John F. Aiso

John Fujio Aiso (Japanese: 相磯 藤雄, December 14, 1909 – December 1987) was an American nisei military leader, lawyer and judge. Aiso was the 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.

Born in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, Aiso was an excellent student, despite encounters with anti-Japanese prejudice. He later described one of his first memories as being called a "Jap" by an elderly woman on a streetcar, explaining the amount of effort he put into his schoolwork was largely to counteract such comments. 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.

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.

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