 This Army presents the Big Picture, an official report produced for the armed forces and the American people. This is the unhappy world in which we live. Hours is an era of endless pressures and tensions, often erupting into conflict and violence. To safeguard our own way of life, we are committed to defense programs which must meet this day's needs and anticipate tomorrow. In our efforts, we do not stand alone, for it is also a world in which we have many friends. With them, we are united in firm resolve to treat any aggressive act against one as an aggressive act against all. It is, too, a world of many peoples and nations with varying degrees of sympathy for our aims. The United States Army, carrying out its mission of national defense, maintains close liaison with the military of those nations allied to us. Its missions and advisory groups are also to be found in many of those nations sympathetic to our cause. Today, some 40% of the United States Army serves throughout 73 different foreign countries. The contacts with the nationals of those countries offer both a challenge and an opportunity. Irrespective of rank and whether engaged in official duty or in off-duty social pursuits, the overseas service man has become an important participant in the contest to win international friendships. The most potent weapon in that struggle is language, the tool of direct communication. Through language, in person-to-person contacts, we can achieve the mutual understanding that leads to goodwill and to the friendships we want. Valuable as an instrument of peace, language is also an effective instrument of war. The interrogation of war prisoners, communication with guerrillas, translation of documents, use in psychological warfare, these are but a few of its applications. In the past, indifference to learning foreign languages created a language barrier. In consequence, we tolerated ineffectual teaching methods and raised that barrier higher. There came a day, however, when history proved our American isolation to be a mirage. Indifference to the other man's language became a luxury we could no longer afford. When the blow against Pearl Harbor plunged us into the world maelstrom, the Army had already taken a first step toward leveling that language barrier. At San Francisco's Presidio, a staff of 15 with 60 students had initiated an intensive study of Japanese. Helping to break the Japanese naval code, that first small group contributed to our victory of the Coral Sea and to our destruction of the Imperial Navy. Language as an instrument of war had proven itself. This new facility with language was to lay open for us the Japanese defense plans for the Philippines. Thus, the way was paved for the liberation of those strategically important islands. By the war's end, that initial study had expanded until today, the curriculum offers 28 different languages, exclusive of the dialects embraced by many national tongues. Today, the United States Army Language School is located at the Presidio in Monterey, overlooking that historic California city with its scenically arresting bay, alive with picturesque fishing craft. An impressive number of buildings has replaced the original makeshift quarters. A program of expansion now looks to the further replacement of these until a goal of some 20 new buildings has been achieved. The target date for completion of this program is 1967. The successors to that original nucleus of 60 students have grown into a student body numbering 2,000 each year. Today too, members of the other armed services have to be found among the student linguists. The original faculty of 15, concentrated upon the teaching of one tongue, has grown to over 400 teaching the 28 now offered. These instructors representing more than 40 different nationalities have been drawn from such diverse fields as the law, medicine, science, and arts. They include many men and women who in their native lands were cabinet ministers, diplomats, journalists, and high-ranking officers. As teachers, these men and women offer unique qualifications for their new profession. An instructor like Mr. Robert Hong brings from his native China a first-hand knowledge of life under communist oppression. His own enthusiasm for the goals set by the Army Language School cannot help but communicate itself to his students, so consider these three instructors in the Polish language department, a Russian, a Pole, a Czech. In their new citizenship, they find a way of life banished from their homelands. In their new profession, a field for zealous service to safeguard that way of life. The student body includes relatively mature men of upper grades who may be preparing for assignments as military attachés or for duty with missions and advisory groups. No less enthusiastic or quick to learn are younger men in the service who have shown an aptitude for language. Many of these will qualify one day as intelligence specialists. Tell me, please, will the exam be today? In background, none of these may know any language other than his own particular brand of American English. More likely than not, stand with the regional drawl or accent of his home community. The new language he will learn will be without marked accent or distortion, for he will learn through repeated imitation the flawless speech of his instructors. In those earliest weeks, mimicry of voice, gesture and even facial expression will be expected of him. Soon a basic vocabulary used effortlessly will be second nature. The student will have learned how to speak simply by speaking. The old-fashioned method of learning by sets of rules is out. To increase the effectiveness of its teaching methods, the Army Language School has developed its own audio-visual aids. Within this building, those aids are produced on the school's own presses and photo equipment. The range is limitless, facsimile public notices or maps using the symbols and language under study. Here, too, are printed the Army's own textbooks and even dictionaries with the latest of electronic labor-saving devices to assemble and bind them. Nearby, the school maintains a sound recording studio. Here, disc and tape recordings of pronunciation drills and vocabulary aids are made for all the languages taught. Here, too, the latest in motion picture projection equipment adds new dimensions to language study. Training film, travel odds, newsreels, even foreign entertainment features expand the student's vocabulary while adding to his knowledge of the people whose language he studies. A pioneer in the language school is Mr. Thomas Osamoko, one of the original small faculty that taught Japanese. The sound studio owes much of its success to his efforts. One of the studio's most progressive innovations is the employment of magnet stripe equipment. Working on the same principle as tape recording, this technique makes it possible to change narrations on film from one language to another. Or, if wanted, the vocabulary employed may be changed from elementary to more advanced to fit the needs of particular classes. Within the Far Eastern Language Division, a closed