Medal of Honor (2018) s01e04 Episode Script
Hiroshi Hershey Miyamura
More than 40 million Americans have served in the United States armed forces.
Of those, fewer than 3,600 have been awarded the military's highest honor.
Where did we find such men? We find them where we've always found them, in our villages and towns, on our city streets, in our shops, and on our farms.
Summoned a degree of courage that stirs wonder and respect and an overpowering pride in all of us.
It recognizes gallantry that goes above and beyond the call of duty.
We may not always hear of their success, but they are there in the thick of the fight, in the dark of night, achieving their mission.
I have received this afternoon a message from the Japanese government which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan.
We had just won World War II, the war to end all wars.
And so, we were ready to come home and move into the homes with a white picket fence and raise families, but the communists, they wanted to spread their ideology around the world, and we wanted to defend ours.
And ours was just simply the ideology of freedom.
After World War II, the biggest threat to the United States is communism.
By 1948, communists have seized power in Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland.
Poverty and hunger lead to demonstrations and violence in the streets.
We're frightened of Red China.
We're frightened of the Russians.
America was determined to stop the spread of communism.
We had seen enough of it.
We had seen Eastern Europe be gobbled up by Stalin at the end of the war against the promises he made us, so our ally had become our enemy.
They were threatening Japan, they had just taken China.
And one day in June, 1950, the spark had happened, and it happened on the Korean Peninsula.
Our military woke up to red alert.
The North Koreans launched attacks on the South with the intent of spreading communism.
So in 1950, when the communist North Koreans invade South Korea, Harry Truman has to decide, in the light of the coming Cold War, do we let them take over South Korea? And his answer is "No.
" No nation will be safe or secure.
If aggression is successful in Korea, we can expect it to spread throughout Asia and Europe and to this hemisphere.
But the Chinese absolutely don't want United States or UN troops on their border.
And so they enter the war, standing up for North Korea.
This changes the war immeasurably, and we're talking about 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese soldiers.
Seoul was the key city for South Korea, and it was a city the communists wanted to capture.
And so Hershey's squad, they were part of an element that was there to defend the city of Seoul.
They were in a position south of the Imjin River and north of Seoul.
They were grossly outnumbered, but Hershey and his teammates were resolved to defend that city at all cost.
Hershey.
Hershey! - Something's out there.
- Where? I got a feeling.
Remember "Bacall.
" Bacall.
Bacall.
Bacall! - I almost shot you.
- I said the password.
Did you see something out there? Jenkins had a feeling.
Uh, what is it now? Hershey was a very likable guy.
We kind of had an immediate clicking, if you will.
I was a squad leader of the first squad in a machine gun platoon and Hershey was the new squad leader of the second squad.
There was about 500 yards between Hershey's squad and my squad to guard, which was tactically an impossible position.
The only communications we had is to go back and forth to talk to each other.
Something's up.
Hey! Let's go, boys.
Joe! Stop changing the password.
First it was Bergman, now it's Bacall? It's not a password if you know what it is.
Being friends, we looked out for each other.
Not only for each other, but for our squads.
Hershey was a very quiet, unassuming individual.
You could tell knowing him, that he knew what he was talking about.
And he never said too much, except when he had to say something.
I kinda looked up to him as a big brother.
Hershey and his men, they didn't know that the Chinese were sneaking up on them.
Sort of calm before the storm.
And so, it was Hershey and his men on a small hilltop, suddenly surrounded by 1,000 Chinese troops.
Hold! The Chinese had infiltrated our lines through the gaps in our lines.
Then they started with the bugles and the banging and hollering.
This was normal procedure with them.
Shit! They hit our squad first, an overwhelming force of Chinese, and they had surrounded us before we even knew what had happened, and all hell broke loose.
Hold! Light 'em up! Come on! These weapons could fire six bullets a second, and that was our saving grace because when you're being charged by hundreds and hundreds, sometimes thousands of Chinese soldiers at once Ready! that's the only thing that's gonna stop 'em.
The trouble is, if you fire too long, if you hold down that trigger, which every man wants to do in a moment of terror and panic, you're gonna melt your barrel.
Jenkins, I got a jam! What that means for the men fighting is they're left with their M-1s, which can also jam, or they're left with bayonets.
Ready! Jenkins! Fetch my ammo! On it! It was a horrendous situation.
We had the Chinese hitting us from the right flank, the left flank.
And I got shot across my legs.
And as I was falling down, I got hit by a hand grenade.
And that was kinda the end of the war for me.
I just kinda faded out.
And then it hits Hershey's squad.
Hershey felt it necessary, uh, for him to get his squad off the hill.
It was almost like a Custer's last stand.
It was a matter of life and death.
I am sure that if you asked Hershey what was going through his mind, he wasn't thinking of being a hero.
He wasn't thinking of, uh, going above and beyond.
He was thinking of doing what was necessary to protect his teammates.
Get Cooper to safety.
Go on.
Get him outta here.
Go! Even at the cost of his own life, he made a decision to stay and cover his troops.
That, to me, distinguishes between an ordinary man and an extraordinary man.
In Hershey sending his men back and saying, "Go, save yourselves," it's one of the ultimate acts of humanity.
I mean, he's essentially saying, "I'm gonna stay here, I'm gonna perhaps die for you.
" Hershey's parents were Japanese, but his parents wanted to come to America to make a better life for themselves.
And Hershey grew up with that concept.
We're here because we're better off than we were in Japan.
This was a coal mining town that attracted immigrants from all over.
And in that town there were a number of Japanese-American families, and a number of other types of families, you know, from other parts of the world.
In Hershey's mind, they're all American.
Hershey gets his nickname Hershey, when he's in fourth grade in Gallup, New Mexico.
Not everybody there can speak Japanese or say Japanese names, so he has a fourth grade teacher who can't pronounce his first name and so she calls him "Hershey" and the name just sticks.
But after Pearl Harbor and World War II, there's a lot of resentment against Japanese-Americans in the United States.
Everywhere that Americans look, they're afraid that Japanese are going to attack.
And they become very, very concerned about the Japanese-American population living among them.
Americans are so afraid that they want to herd these people together and put them where they can't do any damage to the country.
