Kihara was exempted from Japanese relocation camps in 1942 because he worked for the center, but his parents, in-laws and siblings were interred at camps in Utah.
Even during the years without his family, however, he remained “a loyal American,” his son said.
Born in Fairfield, Kihara had just returned from traveling and studying in Japan when a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, suggested he take a teaching job at the military’s new language school.
None of the original four instructors had any teacher training or experience, Kihara later recalled. The school started with 60 students – 58 of them of Japanese ancestry – but by the war’s end had graduated nearly 6,000 linguists. Graduates were assigned to the southwestern Pacific area, the China-Burma-India theater and other locations to interrogate prisoners, translate enemy documents and intercept radio transmissions.
“Heretofore, Japanese Americans were considered second-class citizens, linked to Japan and not to be trusted,” Kihara later said. “Here they were asked to do something of vital service to the United States, very critical not only for the U.S. Army but for Japanese Americans.”
Kihara taught and supervised Japanese language training until 1958, then conducted research and development of foreign language programs, and later served as a director. He retired in 1974.
He also advised a special committee for the Smithsonian Institution’s Japanese American exhibit for the bicentennial celebration of the Constitution.
