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by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian
MIYAGISHIMA BEGINS ARMY INTELLIGENCE CAREER
On Jul. 15, 1943, Masanori “Mike” Miyagishima enlisted in the U.S. Army. He went on to serve twenty-eight years in uniform, retiring as a lieutenant colonel, and then completed an additional eleven years as an Army civilian before retiring a final time in 1982.
Born in Jerome, Idaho, on Jun. 2, 1919, Miyagishima was raised in Wamsutta, Wyoming, and attended high school in Japan. On Jul. 15, 1943, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was immediately sent to the Military Intelligence Service Language School at Camp Savage, Minnesota, for Japanese language training. In mid-June 1944, then Sgt. Miyagishima and twenty-four other Nisei from the school were transferred to the Army Air Forces to serve as voice interceptors with radio intelligence units in the Southwest Pacific Area.
Miyagishima initially served with the 7th Radio Squadron, Mobile (J [Japanese]), in the Thirteenth Air Force, seeing action in New Guinea. Moving to the Philippines in early 1945, he served as an interpreter/translator with the 31st Infantry Division and the 93d Infantry Division. He finished the war in the 33d Infantry Division’s Language Detachment, which transferred to Kobe, Japan, for occupation duties after Japan’s surrender. In the rising tensions of the postwar period, then M. Sgt. Miyagishima conducted a dangerous, unaccompanied, multi-day reconnaissance of a remote Japanese island, finding and documenting ominous evidence of Soviet activity.
When the Korean War began in 1950, Miyagishima was serving in the G-2 section of the U.S. Army Forces in the Far East. He received his commission as a second lieutenant in 1951 and, throughout the rest of the decade, served as liaison officer with, first, the 441st Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment and then the U.S. Army Combined Reconnaissance Activity, both in Tokyo. He left Japan in September 1959 for a three-year tour with the Complaint Investigation Section, 115th Intelligence Corps Group, in San Francisco.
In 1962, Miyagishima began a five-year assignment with the 25th Infantry Division headquartered in Hawaii, beginning with a year as chief of the CI branch in the division’s G-2 section and then assuming command of the 25th MI Detachment in February 1963. In March 1966, 46-year-old Maj. Miyagishima deployed his detachment to South Vietnam, where he provided CI and intelligence collection and analysis in support of the division’s combat operations. Miyagishima earned a Bronze Star for leading assault forces against a Viet Cong special operations unit terrorizing local civilians in the Cu Chi area.
Major Miyagishima left Vietnam in March 1967 for an assignment as chief of the Southeast Asia Unit in the G-2 section, U.S. Army Pacific Command, in Tokyo. The following spring, newly promoted to lieutenant colonel, Miyagishima transferred to the 500th MI Group, where he would lead Detachment B, first as an officer and then, after his retirement on Jul. 15, 1971, as an Army civilian.
In July 1974, Miyagishima assumed his final position as the 500th’s liaison officer. For the next eight years, he put his Japanese language skills and his knowledge of the culture and history to the test to develop bilateral working relationships with the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force, and local police, government, and business leaders. His efforts in these sensitive, cooperative intelligence operations earned him multi-national respect, accolades, and a reputation as an “irreplaceable asset.”
Unfortunately, illness brought Miyagishima’s civilian career to an end in August 1982. He passed away in San Francisco just eight months later. A decade later, in 1993, the 500th MI Brigade honored Lt. Col. Miyagishima by naming its headquarters building at Camp Zama in his honor. At that ceremony, Brigade Commander Col. Austin Kennedy echoed the sentiments of many of Miyagishima’s peers and commanders, citing the late officer as one “who did more to promote Japanese–American relations than any other individual.”
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| Date Taken: | 07.11.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 07.11.2025 14:12 |
| Story ID: | 542569 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 38 |
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