More than 100,000 men, women, and children, all of Japanese ancestry, removed from their homes in the Pacific Coast states, to wartime communities.
One of the things that Hershey is really proud of, as far as the town of Gallup, when the internment orders came out, the mayor and the city council wrote a letter to the president, saying, uh, there are relatively few Japanese-Americans here, but they're good citizens and we don't want them to be interned.
And they weren't.
During World War II, Hershey was old enough to serve.
He and his fellow classmates volunteered to serve.
Now, his classmates from other parts of the world were allowed to join, uh, but Hershey was not.
He was issued a classification of Four-C, which means "alien" and you're not eligible to serve.
And Hershey didn't understand it.
He considered himself to be an American, so that was confusing to him.
The United States won't allow Japanese-Americans to enter the military, even those that are not sent to internment camps.
They're just sort of deemed untrustworthy, that they might turn on the United States.
But as months turned into years in World War II, the United States military needed manpower.
And so, ultimately, even Japanese-Americans are invited to enter the United States military, into units just for them, such as the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
Hershey very much looked forward to going to be able to fight for his country.
About the time that he finished training, the war ended.
So, as he came back to the States, he decided to enlist in the reserves.
He had met Terry and got married.
And one day in 1950, in the morning, he was having breakfast, reading the paper and it says that North Korea has invaded the Republic of South Korea.
Hershey was one of the first ones to be called up to serve in the Korean War.
He's a man who loves his country, who believes in his country.
I don't think you could do what he did if you didn't believe in America and what we were trying to do in keeping the South Koreans free Hershey's machine gun ran out of ammunition.
Hershey at that point still has his M-1 rifle with the bayonet.
Bleeding, he's killed maybe 50 Chinese personally at that time.
I think he went berserk.
He picked up an M-1 rifle with a bayonet and he charged right into the face, or the wave, of these Chinese.
Clearly, his training allowed him to be effective as he engaged the enemy, but the act of doing that is 100% personal courage.
He's now literally behind enemy lines and the Americans call in artillery strikes.
These fires were actually being delivered by the heavy mortar platoon, which was behind Hershey's position.
The Americans, they didn't really know that Hershey was still there.
When last seen, he was fighting ferociously against an overwhelming number of enemy soldiers.
Hershey's squad members, they had no idea of how long Hershey would have survived after that and what happened to Hershey, but, to them, it would have been an incredible display of heroism and leadership.
The grenade detonates.
Hershey's hit with shrapnel.
But the fact that he was able to kick it away saved his life.
He hit some barbed wire and he gets caught up in the coils and he's sliced up pretty good.
Get up! What Hershey did was phenomenally heroic.
But I don't think he thought himself at the time as being a hero.
He just did what he felt he had to do to save as many of his men as possible.
Joe! At that point, I saw Hershey and I was never so happy in all my life to see anybody.
And Hershey came over immediately to me and responded with whatever first aid he could give me.
I thought you bought the farm.
Just take it easy, Joe.
He tried to control the bleeding.
It was kind of hard because all we had was a compress.
And he put some sulfa on the wounds that I had that was supposed to prevent the infections.
It was almost an impossible situation.
As my luck would have it, he was there.
Because of our friendship, I knew then and there that Hershey would try to take care of me as best he could.
Someone will come for us.
Right, Hershey? They'll come for us.
Then they told us at that time that we were going on a march to a camp up north.
and I knew that I couldn't make it 'cause I couldn't walk.
Hershey carried me about ten miles.
Once you're taken prisoner, you've gotta get to the prisoner of war camps in North Korea.
And the only way you can get there is by walking.
These men are marched for hundreds of miles.
Joe was in bad shape.
Um, if a person falls out of the column, they're either beaten or stabbed with bayonets, killed inside a ditch.
The Chinese got tired of Hershey and I slowing up the column and they ordered Hershey to put me at the side of the road.
Uh, Hershey at first refused and the Chinese threatened to shoot him.
I told him, "Hershey, please, you know, let me down.
" So Hershey laid me at the side of the road.
He said, "I'm sorry, Joe.
" I said, "I thank you for what you've done, Hershey.
Uh, I really appreciate it.
" And it was kind of a goodbye of friends.
I thought I knew what was going to happen after that.
It was unlikely either would live long enough to see the other again.
Joe, direly wounded, and Hershey, facing an odyssey that for many would turn deadly.
Finally, Hershey is put in a Chinese prisoner of war camp.
Never given any type of medical attention.
It was a situation where, if you were wounded, you either died or you survived.
You were living on the floor, you were sleeping on hay.
Disease and starvation were just commonplace.
And so Hershey was watching his friends die left and right.
If you look at the death rates, 40% of all American POWs dying before they ever make it home.
At that time, my brother, Hersh, was missing, they didn't know where.
I was a little scared.
I think maybe it was our, uh, belief in God, our prayers.
I think that was what kept all of us going, mainly was our prayers.
The communist offensive was stopped cold.
The Chinese Reds had not only failed in their attempt to retake Seoul, but their entire massive attack had been completely broken up.
The truce was made in 1953.
And in an operation called "Big Switch," they started exchanging groups of American POWs with Chinese and North Korean POWs.
When Hersh was missing in action, my father had called.
He said, "Now watch for the paper.
Make sure his name comes out.
If he's listed as prisoner, he'll be home.
" And my dad said, "He's gonna come home, he's gonna come home, and he's gonna come home alive.
" American families, including the Miyamuras, could only pray that their boys would be among those coming home, but the odds were little better than 50/50.
Just 3,800 of the 7,000 POWs had survived the horrors of the North Korean camps.
It was 6:00 in the morning, and my husband's sister came knocking on our door and said, "I heard your brother's name.
He was released from as a prisoner.
" At 5'10", Hershey now weighed less than 100 pounds, but he was alive.
The realization that his nightmare might be over dawned slowly.
We were the last groups in Korea.
August 20th, 1953 we got word that we're going home.
We had to get on a truck and finally we reached the destination, we could see the Star-Spangled Banner flag fluttering in the breeze.
And, well, that was such a beautiful sight.
I said, "Wow! Now we're gonna actually be home.
" For the Miyamuras, years of separation and worry were finally over.
