John F. Aiso

John Fujio Aiso (, December 14, 1909 – December 29, 1987) was an American nisei military leader, lawyer and judge. Aiso was the Director and head instructor of the Military Intelligence Service Language School, and the highest-ranking Japanese American in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was also the first Japanese American appointed as a judge in the contiguous United States.

Early life

Born in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, Aiso was an excellent student. He later explained that the amount of effort he put into his schoolwork was a way of counteracting anti-Japanese prejudice, recounting one of his first memories of being called a "Jap" by an elderly woman on a streetcar. He was elected student body president of his junior high school in 1922, but the victory proved to be short lived: parents protested a Japanese American holding the position, and student government was suspended until Aiso left the school. He went on to attend Hollywood High School, where he drew national attention when he won the school's oratorical competition on the U.S. Constitution in 1926. However, he was once again forced to step down, when he was told he could not compete at the national championship and would instead have to coach his runner up.

Education and career

After graduating at the top of his Hollywood High School class in 1926, Aiso spent a year in Japan, studying Japanese at Seijo University in Tokyo. He returned to the United States after receiving a scholarship to attend Brown University, where he captained the debate team and majored in economics, graduating cum laude and serving as class valedictorian in 1931. He continued his studies at Harvard Law School, completing his degree in 1934.

Between 1935 and 1952, he worked in private practice in Los Angeles and New York City. In 1936, he spent another year in Tokyo, working with Japanese banks on behalf of his U.S. law firm and studying Japanese law at Chuo University. From 1937 to 1940, he worked for the British American Tobacco Company in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. General Charles Willoughby credited Aiso's MIS graduates with shortening the war by two years and saving close to a million lives. In 1952, he served as a Superior Court Commissioner for one year. Aiso was then appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1953, where he served until he was elevated to the Los Angeles Superior Court in 1957. He was the first Japanese American to enter the California State Judiciary when then Governor Ronald Reagan appointed Aiso as an associate justice of the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, on November 4, 1968. as is the Judge John Aiso Street in the Little Tokyo community of Los Angeles, a one-block segment of San Pedro Street between Temple Boulevard and 1st Street.

Death Aiso, 78, was filling his car at a Hollywood gas station when he was attacked and knocked to the pavement. He died two weeks later in a Burbank hospital on December 29, 1987, from a head injury sustained in the attempted mugging.