Army Addresses Postwar Officer Language Training (17 AUG 1946)
The U.S. Army long struggled with a shortage of fluent foreign language speaking officers ready to step into military attaché, observer, and foreign liaison assignments overseas. The highly specialized language courses needed for a relatively small student population, however, challenged trainers to consider unconventional educational opportunities. As early as 1919, the Army chief of staff authorized the detail of two officers each to Japan and China for immersive language study. The program grew to sixteen officers before dropping to twelve due to declining budgets in 1933. When additional funds were found the following year, the Army detailed two officers to Columbia University to learn Russian. As of Dec. 7, 1941, twelve officers were still studying in China and Japan, while the number of students in the Russian program—moved to Harvard—had increased to five.
The need for fluent speakers increased dramatically during the war. While most of the Army’s requirements for Japanese linguists was satisfied through the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) in Minnesota, the University of Michigan also provided intensive Japanese language training, graduating 789 officers between January 1943 and December 1945. Likewise, the shortage of Chinese speakers for the China-Burma-India theater was alleviated through contract programs at the University of California (for officers) and Yale (for enlisted), while Russian speakers attended the University of Indiana and Cornell. The Military Intelligence Training Center (MITC) at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, also provided some Russian language training beginning in September 1944.
Postwar, the Army closed the MITC, while the MISLS retained its focus on Japanese. By late 1945, however, the Army’s Military Intelligence Division (MID) saw an increased need for Russian and Chinese speakers. In early November, the Army chief of staff authorized the establishment of Japanese, Chinese, and Russian language training programs that would prepare officers for overseas assignments. The MID developed a rigorous nominative process to select students for participation and arranged the necessary courses at civilian and government institutions in the U.S. and overseas. This program was formalized with the issuance of Circular No. 250 on Aug. 17, 1946.
A year later, on Sept. 17, 1947, War Department Circular No. 260 superseded No. 250, further formalizing the Army Language and Area Training program “to create qualified linguists and area specialists to meet the requirements incident to occupation of foreign countries, military missions, foreign liaison, and the collection and evaluation of intelligence.” The program expanded to include Arabic, Persian, and Turkish languages, with programs in Greek, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and French under development. The training progression required all language students to complete their first year of instruction at the Army Language School (formerly the MISLS that had moved to Monterey, California, in June 1946). By the second year, the now fluent students scattered to learn “the political, economic, sociological, and topographical aspects of the area being studied and areas contiguous thereto.” Japanese students were ordered to Detachment S in Tokyo; Russian students to Columbia University and then to Detachment R\* in Oberammergau, Germany; Chinese students to Yale and then the War Department Language School in Peiping, China (closed in 1949); and Turkish, Persian, and Arabic students to Princeton and then American University in Beirut, Lebanon.
The new circular laid out timelines, student eligibility qualifications, and application procedures. It also established quotas, allocating 50 percent of the available slots to the Army Ground Forces, 40 percent to the Army Air Forces, and the remaining 10 percent to the quartermaster, signal, surgeon general, transportation, and provost marshal general services. Although responsibility for the Army Language and Area Training program shifted to the Army Field Forces in October 1949 due to funding and personnel shortages in the Intelligence Division, it continued as the Foreign Area Specialist Training (FAST) program into the 1960s.
\*For more information about Detachment R, see: https://www.dvidshub.net/news/574424/.
***
Article by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian. New issues of This Week in MI History are published each week. To report story errors, ask questions, request previous articles, or be added to our distribution list, please contact: TR-ICoE-Command-Historian@army.mil.
Legal Disclaimer:
EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