The whole family went out to the San Francisco dock, but we saw the ship, and the gangplank was lowered, and the first one down the gangplank, by himself, was Hershey.
When I saw Terry, my wife It was such a great feeling to see her again, because at times I never thought I'd ever see her again.
Another hero of Korea is welcomed back by General Glasgow, and then he sweeps his wife into an embrace.
He is Sergeant Hiroshi Miyamura.
And the rest of us were at the bottom there, and my father was there and, um and he hugged him, too.
I was glad my father was alive to see this.
We didn't question him too much because we knew he had gone through quite a bit.
So we just waited until he was able to talk about, which It took him a little time.
The larger community of Gallup, New Mexico, was eager to welcome home this brave but bewildered hero.
We arrived in Gallup.
It was a pretty-good-sized crowd there.
I just didn't expect anything like that.
It just caught me off guard.
I never thought the town would come out like they did.
I was told to get on top of this convertible that I was to ride.
Immediately, when I got home, there was a letter waiting for me and it was from the White House.
It said I was to report to Washington DC.
We're gathered here to symbolize the gratitude of America, to seven young men who have won the Medal of Honor.
There were gonna be seven of us receiving the medal from the president, and, I was to be the first one out there to receive the medal.
And boy, I was so nervous.
The President of the United States of America has awarded in the name of the Congress, the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Hiroshi H.
Miyamura.
Corporal Miyamura, a machine gun squad leader, aware of the imminent danger to his men, unhesitatingly jumped from his shelter, wielding his bayonet in close hand-to-hand combat.
The president said, "I'm kinda nervous myself.
This is one of the first ones I'm gonna put around a soldier's neck.
" So, that didn't really help me that much.
But everything was a blur after that.
Unbelievable.
It's like I'm living in a dream.
I never, ever thought I would receive the Medal of Honor for doing my duty, which I thought that's all I was doing was my duty.
My father was able to see his son receive a Medal of Honor, which was really something, and this is why when he passed away, he says, "No, don't feel sad or anything.
" He says, "I've Look how many people haven't experienced what I have.
" I've always felt humble among people when I wear the medal.
I know a lot of us wear this medal for those that never received any recognition.
After the war, I picked up a Newsweek magazine, and I was just scanning through it and I saw this picture, and I looked and it was Hershey.
A skinny, little, emaciated fella, about 90 pounds and wearing army pajamas.
I said, "Boy, I've got to head on down to Gallup and see Hershey.
" And I drove down to Gallup, I found out where Hershey was working at the time, and I walked into the store, and Hershey turned around, he saw me, turned white as a sheet! Here comes Joe, walking through the door and I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
And he said, "My god, you're dead!" I said, "No, Hershey, I'm alive.
Thanks to you," you know.
I went over, gave him a big hug.
He hugged me.
And, uh, we've been friends ever since.
Back firmly on the home front, Hershey embraced family life, focusing on fatherhood.
I put the war out of my mind.
My concentration was family.
Raising them, sending them to school.
Hard worker.
He was always up early, you know, worked late.
He By the time we were born, he had already had his service station.
My dad never really talked much about his war experience.
I guess that was the case with a lot of soldiers.
In their own way, they didn't want to tell their family what they experienced.
Both he and my mother, they were very humble and they didn't want a lot of attention.
We really didn't understand what the Medal of Honor was.
He's still not comfortable bringing all this attention to himself, but because he feels like a responsibility, an obligation, you know, he's like, "Okay, I'll do it.
" Being his only grandchild that's in the military, I really have a lot of pride in being able to carry on his legacy.
That freshman year at the Academy, you start to learn a lot about military history.
And you learn about the significance of the Medal of Honor.
And that's when it really clicked, for me, um, what he had done and what that meant for the military community.
I hope that his legacy carries on down past my children.
- It's broken! - Oh, woo! - Oh! - Yeah! He's talking about it much more now than he did even then.
- This is 40 years old.
- Only 40.
Wow! He feels obligated to the veterans of the Korean War because he feels like the public doesn't know as much about the Korean War as they should.
And so, he feels a responsibility for that, as well as for the Japanese-American veterans.
I just hope my legacy will show that I tried to help my fellow Japanese-American prove that throughout America that we were, and are, true loyal American citizens.
In 2007, this small community showed, once again, how proud it is of its larger-than-life hero.
I remember Hershey calling all of us and telling us that the high school will be named after Hershey Miyamura.
Please give a huge welcome to a true American patriot and the namesake of our school, Mr.
Hiroshi Miyamura.
I want to first congratulate you seniors on reaching your first step into adulthood.
Now, the road is gonna get a little harder, and I'm here to teach you a word.
And try to remember this word.
It is "perseverance.
" His main message that he always says is never quit, never give up.
No matter what you're going through, if you have faith, you'll make it through.
It's so easy to give up, but if you persevere, you will eventually achieve your goal.
And salute! I learned so much during that 27 months that has changed my outlook towards life.
And that's why every opportunity I have, I like to tell people about not giving up.
Recipients of the Medal of Honor, they're not John Wayne, gung-ho types.
They do these extraordinary things, and these are ordinary people who do extraordinary things because they care for their people.
And then you meet this quiet, modest self-effacing man who never, ever brags about what he did.
He will just tell you, "Hey, I was just doing my job.
And I was lucky enough to survive, and I was fortunate that they gave me this medal.
" Hershey did what needed to be done.
And what he was most focused on was keeping those young men alive.
Because it was almost not fair that they were there, you know, thrust in a very difficult situation at 17 years old or 18 years old.
Some family back in the United States of America was hoping that those kids would return.
And Hershey was bound and determined to do everything he could to make that happen.
And he did.
If you think about it, Hershey and Joe How many people would give you everything? That's what life is, it's everything.
And those guys are willing to give everything to each other.
When he first walked into that tent, I said, "Oh I'm gonna have a lot of trouble with this guy.
I know I am.
" - And the reason I said that - Nah.
is I was the best-looking guy in the company until he showed up.
Hershey will never tell you, he'll never tell me exactly what went on, but Hershey knew instinctively that he had to get those troops off the hill, and he did.
And he did that almost at the cost of his own life, without regard to his own life.
My grandpa and Joe Annello, to this day, they are still so close and still so bonded.
Seven decades after the war, the two remain utterly fearless.
