Aiso Library serves as the academic library for the students, faculty, and staff of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC).
The Aiso Library is dedicated to John Fujio Aiso who was born in 1909 in Burbank, California, as a second generation Japanese American (Nisei). He graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School, and worked from 1937 to 1941 for a British company in Manchuria. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in early 1941, and within months was called upon to serve as the chief instructor of what became the Military Intelligence Service Language School, the predecessor of the Defense Language Institute. Under his leadership as Director of Academic Training, the school expanded to graduate over 6,000 military linguists from 1942 until 1946; linguists who made invaluable contributions to the American victory and to the peace that followed. He was given a direct commission to Major and was awarded the Legion of Merit. After the war he resumed the practice of law. In 1953 he became the first Japanese American to enter the California state judiciary. In 1984, for his contributions to understanding and friendship between the United States and Japan, the Emperor of Japan awarded him the 3rd Class Order of the Rising Sun.
