Camp Ritchie: Difference between revisions

Camp Ritchie also trained more than '''500''' Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) soldiers for document work connected with the Pacific war, including PACMIRS (Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section). '''Nisei women''' in the Military Intelligence Service likewise completed rigorous Japanese military-language training and were often assigned to PACMIRS at Camp Ritchie to work captured Japanese documents. Captured Japanese materials were studied at the camp; one well-known episode involves [[Yamane, Kazuo E. (30101877)|Kazuo E. Yamane]] identifying Japanese armory meeting notes among crates of documents from Saipan, which helped the War Department locate and strike armories. (See also the 2017 film ''Proof of Loyalty: Kazuo Yamane and the Nisei Soldiers of Hawaii''.) A 1946 MISLS yearbook states that of '''35''' WAC graduates at the November 1945 commencement, '''21''' were transferred to Camp Ritchie (with remaining graduates following when the WAC Detachment deactivated in February 1946)—matching Wikipedia’s note that about twenty-one MISLS women translator graduates went to PACMIRS work there (see [[Nisei and Pacific#MISLS WAC Detachment and Camp Ritchie|Nisei and Pacific]]). In 1945 the camp also formed '''Mobile Intelligence Training Units''' (MITU) for Army Ground Forces redeployment training: small teams in which Nisei demonstrated Japanese squad tactics and took part in orientation plays (some teams included veterans of the 442nd Combat Team). See [[Nisei and Pacific#Mobile Intelligence Training Units (MITU), 1945|Nisei and Pacific]].