Hershey, it's an honor to jump with you today.
We look forward to seeing you up there.
He's just so positive, he's so upbeat.
He's adventurous, I would say is the big thing.
He's just willing to try things.
All right, Hershey, here we are on our way up to 13,000 feet.
How you feeling? I feel fine, so far.
Feel fine so far.
You excited? Yeah, I am.
Hershey, what did you think of that? - That was great.
I really enjoyed it.
- Outstanding.
Outstanding.
Not many people have come within a hair's breadth of internment, fought their way into the service, and endured the grueling brutality of years in a POW camp, but Sergeant Hiroshi Miyamura seems to wear his medal and his burdens lightly.
The high school that bears his name commissioned a statue in his honor, but Hershey, the man, serves as a humble, joyous, living monument to the very best of America, the country where he and his family worked so hard to belong.
Hershey's Medal of Honor was very special.
It was the first top-secret Medal of Honor because it was awarded while he was still in the camps, in the Chinese and North Korean POW camps.
And if they found out that they had an American hero in their grasp, they would have punished him.
They would have crushed him because the Medal of Honor citation says what he did.
And it says how many men he killed and it says what a hero he was.
If they found that out, it could have been a death sentence to Hershey.
Before we began the march, they gave us each a a pouch approximately two and a half, uh or two-feet long, two-and-a-half inches in diameter, and it was filled with a fine powder made up of rice, millet, sorghum.
It had the consistency of talcum powder, and we were told you put some in your hand, gulp it down, and then drink some water and it'll get to your stomach, and make you feel like you've had something to eat.
Well, that was easier said than done because we couldn't get the water whenever we wanted.
And they told us that this is to last you a week and if you finish it before the week, you have to do without.
So, you had to be careful as to how much you ate.
But the sad part is we had some 16-year-olds in our group.
There's about six that I recall, and they refused to eat this powder.
And I was 24 at the time, and I said, "If you don't eat this powder, you're not gonna make it.
" And along the march, we lost those six men because they became human skeletons on the march.
I laid there for about two days and another Chinese unit that was retreating, uh, from our forces found me.
They picked me up, put me on a kind of a push cart with bicycle wheels and they took me up north about 45, 50 miles, yeah, where we were interned with five other soldiers, uh, all seriously wounded.
I returned to South Korea in about 50 years after I left.
It was in 2006, so it would have to be 55 years.
I went back with the JPAC team from Hawaii.
Their mission, of course, is to recover bodies of people that were killed in action, and the remains hadn't been recovered.
Uh, I had buried one of our men in a kimchi hole just outside of the hut we were kept in.
During the course of the digging and excavating, I came up with two artifacts.
One is a 50-caliber expended shell from one of the five tanks that rescued us.
So, I thought it was very nice to be kept as a souvenir.
And the second I picked up was a bugle mouthpiece from one of the Chinese bugles that they used all the time in their attacks on our forces.
It brings back memories to that point of where I buried him.
Uh, I'm being nostalgic, but I also have an urn full of the earth that we buried him in at home, on the mantel right between these two.
He feels like the medal is really for the veterans that didn't come back.
So, um, getting a little choked up here, um So it's it's, um When you get a group of them, you know, it's very, um Even though their experience was, you know, decades ago, it's very, um still very real, the feelings and the emotions.
And they all I mean, they talk about the ones that haven't come back, didn't come back and, um He's He's said that for years, that this is really for them.
I visited North Korea, actually, to do research.
And being around the North Korean Army officers, you know, in public, they talk about how they beat the imperialist Americans and they won the Korean War, but behind closed doors they tell a different story.
They speak of the bravery of our troops and they acknowledge that America has some pretty good warriors.
I promise, they have not forgotten people like Hershey.
So, if you ask Hershey what he would like for you to know, I'm sure he would tell you that, you know, people talk to me all the time about my military career and what I did, I forget to talk about my family.
I am so proud of my family.
He'd also tell you that he's grateful for the opportunities that he's been given.
He'd tell you that he didn't think he did anything special.
I also think that he would tell you that he is very proud of what happened in the POW camp and the fact that he never gave up and that he made it.
So, there's almost two Medal of Honor stories here wrapped in one.
His actions on the night of the 24th of April 1951, and his actions, all of his actions post-capture.
Uh A tremendous story, a story unlike any other.
And a story that really deserves to be told and remembered as long as we have a military.
Events are gonna happen in your life and you won't know I mean, sometimes it's bad, but you don't know why, and you wonder why it happened that way.
But eventually, down the road, you're gonna find out why it happened that way, and it's usually for the better.
So, I try to pass on that don't worry about events that you have no control over, because eventually it will work out okay.
The President of the United States of America, authorized by act of Congress approved March 3rd, 1863, has awarded in the name of the Congress, the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Hiroshi H.
Miyamura, United States Army, with citation as follows.
Step over here, Sergeant.
Corporal Miyamura, Infantry Army of the United States, a member of Company H 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy near Taejon-ni, Korea, on 24 and 25 April, 1951.
On the night of 24 April, Company H was occupying a defensive position when the enemy fanatically attacked, threatening to overrun the position.
Corporal Miyamura, a machine gun squad leader, aware of the imminent danger to his men, unhesitatingly jumped from his shelter, wielding his bayonet in close hand-to-hand combat, killing approximately ten of the enemy.
Returning to his position, he administered first aid to the wounded and directed their evacuation.
As another savage assault hit the line, he manned his machine gun and delivered withering fire until his ammunition was expended.
We gotta wait here a second until they get all their pictures.
As we assemble on such an occasion, I think there are a number of thoughts that must cross our minds.
One of the first and natural ones is that if you ever have to get into a fight, you'd like to have these seven on your side.
Certainly, we are We view with almost incredulity the tales that we hear told in these citations.
Seems impossible that human beings could stand up to the kind of punishment they received and deliver the kind of service they have.
But I think the most predominating thought would be could we be so fortunate that this would be the last time such a group has ever been gathered together at the White House to receive the Medal of Honor, a battlefield decoration.
Now, of course, it's obvious the future belongs to youth and a very special measure belongs to these young men, because they have done so much they must do more.
Any man who wears his nation's highest decoration is marked for leadership and he must exert it, and now, instead of leading in battle, they must lead toward peace.
Of those, fewer than 3,600 have been awarded the military's highest honor.
Where did we find such men? We find them where we've always found them, in our villages and towns, on our city streets, in our shops, and on our farms.
Summoned a degree of courage that stirs wonder and respect and an overpowering pride in all of us.
It recognizes gallantry that goes above and beyond the call of duty.
We may not always hear of their success, but they are there in the thick of the fight, in the dark of night, achieving their mission.
I have received this afternoon a message from the Japanese government which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan.
We had just won World War II, the war to end all wars.
And so, we were ready to come home and move into the homes with a white picket fence and raise families, but the communists, they wanted to spread their ideology around the world, and we wanted to defend ours.
And ours was just simply the ideology of freedom.
After World War II, the biggest threat to the United States is communism.
By 1948, communists have seized power in Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland.
Poverty and hunger lead to demonstrations and violence in the streets.
We're frightened of Red China.
We're frightened of the Russians.
America was determined to stop the spread of communism.
We had seen enough of it.
We had seen Eastern Europe be gobbled up by Stalin at the end of the war against the promises he made us, so our ally had become our enemy.
They were threatening Japan, they had just taken China.
And one day in June, 1950, the spark had happened, and it happened on the Korean Peninsula.
Our military woke up to red alert.
The North Koreans launched attacks on the South with the intent of spreading communism.
So in 1950, when the communist North Koreans invade South Korea, Harry Truman has to decide, in the light of the coming Cold War, do we let them take over South Korea? And his answer is "No.
" No nation will be safe or secure.
If aggression is successful in Korea, we can expect it to spread throughout Asia and Europe and to this hemisphere.
But the Chinese absolutely don't want United States or UN troops on their border.
And so they enter the war, standing up for North Korea.
This changes the war immeasurably, and we're talking about 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese soldiers.
Seoul was the key city for South Korea, and it was a city the communists wanted to capture.
And so Hershey's squad, they were part of an element that was there to defend the city of Seoul.
They were in a position south of the Imjin River and north of Seoul.
They were grossly outnumbered, but Hershey and his teammates were resolved to defend that city at all cost.
Hershey.
Hershey! - Something's out there.
- Where? I got a feeling.
Remember "Bacall.
" Bacall.
Bacall.
Bacall! - I almost shot you.
- I said the password.
Did you see something out there? Jenkins had a feeling.
Uh, what is it now? Hershey was a very likable guy.
We kind of had an immediate clicking, if you will.
I was a squad leader of the first squad in a machine gun platoon and Hershey was the new squad leader of the second squad.
There was about 500 yards between Hershey's squad and my squad to guard, which was tactically an impossible position.
The only communications we had is to go back and forth to talk to each other.
Something's up.
Hey! Let's go, boys.
Joe! Stop changing the password.
First it was Bergman, now it's Bacall? It's not a password if you know what it is.
Being friends, we looked out for each other.
Not only for each other, but for our squads.
Hershey was a very quiet, unassuming individual.
You could tell knowing him, that he knew what he was talking about.
And he never said too much, except when he had to say something.
I kinda looked up to him as a big brother.
Hershey and his men, they didn't know that the Chinese were sneaking up on them.
Sort of calm before the storm.
And so, it was Hershey and his men on a small hilltop, suddenly surrounded by 1,000 Chinese troops.
Hold! The Chinese had infiltrated our lines through the gaps in our lines.
Then they started with the bugles and the banging and hollering.
This was normal procedure with them.
Shit! They hit our squad first, an overwhelming force of Chinese, and they had surrounded us before we even knew what had happened, and all hell broke loose.
Hold! Light 'em up! Come on! These weapons could fire six bullets a second, and that was our saving grace because when you're being charged by hundreds and hundreds, sometimes thousands of Chinese soldiers at once Ready! that's the only thing that's gonna stop 'em.
The trouble is, if you fire too long, if you hold down that trigger, which every man wants to do in a moment of terror and panic, you're gonna melt your barrel.
Jenkins, I got a jam! What that means for the men fighting is they're left with their M-1s, which can also jam, or they're left with bayonets.
Ready! Jenkins! Fetch my ammo! On it! It was a horrendous situation.
We had the Chinese hitting us from the right flank, the left flank.
And I got shot across my legs.
And as I was falling down, I got hit by a hand grenade.
And that was kinda the end of the war for me.
I just kinda faded out.
And then it hits Hershey's squad.
Hershey felt it necessary, uh, for him to get his squad off the hill.
It was almost like a Custer's last stand.
It was a matter of life and death.
I am sure that if you asked Hershey what was going through his mind, he wasn't thinking of being a hero.
He wasn't thinking of, uh, going above and beyond.
He was thinking of doing what was necessary to protect his teammates.
Get Cooper to safety.
Go on.
Get him outta here.
Go! Even at the cost of his own life, he made a decision to stay and cover his troops.
That, to me, distinguishes between an ordinary man and an extraordinary man.
In Hershey sending his men back and saying, "Go, save yourselves," it's one of the ultimate acts of humanity.
I mean, he's essentially saying, "I'm gonna stay here, I'm gonna perhaps die for you.
" Hershey's parents were Japanese, but his parents wanted to come to America to make a better life for themselves.
And Hershey grew up with that concept.
We're here because we're better off than we were in Japan.
This was a coal mining town that attracted immigrants from all over.
And in that town there were a number of Japanese-American families, and a number of other types of families, you know, from other parts of the world.
In Hershey's mind, they're all American.
Hershey gets his nickname Hershey, when he's in fourth grade in Gallup, New Mexico.
Not everybody there can speak Japanese or say Japanese names, so he has a fourth grade teacher who can't pronounce his first name and so she calls him "Hershey" and the name just sticks.
But after Pearl Harbor and World War II, there's a lot of resentment against Japanese-Americans in the United States.
Everywhere that Americans look, they're afraid that Japanese are going to attack.
And they become very, very concerned about the Japanese-American population living among them.
Americans are so afraid that they want to herd these people together and put them where they can't do any damage to the country.
More than 100,000 men, women, and children, all of Japanese ancestry, removed from their homes in the Pacific Coast states, to wartime communities.
