2 Hawaii soldiers to receive Medal of Honor

The White House announced Monday that on July 5, President Joe Biden will award the Medal of Honor to four soldiers, including two from Hawaii.

Spc. 5th Class Dennis M. Fujii will attend a White House ceremony and receive the award for his actions during a rescue mission gone wrong. Staff Sgt. Edward N. Kaneshiro will receive the award posthumously for his actions during a bloody ambush in Vietnam’s Kim Son Valley.

Spc. 5th Class Dwight W. Birdwell, former Cherokee Nation Supreme Court, and Green Beret Maj. John J. Duffy of California will receive the award for their actions in Vietnam.

Both Fujii and Kaneshiro previously received the Distinguished Service Cross. But the U.S. military has been reviewing past awards, particularly those belonging to minority groups who may have received lesser awards than what their comrades had recommended due to biases and bigotry of senior officers who signed off on military awards and honors.

The Medal of Honor is the highest honor bestowed on veterans and is personally awarded by the sitting president.

Ambush

Kaneshiro arrived in Vietnam on July 18, 1966. On Dec. 1 he was serving as an infantry squad leader with Troop C, 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, near the village of Phu Huu 2 for a search mission looking for enemy forces.

According to military rec­ords, two squads from his platoon moved into the center of the village, and Kaneshiro and his squad scouted the more open terrain eastward. Unknown to them, the village was heavily fortified and garrisoned by a vastly superior force of North Vietnamese troops.

A bunkered and concealed trench system ran the length of the village on the west side. Machine gun and rifle fire suddenly rained down on the two squads at the center, killing the platoon leader and his point man, wounding four others and pinning down all the survivors in a continuous hail of bullets.

Kaneshiro moved his squad to cover, then crawled forward by himself to attack the trench. He began grenading the trench and managed to shoot and kill the machine gunner. He then moved into the trench, fighting enemy forces while the squads in the village extracted the wounded, enabling the platoon to retreat.

Kaneshiro survived that mission but would ultimately be killed in battle in Binh Dinh province on March 6, 1967.

Left behind

Fujii is being honored for his actions over several days. On Feb. 18, 1971, he and fellow soldiers worked to rescue badly wounded South Vietnamese troops as a member of the 237th Medical Detachment, 61st Medical Battalion, 67th Medical Group. He was the crew chief of a medical evacuation helicopter.

The South Vietnamese troops were locked in a savage battle on the ground below, and heavy fire from enemy troops prevented the helicopter from landing. When the pilot made a second attempt to land, heavy fire forced the chopper to crash-land, injuring much of the crew.

A second helicopter managed to reach the wreckage and evacuate all the Americans except Fujii, who while under heavy fire waved off the helicopter fearing that everyone would die if they waited for him. He volunteered to stay behind as the only American on the battlefield alongside South Vietnamese Rangers.

That night the base took heavy artillery fire. Fujii managed to get a hold of a radio and called in American gunships. He volunteered to leave the South Vietnamese camp to spot enemy positions and call in strikes. At times his transmissions would be interrupted as he himself returned fire with his rifle.

On Feb. 20 a helicopter was finally able to pick up the exhausted and wounded Fujii from the South Vietnamese camp. But his trials weren’t over. As his evacuation chopper made its way from the battlefield it, too, began taking heavy fire and was forced to crash-land at another South Vietnamese base just 4 kilometers away.

He remained at that camp until another helicopter evacuated him to Phu Bai for medical assistance on Feb. 22.