HONOLULU — The Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of Hawaii will hold a national reunion of MIS veterans with the theme of “Keeping the MIS Legacy Alive.”
The schedule is as follows:
- March 27, 5 to 8 p.m. — Opening social, dinners and workshops, 100th Battalion Veterans Clubhouse, 520 Kamoku St.
- March 28, 9 a.m. — Grand opening ceremony for “America’s Secret Weapon,” a new exhibit at the U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii, followed by museum tour. Army Historian James McNaughton, author of “Nisei Linguists,” will speak.
- March 28, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. — Reunion luncheon banquet at the Hale Koa Hotel DeRussy Ballroom. Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., commander of the U.S. 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 the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl, plus a visit to the Hawaii State Legislature for Senate and House recognition of World War II MIS veterans.
Reservations for reunion scheduled events and to stay at Ala Moana Hotel are made through Military Reunion Planners at http://militaryreunionplanners.com/SR/index.php?folder=MIS.
Links to reservation forms can also be found on the MIS Veterans Club of Hawaii website, www.misveteranshawaii.com.
Veterans from beyond Oahu who wish to attend can make travel arrangements through their own travel agents. Deadlines: hotel reservations at reunion rates, Feb. 25; and luncheon banquet, March 16. Non-refundable late reservation fee for reunion registration after Feb. 25 will be waived because of this delayed announcement.
The MIS Veterans Club of Hawaii is a nonprofit organization of U.S. military intelligence veterans of all wars. The current 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 Americans of Japanese ancestry who served in the MIS during the war and in the occupation of Japan. While the MIS Nisei were credited with saving countless lives and shortening the war against Japan, their achievements were highly classified and went unheralded for many years.
Their story is told in “America’s Secret Weapon,” a colorful new exhibit at the U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii. The exhibit features such Hawaii-born MIS heroes 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.
Produced on behalf of the MIS Veterans Club of Hawaii by Mark Matsunaga, Gregg Hirata and Harlan Yuhara, with support from the museum and the Hawaii Army Museum Society, the exhibit includes 80 photographs and dozens of artifacts from veterans as well as the Army Museum’s collection