One of the things that Hershey is really proud of, as far as the town of Gallup, when the internment orders came out, the mayor and the city council wrote a letter to the president, saying, uh, there are relatively few Japanese-Americans here, but they're good citizens and we don't want them to be interned.
And they weren't.
During World War II, Hershey was old enough to serve.
He and his fellow classmates volunteered to serve.
Now, his classmates from other parts of the world were allowed to join, uh, but Hershey was not.
He was issued a classification of Four-C, which means "alien" and you're not eligible to serve.
And Hershey didn't understand it.
He considered himself to be an American, so that was confusing to him.
The United States won't allow Japanese-Americans to enter the military, even those that are not sent to internment camps.
They're just sort of deemed untrustworthy, that they might turn on the United States.
But as months turned into years in World War II, the United States military needed manpower.
And so, ultimately, even Japanese-Americans are invited to enter the United States military, into units just for them, such as the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
Hershey very much looked forward to going to be able to fight for his country.
About the time that he finished training, the war ended.
So, as he came back to the States, he decided to enlist in the reserves.
He had met Terry and got married.
And one day in 1950, in the morning, he was having breakfast, reading the paper and it says that North Korea has invaded the Republic of South Korea.
Hershey was one of the first ones to be called up to serve in the Korean War.
He's a man who loves his country, who believes in his country.
I don't think you could do what he did if you didn't believe in America and what we were trying to do in keeping the South Koreans free Hershey's machine gun ran out of ammunition.
Hershey at that point still has his M-1 rifle with the bayonet.
Bleeding, he's killed maybe 50 Chinese personally at that time.
I think he went berserk.
He picked up an M-1 rifle with a bayonet and he charged right into the face, or the wave, of these Chinese.
Clearly, his training allowed him to be effective as he engaged the enemy, but the act of doing that is 100% personal courage.
He's now literally behind enemy lines and the Americans call in artillery strikes.
These fires were actually being delivered by the heavy mortar platoon, which was behind Hershey's position.
The Americans, they didn't really know that Hershey was still there.
When last seen, he was fighting ferociously against an overwhelming number of enemy soldiers.
Hershey's squad members, they had no idea of how long Hershey would have survived after that and what happened to Hershey, but, to them, it would have been an incredible display of heroism and leadership.
The grenade detonates.
Hershey's hit with shrapnel.
But the fact that he was able to kick it away saved his life.
He hit some barbed wire and he gets caught up in the coils and he's sliced up pretty good.
Get up! What Hershey did was phenomenally heroic.
But I don't think he thought himself at the time as being a hero.
He just did what he felt he had to do to save as many of his men as possible.
Joe! At that point, I saw Hershey and I was never so happy in all my life to see anybody.
And Hershey came over immediately to me and responded with whatever first aid he could give me.
I thought you bought the farm.
Just take it easy, Joe.
He tried to control the bleeding.
It was kind of hard because all we had was a compress.
And he put some sulfa on the wounds that I had that was supposed to prevent the infections.
It was almost an impossible situation.
As my luck would have it, he was there.
Because of our friendship, I knew then and there that Hershey would try to take care of me as best he could.
Someone will come for us.
Right, Hershey? They'll come for us.
Then they told us at that time that we were going on a march to a camp up north.
and I knew that I couldn't make it 'cause I couldn't walk.
Hershey carried me about ten miles.
Once you're taken prisoner, you've gotta get to the prisoner of war camps in North Korea.
And the only way you can get there is by walking.
These men are marched for hundreds of miles.
Joe was in bad shape.
Um, if a person falls out of the column, they're either beaten or stabbed with bayonets, killed inside a ditch.
The Chinese got tired of Hershey and I slowing up the column and they ordered Hershey to put me at the side of the road.
Uh, Hershey at first refused and the Chinese threatened to shoot him.
I told him, "Hershey, please, you know, let me down.
" So Hershey laid me at the side of the road.
He said, "I'm sorry, Joe.
" I said, "I thank you for what you've done, Hershey.
Uh, I really appreciate it.
" And it was kind of a goodbye of friends.
I thought I knew what was going to happen after that.
It was unlikely either would live long enough to see the other again.
Joe, direly wounded, and Hershey, facing an odyssey that for many would turn deadly.
Finally, Hershey is put in a Chinese prisoner of war camp.
Never given any type of medical attention.
It was a situation where, if you were wounded, you either died or you survived.
You were living on the floor, you were sleeping on hay.
Disease and starvation were just commonplace.
And so Hershey was watching his friends die left and right.
If you look at the death rates, 40% of all American POWs dying before they ever make it home.
At that time, my brother, Hersh, was missing, they didn't know where.
I was a little scared.
I think maybe it was our, uh, belief in God, our prayers.
I think that was what kept all of us going, mainly was our prayers.
The communist offensive was stopped cold.
The Chinese Reds had not only failed in their attempt to retake Seoul, but their entire massive attack had been completely broken up.
The truce was made in 1953.
And in an operation called "Big Switch," they started exchanging groups of American POWs with Chinese and North Korean POWs.
When Hersh was missing in action, my father had called.
He said, "Now watch for the paper.
Make sure his name comes out.
If he's listed as prisoner, he'll be home.
" And my dad said, "He's gonna come home, he's gonna come home, and he's gonna come home alive.
" American families, including the Miyamuras, could only pray that their boys would be among those coming home, but the odds were little better than 50/50.
Just 3,800 of the 7,000 POWs had survived the horrors of the North Korean camps.
It was 6:00 in the morning, and my husband's sister came knocking on our door and said, "I heard your brother's name.
He was released from as a prisoner.
" At 5'10", Hershey now weighed less than 100 pounds, but he was alive.
The realization that his nightmare might be over dawned slowly.
We were the last groups in Korea.
August 20th, 1953 we got word that we're going home.
We had to get on a truck and finally we reached the destination, we could see the Star-Spangled Banner flag fluttering in the breeze.
And, well, that was such a beautiful sight.
I said, "Wow! Now we're gonna actually be home.
" For the Miyamuras, years of separation and worry were finally over.
The whole family went out to the San Francisco dock, but we saw the ship, and the gangplank was lowered, and the first one down the gangplank, by himself, was Hershey.
When I saw Terry, my wife It was such a great feeling to see her again, because at times I never thought I'd ever see her again.
Another hero of Korea is welcomed back by General Glasgow, and then he sweeps his wife into an embrace.
He is Sergeant Hiroshi Miyamura.
And the rest of us were at the bottom there, and my father was there and, um and he hugged him, too.
I was glad my father was alive to see this.
We didn't question him too much because we knew he had gone through quite a bit.
So we just waited until he was able to talk about, which It took him a little time.
The larger community of Gallup, New Mexico, was eager to welcome home this brave but bewildered hero.
We arrived in Gallup.
It was a pretty-good-sized crowd there.
I just didn't expect anything like that.
It just caught me off guard.
I never thought the town would come out like they did.
I was told to get on top of this convertible that I was to ride.
Immediately, when I got home, there was a letter waiting for me and it was from the White House.
It said I was to report to Washington DC.
We're gathered here to symbolize the gratitude of America, to seven young men who have won the Medal of Honor.
There were gonna be seven of us receiving the medal from the president, and, I was to be the first one out there to receive the medal.
And boy, I was so nervous.
The President of the United States of America has awarded in the name of the Congress, the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Hiroshi H.
Miyamura.
Corporal Miyamura, a machine gun squad leader, aware of the imminent danger to his men, unhesitatingly jumped from his shelter, wielding his bayonet in close hand-to-hand combat.
The president said, "I'm kinda nervous myself.
This is one of the first ones I'm gonna put around a soldier's neck.
" So, that didn't really help me that much.
But everything was a blur after that.
Unbelievable.
It's like I'm living in a dream.
I never, ever thought I would receive the Medal of Honor for doing my duty, which I thought that's all I was doing was my duty.
My father was able to see his son receive a Medal of Honor, which was really something, and this is why when he passed away, he says, "No, don't feel sad or anything.
" He says, "I've Look how many people haven't experienced what I have.
" I've always felt humble among people when I wear the medal.
I know a lot of us wear this medal for those that never received any recognition.
After the war, I picked up a Newsweek magazine, and I was just scanning through it and I saw this picture, and I looked and it was Hershey.
A skinny, little, emaciated fella, about 90 pounds and wearing army pajamas.
I said, "Boy, I've got to head on down to Gallup and see Hershey.
" And I drove down to Gallup, I found out where Hershey was working at the time, and I walked into the store, and Hershey turned around, he saw me, turned white as a sheet! Here comes Joe, walking through the door and I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
And he said, "My god, you're dead!" I said, "No, Hershey, I'm alive.
Thanks to you," you know.
I went over, gave him a big hug.
He hugged me.
And, uh, we've been friends ever since.
Back firmly on the home front, Hershey embraced family life, focusing on fatherhood.
I put the war out of my mind.
My concentration was family.
Raising them, sending them to school.
Hard worker.
He was always up early, you know, worked late.
He By the time we were born, he had already had his service station.
My dad never really talked much about his war experience.
I guess that was the case with a lot of soldiers.
In their own way, they didn't want to tell their family what they experienced.
Both he and my mother, they were very humble and they didn't want a lot of attention.
We really didn't understand what the Medal of Honor was.
He's still not comfortable bringing all this attention to himself, but because he feels like a responsibility, an obligation, you know, he's like, "Okay, I'll do it.
" Being his only grandchild that's in the military, I really have a lot of pride in being able to carry on his legacy.
That freshman year at the Academy, you start to learn a lot about military history.
And you learn about the significance of the Medal of Honor.
And that's when it really clicked, for me, um, what he had done and what that meant for the military community.
I hope that his legacy carries on down past my children.
- It's broken! - Oh, woo! - Oh! - Yeah! He's talking about it much more now than he did even then.
- This is 40 years old.
- Only 40.
Wow! He feels obligated to the veterans of the Korean War because he feels like the public doesn't know as much about the Korean War as they should.
And so, he feels a responsibility for that, as well as for the Japanese-American veterans.
I just hope my legacy will show that I tried to help my fellow Japanese-American prove that throughout America that we were, and are, true loyal American citizens.
In 2007, this small community showed, once again, how proud it is of its larger-than-life hero.
I remember Hershey calling all of us and telling us that the high school will be named after Hershey Miyamura.
Please give a huge welcome to a true American patriot and the namesake of our school, Mr.
Hiroshi Miyamura.
I want to first congratulate you seniors on reaching your first step into adulthood.
Now, the road is gonna get a little harder, and I'm here to teach you a word.
And try to remember this word.
It is "perseverance.
" His main message that he always says is never quit, never give up.
No matter what you're going through, if you have faith, you'll make it through.
It's so easy to give up, but if you persevere, you will eventually achieve your goal.
And salute! I learned so much during that 27 months that has changed my outlook towards life.
And that's why every opportunity I have, I like to tell people about not giving up.
Recipients of the Medal of Honor, they're not John Wayne, gung-ho types.
They do these extraordinary things, and these are ordinary people who do extraordinary things because they care for their people.
And then you meet this quiet, modest self-effacing man who never, ever brags about what he did.
He will just tell you, "Hey, I was just doing my job.
And I was lucky enough to survive, and I was fortunate that they gave me this medal.
" Hershey did what needed to be done.
And what he was most focused on was keeping those young men alive.
Because it was almost not fair that they were there, you know, thrust in a very difficult situation at 17 years old or 18 years old.
Some family back in the United States of America was hoping that those kids would return.
And Hershey was bound and determined to do everything he could to make that happen.
And he did.
If you think about it, Hershey and Joe How many people would give you everything? That's what life is, it's everything.
And those guys are willing to give everything to each other.
When he first walked into that tent, I said, "Oh I'm gonna have a lot of trouble with this guy.
I know I am.
" - And the reason I said that - Nah.
is I was the best-looking guy in the company until he showed up.
Hershey will never tell you, he'll never tell me exactly what went on, but Hershey knew instinctively that he had to get those troops off the hill, and he did.
And he did that almost at the cost of his own life, without regard to his own life.
My grandpa and Joe Annello, to this day, they are still so close and still so bonded.
Seven decades after the war, the two remain utterly fearless.
Hershey, it's an honor to jump with you today.
We look forward to seeing you up there.
He's just so positive, he's so upbeat.
He's adventurous, I would say is the big thing.
He's just willing to try things.
All right, Hershey, here we are on our way up to 13,000 feet.
How you feeling? I feel fine, so far.
Feel fine so far.
You excited? Yeah, I am.
Hershey, what did you think of that? - That was great.
I really enjoyed it.
- Outstanding.
Outstanding.
Not many people have come within a hair's breadth of internment, fought their way into the service, and endured the grueling brutality of years in a POW camp, but Sergeant Hiroshi Miyamura seems to wear his medal and his burdens lightly.
The high school that bears his name commissioned a statue in his honor, but Hershey, the man, serves as a humble, joyous, living monument to the very best of America, the country where he and his family worked so hard to belong.
Hershey's Medal of Honor was very special.
It was the first top-secret Medal of Honor because it was awarded while he was still in the camps, in the Chinese and North Korean POW camps.
And if they found out that they had an American hero in their grasp, they would have punished him.
They would have crushed him because the Medal of Honor citation says what he did.
And it says how many men he killed and it says what a hero he was.
If they found that out, it could have been a death sentence to Hershey.
Before we began the march, they gave us each a a pouch approximately two and a half, uh or two-feet long, two-and-a-half inches in diameter, and it was filled with a fine powder made up of rice, millet, sorghum.
It had the consistency of talcum powder, and we were told you put some in your hand, gulp it down, and then drink some water and it'll get to your stomach, and make you feel like you've had something to eat.
Well, that was easier said than done because we couldn't get the water whenever we wanted.
And they told us that this is to last you a week and if you finish it before the week, you have to do without.
So, you had to be careful as to how much you ate.
But the sad part is we had some 16-year-olds in our group.
There's about six that I recall, and they refused to eat this powder.
And I was 24 at the time, and I said, "If you don't eat this powder, you're not gonna make it.
" And along the march, we lost those six men because they became human skeletons on the march.
I laid there for about two days and another Chinese unit that was retreating, uh, from our forces found me.
They picked me up, put me on a kind of a push cart with bicycle wheels and they took me up north about 45, 50 miles, yeah, where we were interned with five other soldiers, uh, all seriously wounded.
I returned to South Korea in about 50 years after I left.
It was in 2006, so it would have to be 55 years.
I went back with the JPAC team from Hawaii.
Their mission, of course, is to recover bodies of people that were killed in action, and the remains hadn't been recovered.
Uh, I had buried one of our men in a kimchi hole just outside of the hut we were kept in.
During the course of the digging and excavating, I came up with two artifacts.
One is a 50-caliber expended shell from one of the five tanks that rescued us.
So, I thought it was very nice to be kept as a souvenir.
And the second I picked up was a bugle mouthpiece from one of the Chinese bugles that they used all the time in their attacks on our forces.
It brings back memories to that point of where I buried him.
Uh, I'm being nostalgic, but I also have an urn full of the earth that we buried him in at home, on the mantel right between these two.
He feels like the medal is really for the veterans that didn't come back.
So, um, getting a little choked up here, um So it's it's, um When you get a group of them, you know, it's very, um Even though their experience was, you know, decades ago, it's very, um still very real, the feelings and the emotions.
And they all I mean, they talk about the ones that haven't come back, didn't come back and, um He's He's said that for years, that this is really for them.
I visited North Korea, actually, to do research.
And being around the North Korean Army officers, you know, in public, they talk about how they beat the imperialist Americans and they won the Korean War, but behind closed doors they tell a different story.
They speak of the bravery of our troops and they acknowledge that America has some pretty good warriors.
I promise, they have not forgotten people like Hershey.
So, if you ask Hershey what he would like for you to know, I'm sure he would tell you that, you know, people talk to me all the time about my military career and what I did, I forget to talk about my family.
I am so proud of my family.
He'd also tell you that he's grateful for the opportunities that he's been given.
He'd tell you that he didn't think he did anything special.
I also think that he would tell you that he is very proud of what happened in the POW camp and the fact that he never gave up and that he made it.
So, there's almost two Medal of Honor stories here wrapped in one.
His actions on the night of the 24th of April 1951, and his actions, all of his actions post-capture.
Uh A tremendous story, a story unlike any other.
And a story that really deserves to be told and remembered as long as we have a military.
Events are gonna happen in your life and you won't know I mean, sometimes it's bad, but you don't know why, and you wonder why it happened that way.
But eventually, down the road, you're gonna find out why it happened that way, and it's usually for the better.
So, I try to pass on that don't worry about events that you have no control over, because eventually it will work out okay.
The President of the United States of America, authorized by act of Congress approved March 3rd, 1863, has awarded in the name of the Congress, the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Hiroshi H.
Miyamura, United States Army, with citation as follows.
Step over here, Sergeant.
Corporal Miyamura, Infantry Army of the United States, a member of Company H 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy near Taejon-ni, Korea, on 24 and 25 April, 1951.
On the night of 24 April, Company H was occupying a defensive position when the enemy fanatically attacked, threatening to overrun the position.
Corporal Miyamura, a machine gun squad leader, aware of the imminent danger to his men, unhesitatingly jumped from his shelter, wielding his bayonet in close hand-to-hand combat, killing approximately ten of the enemy.
Returning to his position, he administered first aid to the wounded and directed their evacuation.
As another savage assault hit the line, he manned his machine gun and delivered withering fire until his ammunition was expended.
We gotta wait here a second until they get all their pictures.
As we assemble on such an occasion, I think there are a number of thoughts that must cross our minds.
One of the first and natural ones is that if you ever have to get into a fight, you'd like to have these seven on your side.
Certainly, we are We view with almost incredulity the tales that we hear told in these citations.
Seems impossible that human beings could stand up to the kind of punishment they received and deliver the kind of service they have.
But I think the most predominating thought would be could we be so fortunate that this would be the last time such a group has ever been gathered together at the White House to receive the Medal of Honor, a battlefield decoration.
Now, of course, it's obvious the future belongs to youth and a very special measure belongs to these young men, because they have done so much they must do more.
Any man who wears his nation's highest decoration is marked for leadership and he must exert it, and now, instead of leading in battle, they must lead toward peace.