Shigeya Kihara joined Military Service Intelligence Language School (MISLS) as one of the first civilian instructors. 

After attending a segregated school system in Oakland, Calif. Kihara entered the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in political science. After graduation he could not find a job. He returned to school and earned a Master's degree in international relations. The economy still suffered from the effects of the Great Depression. Taking his father's advice, he left for Japan in September1940.

Upon arrival, he followed Japanese procedure and reported to a local police office near his residence. A "seedy-looking" bureaucrat checked Kihara's papers and said, "Huh. You're a son of an emigrant, aren't you?" [Oral History]. While he could understand the treatment he received in America due to his racial difference, in Japan the discrimination felt different:

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 If I'm destined to be an object of prejudice, discrimination, and ridicule in life in the United States or in the country of my parents, Japan, I would prefer to receive prejudice and be discriminated against in the United States rather than to receive prejudice and discrimination from my own people in Japan. And so my mind began to switch in that way. [Oral History]
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As relations between the two countries deteriorated, Kihara decided to return to the United States. 

In September 1941, an UC-Berkeley professor contacted him about a job teaching Japanese for the Army. Kihara interviewed but thought he did not know enough Japanese to teach. "If he (Lt. Col. Weckerling) had pulled out a Japanese military textbook and asked me to read and translate, I wouldn't have been able to do it!" [Oral History]. Other university-educated Kibei, who had a greater knowledge of Japanese, could have been teachers. However, a torrent of rumors had circulated through Japanese American communities, and many refused to volunteer:

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(It was said that) the Army was looking for Japanese language instructors in order to serve as spies for the United States Army against individuals in Japanese communities. And the Kibei were absolutely reluctant to apply for a job; none of them, very few of them would apply. [Oral History]
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Kihara, eager to start working at his first job, accepted the position. He went to the Presidio, San Francisco, where Col. John Weckerling introduced him to John Aiso, Akira Oshida, and Art Kaneko, the three other civilian staff members for the school:

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And after the introductions were finished, Colonel Weckerling said, "Ok, let's pack these books in my car and we'll go down to your school.".... We left the manicured green lawn, tree-lined streets, or the Presidio proper. And then we went toward the Bay, crossed some railroad lines, and there was this huge empty area.... There was nothin' there. Just this one abandoned, empty, unpainted, crusty-looking, corrugated tin building. [Oral History]
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That building housed the first class of MIS linguists. 

In preparation for classes, Aiso sent him around the Bay Area to find Japanese language books, dictionaries, and anything else that would help them develop materials for the first class. Because Kihara's Japanese ability was the weakest of all the teachers, Aiso assigned him to teach the lowest level class:

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The course consisted of six hours of classroom each day, plus two hours of supervised instruction from seven to nine in the evenings and four hours of examinations on Saturdays....

It was a day-to-day struggle of keeping one step ahead of our students and providing the mimeographed materials, preparing English to Japanese translation materials each day for our students and then preparing examinations on Saturdays. [Oral History]
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At first the students studied and hoped that Japan and the United States would not go to war. After Pearl Harbor was attacked, the students and teachers realized that this school was preparing them to be sent out to the battlefield. Their studying became fast and intense. Not much later, on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 and Kihara's family had to move:

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My family, Japanese Americans in Oakland (Calif.), were ordered to go to Tanforan. Colonel Weckerling assured us that school would remain at the Presidio of San Francisco until the first class had graduated. That all the instructors would be protected from the relocation. My family, father and mother and brothers and sisters, and my wife's family, all prepared to move, getting rid of automobiles, refrigerators, business equipment... washers, dryers, presses, inventories in stores, farm equipment, tractors, everything. And it was total chaos. [Oral History]
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While all other Japanese Americans packed their things and headed to assembly centers, Kihara and his wife stayed in their apartment. They were the only Japanese Americans left in the Oakland, Calif. Every night he drove home across the Bay Bridge where signs read, "All Oriental people stop to receive authority or permission to cross the bridge." (p. 27). The guards stopped everyone who appeared to be Asian. Kihara's 4th Army pass granted him safe passage. After the first class graduated, the school, Kihara, and his wife moved to Minnesota.

As the war developed, new instructors introduced curriculum that helped students in battle. One teacher taught Japan's geography and topography, others introduced grasswriting (sosho)-a stylized calligraphy that Japanese soldiers used in their diaries. The instructors taught POW interrogation techniques; at first they taught a hard-nosed method but later learned from men in the field that a gentler approach worked much better. Tips came in from the field and the instructors adjusted.

By the end of the war, the MIS Language School had trained thousands of linguists. Kihara, one of the founding instructors, watched many men go into the field with the confidence that they would remain loyal to the United States:

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You can't conduct a war against a powerful enemy like Japan only using two-dozen military intelligence operators. And so Japanese Americans, the Nisei, were the only source. And Weckerling and Captain Rasmussen and other people who had associations with Nisei in Tokyo and after coming back from language duty in different places had confidence that the Nisei would be loyal to the United States and would be able to conduct military intelligence. [Oral History]
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