Building 640 - The Secret Language School

A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.

Down the hill near Crissy Field stands Building 640, a plain former airplane hangar with one of the most remarkable stories in the park. On November 1, 1941, five weeks before Pearl Harbor, the Army opened a secret school here to train soldiers in the Japanese language. Nearly all of the first 60 students were Nisei, American-born children of Japanese immigrants, and they studied in the hangar with orange crates for furniture.

Within months, the Western Defense Command, headquartered on this same post, ordered everyone of Japanese ancestry removed from the West Coast, and many students' families were sent to camps. The school moved to Minnesota. Its graduates served as translators and interrogators across the Pacific war, work kept secret for decades.

The building now houses the Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center; check its website for hours and admission.

More on Wikipedia: Military Intelligence Service · Nisei

Stops on this tour

  1. Ferry Building and the Embarcadero - Where the City Met the World
  2. Financial District and Jackson Square - Gold Rush on the Old Shoreline
  3. Chinatown - The Neighborhood That Refused to Move
  4. North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats
  5. Fisherman's Wharf - Italian Boats and Old Ships
  6. Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire
  7. The Presidio - Two Centuries Guarding the Golden Gate
  8. Japantown and the Fillmore - Two Communities, One Neighborhood
  9. Haight-Ashbury - From Victorian Suburb to Summer of Love
  10. Golden Gate Park - Sand Dunes Turned Into a Park
  11. The Castro - A Neighborhood That Became a Movement
  12. The Mission - Where San Francisco Began
  13. Civic Center - Domes, Charters and Protest
  14. South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom