06/02/2026
U.S. Army soldier Yeiki Kobashigawa of Hilo, Hawaii, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his extraordinary actions on June 2, 1944, near Lanuvio, Italy.
Kobashigawa was born the son of Japanese immigrants. He joined the U.S. Army in November 1941, one month before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Immediately following the attack, the U.S. Armed Forces did not accept Japanese Americans. However, after this ban was lifted in 1943, Kobashigawa volunteered to join the all-Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion, mostly made up of Japanese Americans from Hawaii and the mainland.
In June 1944, near Lanuvio, Italy, Kobashigawa and his platoon were ambushed by German forces who were hunkered down in several machine gun nests. Under intense enemy fire, Kobashigawa led a squad that crawled 50 yards toward the nests and assaulted the first nest with gr***des and submachine gun fire. After capturing the first nest, his platoon advanced while Kobashigawa repeated the process on a second machine gun nest. The second machine gun nest was seized in a similar fashion by Kobashigawa and a fellow soldier, resulting in the capture of four German soldiers as prisoners. Four more machine gun nests were in the vicinity, and Kobashigawa was successful in disabling two of them.
For these actions, Kobashigawa received a Distinguished Service Cross in 1944. In 1996, the United States began investigating discrimination against American soldiers of Japanese descent regarding medals and citations awarded during World War II. This led to Kobashigawa’s Distinguished Service Cross being changed to a Medal of Honor in 2000. It was awarded to Kobashigawa by President Bill Clinton at the White House.
After the war, Kobashigawa worked as a maintenance mechanic and raised his family in Hawaii. He died in 2005 at the age of 88 and is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.