circuit television system permits simultaneous reception of film subjects in a number of classrooms. Again, through magnet stripe, original foreign soundtrack can be made to alternate with an English translation or erased and run silent as the student supplies his own description under his instructor's questioning. An even more impressive application of electronics is found in this language laboratory. Here, soundproof partitions make each booth a private classroom as tape recorder and earphones assist the student in attaining correct pronunciation of difficult Chinese phrasings. Through an electronically controlled monitor system, the student hears the phrasings under study spoken by an instructor, then offers his own pronunciation. He can then listen to playbacks of both for comparison and subsequent correction. After his six hours of daily classroom work have ended, the student finds other mechanical aids available for home study. Portable phonographs and discs offer reviews of the preceding hours of pronunciation drill. Three hours of home study are required, thus adding up to a nine-hour workday for the student linguist. But electronic aids and formal classroom instruction are not the only paths to an expanding use of language. Housed in this unpretentious building are ingenious reproductions of scenes that are encountered universally in everyday living situations. The merchandise in this general store may not actually leave the shelves, but transactions that involve drugs, food, hardware, among other items stimulate the imagination and demand flexible use of vocabulary. To meet these real-life situations of their own creation, the students are forced into a more rapid and more facile use of the Spanish they are studying. An ordinary table and chairs become scenes in restaurants, nightclubs, cafes, or private homes dependent solely upon the student's imagination and the accompanying exercise of language appropriate to each. Here, for example, an Italian cafe. A few standard pieces of furniture, and a doctor's, dentist's, or even a barber's world is improvised. This hour is doctor and patient, agonizing an Italian, may in the next hour give over to a German barber and his patron. In the same way, a window and wood panels become a fertile source of conversational exercise by serving variously as theater box office, customs office, and in this situation, a French bank. The student, already acquainted with basic military terminology, is soon adding to it as he approaches tactical problems on a sand table. Exercises of this kind train him for effective liaison with military units of countries with whom we are allied under NATO and the Organization of American States. In the event of aggression against any friendly nation, United States military personnel must be able to discuss tactical situations with their allied counterparts. Part of their training for that contingency employs two similar tables which test his command of language. Descriptions of the situation on the table in one room are relayed to an adjoining room. There, a duplicate is constructed solely on an understanding of the telephone instructions. Weapons and equipment of other nations provide valuable tactical and visual aids to learning. They also add to the student's fund of military and technical knowledge. Unfamiliar uniforms cause no concern, for students frequently play the roles of their foreign counterparts as another step toward familiarity with the language and the military of that country. The importance of these two objectives is emphasized in all phases of the learning process. Here, for example, in a Russian language course, an instructor quizzes a student on the working parts, operation and maintenance of a Russian tank. Military terminology and knowledge along with a grasp of language are tested. The desired response should be one that might win total approval from the most exacting of Russian army instructors. Describe briefly the medium tank T-34. Thank you very good. Yet another spur to mastery of a tongue is the Army's encouragement of married students to enroll wives in the courses being taken. Don't help me. I'm telling that when daddy finishes this course, we're all going to be speaking French. Language is inseparable from a nation's culture, and so its facile use is reinforced by encouraging the soldier linguist to identify himself with popular aspects of that culture. The same capacity for absorbing other ways of life becomes an effective instrument for strengthening our ties with friendly peoples and winning the friendships of new ones. Costume parties and theatricals such as this one, which features native dances, are actively sponsored. Additionally, these offer opportunity for person-to-person contacts with foreign nationals. Capacity to identify with a foreign culture also becomes a potent aid in understanding the other man's mind. This Russian language choral group shows itself as not unworthy of comparison with the famed Don Cossack chorus. After a degree of familiarity with the spoken tongue has been reached, does the student extend his knowledge into reading and writing? By then, his further understanding of a language and the culture it represents may be acquired through the periodicals and books made available. A well-stocked research library maintains technical, military, historical and literary material of the nations whose languages are taught. Even the ten minute break between classes is utilized. Popular music, national airs and classics piped into the corridors add to the student's general orientation and help him further to absorb the culture under study. Lectures by visiting diplomats and authorities add to the student's store while demanding full exercise of his newly acquired grasp of idiom. Only because our defenses have been maintained and given us a position of strength do we know the blessings of peace. The United States Army is prepared for any eventuality should that peace be threatened and the Cold War erupt into the inferno of vile and conflict. An army of men trained in skills unknown to previous generations of soldiers. Many of these skills have earned for today's soldier the name soldier-scientist, a phrase that has become a popular addition to the American idiom. Today, as an increasing number of men are equipped by the army with the now indispensable skill called language, it is no less appropriate to call the modern soldier a soldier linguist With language as an instrument for building understanding and friendship we can look forward to closer ties with both the friendly and the uncommitted nations of the world. With language as a weapon of war we can take pride in another new addition to our national defense. Wielding that weapon is an ever-growing body of men who have mastered their new skill on the heights of Monterey. The Army language school's soldier linguists the United States Army's modern fighting men. A big picture is an official report for the armed forces and the American people produced by the Army Pictorial Center presented by the Department of the Army in cooperation with this station.