When Army Tech. Sgt. Yeiki Kobashigawa encountered enemy machine gun nests in Italy during World War II, he didn't shy away. Instead, he pushed the attack with a fearlessness that helped the Allies take the country back from the Nazis. Nearly half a century later, he received a belated Medal of Honor for his actions.
Kobashigawa was born Sept. 28, 1917, in Hilo, Hawaii, to Japanese immigrants Shintsu and Kame Kobashigawa. After a few years, his family moved to Wai'anae on the island of Oahu, where he and his eight siblings grew up.
When Kobashigawa was 12 or 13, his father became sick, so he dropped out of school to support his family. The young man worked on a sugar plantation as a laborer. He also enjoyed baseball and played in local leagues in his spare time.
In November 1941, Kobashigawa was drafted into the Army and assigned to the 298th Infantry Regiment of the Hawaiian National Guard.
Weeks later, Pearl Harbor was attacked. Kobashigawa was at home on leave and preparing for a baseball game when alarms sounded on the island. He quickly caught a ride to Schofield Barracks to prepare for war, but shortly after arriving at the post, Kobashigawa said his rifle was taken from him.
Because the Japanese were the perpetrators of the attack that launched the U.S. into World War II, Americans were fearful of Japanese Americans, known as nisei. As a result, they were barred from military service. Those in Hawaii who were already serving, including Kobashigawa, were taken out of integrated units and moved into the segregated Hawaiian Provisional Infantry Battalion.
By mid-1942, the Army moved the battalion to the mainland and redesignated it as the 100th Infantry Battalion. The 100th, along with the newly created 442nd Regimental Combat Team, were segregated units for nisei who wanted to prove their allegiance to America.
In August 1943, the 100th was deployed to North Africa. A month later, they moved into Italy, attached to the 34th Infantry Division.
During the unit's march toward Rome, Kobashigawa was wounded several times, according to the National World War II Museum. But he truly distinguished himself on June 2, 1944, near Lanuvio, Italy.
During an attack that day, Kobashigawa and his unit, Company B, encountered strong enemy resistance from a series of enemy machine guns.
After spotting one of the machine gun nests about 50 yards away, Kobashigawa crawled forward, threw a grenade and then charged the enemy position with his submachine gun, all while a fellow soldier provided cover fire for him. Kobashigawa killed one enemy soldier and captured two others.
Soon, the pair was being fired upon by another machine gun nest about 50 yards further away. Kobashigawa quickly directed the rest of his squad to move to their current position. He then moved forward again to subdue that second enemy position.
After throwing grenades at the second nest, Kobashigawa stayed back this time to provide the cover fire for his comrade, who charged the position and took four enemy soldiers prisoner.
Kobashigawa soon discovered four more enemy machine gun nests and led a squad to neutralize two of them.
The 100th became one of the most decorated units of World War II; however, in the years after the war, only one nisei soldier received the Medal of Honor: Pfc. Sadao Munemori, who died in battle. Kobashigawa instead received the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second highest military award for valor.
When the war ended, Kobashigawa returned to Hawaii and worked as a maintenance mechanic for Hawaiian Cement. He married a woman named Haruko Miyashiro and had two sons, Merle and Floyd, and a daughter, Jill.
According to Kobashigawa's obituary in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, he rarely spoke about the war, to the point that his children didn't even know of his Distinguished Service Cross until the 1980s. The newspaper said his son, Merle, found out about it when his daughter went on a field trip to Washington, and stumbled on her grandfather's name on a display.
Righting a Wrong
In the 1990s, legislation sponsored by a Hawaiian senator led to an official review of the many Distinguished Service Crosses received by Japanese Americans for their heroics in the 1940s, despite the discrimination they faced at the time. The yearslong review resulted in the military upgrading 19 of the 52 Distinguished Service Crosses to Medals of Honor, as well as one Silver Star.
Seven members of the 100th and several more nisei soldiers received that honor on June 21, 2000. Kobashigawa was one of only a handful of men still alive to receive it in person from President Bill Clinton during a White House ceremony.
Merle Kobashigawa said his father actually had to be talked into going to the ceremony; the elder Kobashigawa initially told the Army to "put the medal in the mail," the son told newspapers at the time.
Kobashigawa died March 31, 2005, in his hometown of Wai'anae. He is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
Kobashigawa's Medal of Honor is on display at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.
This article is part of a weekly series called "Medal of Honor Monday," in which we highlight one of the more than 3,500 Medal of Honor recipients who have received the U.S. military's highest medal for valor.