Ted Kihara Photograph Collection

Ted T. Kihara (1915-2003), was the son of Gonjiro Kihara who immigrated to the United States in 1892 and originally worked as a houseboy in San Francisco before opening a café in Sacramento, a boarding house in Seattle, and eventually a laundromat in Winnemucca, Nevada. Ted enlisted in June 1941 and served in the U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps. Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Ted Kihara transferred to the infantry and attended the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) in Savage, Minnesota. Upon graduation, Kihara was assigned to the 43rd Infantry Division as a Japanese translator and earned the Combat Infantryman Badge during the battle for Munda Airfield in the Solomon Islands. After returning stateside to complete Office Candidate School at Fort Benning, Kihara worked with the Canadian Army to help establish its Japanese Language School. Following the Japanese surrender, Kihara was reassigned to the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) in the newly established Far East Command’s General Headquarters at the Dai Ichi Building in Tokyo, Japan. Among the duties the ATIS performed during the occupation were translating documents and news accounts, interrogating prisoners of war, and assisting in the effort to return Japanese soldiers and civilians who were stranded outside Japan after its surrender. While in Tokyo, Kihara met and married a Japanese national named Kimiko Mikumi and started a family before leaving the Army and settling in Berkeley, California.