The National Japanese American Memorial Foundation plans to honor Military Intelligence Service veterans at its annual luncheon in Washington, D.C. next week.

Grant Ichikawa is expected to accept the foundation’s Award for Patriotism on behalf of all Military Intelligence Service veterans at the Nov. 4 event.

Ichikawa was an MIS translator and interpreter in Australia and the Philippines during World War II. He went to Hiroshima after the war to help assess the atomic bomb’s affect on the city.

Some 6,000 Japanese-Americans served with the MIS, helping translate Japanese military documents and interpret interrogations of Japanese prisoners.

Their work was little known until it was declassified in the 1970s.