Alumni of the U.S. Navy Japanese/Oriental Language School will reunite at the University of Colorado at Boulder 60 years to the month after the Japanese Language School was moved to Boulder in 1942.
Attendees will be welcomed at a luncheon on Friday, June 7, where a color guard will present the flag. The flag will be retired at the conclusion of the reunion Sunday, June 9.
A plaque honoring the instructors and graduates of the school will be dedicated in the University Memorial Center at 4:30 p.m. on June 7. The dedication is free and open to the public.
On Saturday morning from 10 a.m. to noon, the public is invited to a panel discussion in the Old Main chapel on the history and significance of the U.S. Navy Japanese/Oriental Language School.
Activities scheduled for alumni from June 7 through June 9 include campus tours, oral history stations, Archives and Heritage Center visits, and a special Japanese Language School exhibit in the Norlin Library east and west lobbies. The exhibit is on view now through June 14 during Norlin's regular hours, posted at .Ìý
The reunion is sponsored by the University Libraries Archives, CU Foundation, the Center for Asian Studies and Navy ROTC, and is supported by the CU-Boulder Heritage Center. Additional information is available at .
The original U.S. Navy Japanese Language School was moved from Tokyo to the United States as a result of diplomatic tensions between the United States and Japan in 1940. Pearl Harbor and the internment of west coast Japanese Americans caused the school to move again in 1942 from the University of California, Berkeley to the University of Colorado.Ìý
Under the CU-Boulder administration, the expanded Japanese and Oriental Languages Schools became a training site for more than 800 language officers in Japanese and other Asian languages by 1946. Most of the instructors were Nisei, first-generation Japanese Americans.
Navy and Marine Japanese Language Officers served in the Pacific theater during World War II, functioning as interpreters, translators, interrogators and cryptographers. Whether on battlefields such as New Guinea, Bougainville, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, or in the radio intercept centers in Australia, Hawaii and Washington, D.C., Japanese Language Officers made significant contributions to the war effort.
After the war, in occupied Japan, China and in the Pacific Islands, Japanese Language Officers assisted with the surrender and repatriation of hundreds of thousands of bypassed Japanese soldiers.Ìý
In the 50 years that followed, former Japanese/Oriental Language Officers put their language and cultural understanding to work in various branches of the U.S. State Department, several arms of U.S. Intelligence, and in Japanese Language and East Asian departments in universities around the country, enhancing and developing the national understanding of Japan and Asia.
Almost 20 percent of those who entered the school found their way into Who's Who publications in academic, legal, medical, entertainment, governmental and business fields.