Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, thousands of Japanese-Americans, including those born and raised in the United States, were shipped to internment camps, while others joined the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which fought with great bravery in the European theater.
Still others, as Junichi Suzuki's documentary "MIS: Human Secret Weapon (Futatsu no Sokoku)" reveals, were recruited for the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), a secret unit comprised almost entirely of nisei — second-generation Japanese-Americans — who served as translators, interrogators and spies. After the end of the war they continued to work in occupied Japan, as U.S. aims shifted from democratization to the suppression of Communism in their former enemy and new ally.
Suzuki and his crew interviewed nearly 80 people, from MIS veterans to those preserving its legacy, such as U.S. Army historian James McNaughton and Hawaiian musician Jake Shimabukuro. Out of this cacophony of talking heads emerge stories, illustrated with rare archival footage and photographs, that are still fascinating, revealing and heartbreaking.