FORT HUACHUCA, Arizona — By Michael E. Bigelow, INSCOM Command Historian: On September 1, 1952, the Army activated the five hundredth Army Intelligence Service (MIS) Group at Camp Drake, Japan. Col. Washington M. Ives, Jr., a veteran of the Pacific campaigns in World Conflict II, was its first commander.
Throughout the Korean Conflict, the Army started fielding group-sized models to direct its intelligence effort. In Korea, the 501st Communication Reconnaissance Group was fashioned to supply management over the rising sign intelligence parts supporting the U.S. Eighth Army. In Japan, the Army activated the five hundredth MIS Group as a extra everlasting unit to switch the Army Intelligence Assist Group, Far East, a short lived group that offered translation and intelligence assist to the Far East Command. The assist group was the successor to the Allied Translator and Interpreter Part, which had translated paperwork and interrogated prisoners to assist Normal Douglas MacArthur’s drive by way of the southwest Pacific and ultimately to Japan. Situated at Camp Drake, within the northwest suburbs of Tokyo, Colonel Ives’ five hundredth MIS Group offered a translation service and basic intelligence assist for Army management in Japan. After six years and several other redesignations, the group was inactivated.
As a replacement, the Army organized the U.S. Army Command Reconnaissance Actions, Pacific Command (USACRAPAC). The group had carried out area and supply intelligence operations in the course of the Korean Conflict. After the conflict, it established its headquarters at Camp Drake and assumed the extra features of getting ready intelligence research and performing translation service. The preparations proved awkward and, on March 25, 1961, the Army reactivated the five hundredth MI Group at Camp Drake with operational management underneath the G-2 at U.S. Army, Pacific (USARPAC). The group, nevertheless, was connected to U.S. Army, Japan for administration and logistics assist.
Beneath Col. James M. Worthington, the group absorbed the USACRAPAC’s mission and personnel. In addition to these assortment and intelligence assist missions, the group added some counter-intelligence and photographic interpretation features and duty for 5 technical intelligence detachments. All informed, Worthington’s group had 59 officers, 8 warrant officers, 244 enlisted males, and 100 civilians. These 414 people targeting the bottom forces of Communist Bloc international locations within the Far East.
For area operations, the group was divided into lettered detachments stationed at numerous areas all through the Pacific and Far East, together with Japan, Korea, Okinawa, Thailand, and the Philippines. By 1964, nevertheless, the group’s duties had been streamlined, and the picture interpretation features had been transferred and the technical intelligence detachments had been inactivated. This allowed the group to focus on its area operations, a operate at which it proved notably adept.
One of many group’s detachments, Detachment I, was one of many first Army intelligence parts to serve in Vietnam. From early 1962, it supported the Army Help Command, Vietnam (MACV) in a twin position of advising and helping the South Vietnamese in intelligence assortment and interesting in restricted assortment actions itself. At its peak, the detachment had 56 personnel. For contributions in the course of the Vietnam Conflict, the Army acknowledged the five hundredth MI Group with Meritorious Unit Commendations for operations 1968-1969 after which once more in 1972-1974.
On January 1, 1977, the Army assigned the five hundredth MI Group to the U.S. Army Intelligence and Safety Command (INSCOM) the place it grew to become considered one of 5 theater MI teams. In 2010, the group was reorganized because the five hundredth MI Brigade. Because it commemorates its seventieth anniversary, the brigade serves because the “Pacific Vanguard”: INSCOM’s direct assist to USARPAC.
