The national reunion of the Military Intelligence Service veterans club will coincide with the opening March 28 of the "America’s Secret Weapon" exhibit at Fort DeRussy’s U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii.
The exhibit will feature Hawaii-born MIS soldiers such as Hoichi Kubo, who earned the Distinguished Service Cross on Saipan, and Dick Hamada, who saved a battalion of Allied troops while serving in Burma with Detachment 101 of the Office of Strategic Services.
The exhibit was produced by Mark Matsunaga, Gregg Hirata and Harlan Yuhara, with support from the museum and the Hawaii Army Museum Society. It includes 80 photographs and dozens of artifacts from veterans as well as the Army Museum’s collection.
The exhibit will open at 9 a.m. March 28. Army historian James McNaughton, author of "Nisei Linguists," will speak.
The reunion will begin at 5 p.m. March 27 with a dinner and workshops at the 100th Battalion Veterans Clubhouse, 520 Kamoku St.
At 11 a.m. March 28, a reunion luncheon banquet will be held at the Hale Koa Hotel. Navy Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., commander of the Pacific Fleet, will speak.
Reunion participants will also have the opportunity to go on optional tours of the USS Arizona Memorial, Battleship Missouri Memorial, Pacific Aviation Museum and National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl. Also planned is a visit to the state Legislature for Senate and House recognition of World War II MIS veterans.
The MIS Veterans Club of Hawaii is a nonprofit organization of U.S. military intelligence veterans of all wars. The president is Lawrence Enomoto, a retired Air Force major and State Department officer whose father, Gulstan Enomoto, served in the MIS in World War II.
The club was established in 1946 by some of the 6,000 Japanese-Americans who served in the MIS during the war and in the occupation of Japan. While the MIS nisei, or second-generation Japanese-Americans, were credited with saving countless lives and shortening the war against Japan, their achievements were classified.
For more information, go to the MIS Veterans Club of Hawaii website at www.misveteranshawaii.com.
