Congressional Record: March 22, 2001 (Senate)
Page S2725-S2726
AMERICA'S FIRST TOP SECRET HERO
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, today I had the honor of presenting a
personal letter to Mr. Hiroshi H. Miyamura at an event honoring Mr.
Miyamura and commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Korean War. Mr.
Miyamura is a native New Mexican, a Medal of Honor recipient, and a
true American hero.
In honor of Mr. Miyamura and in recognition of the events surrounding
his contribution in the Korean War, I ask unanimous consent that a copy
of my letter to him and a short historical sketch about Mr. Miyamura be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
March 21, 2001.
Mr. Miyamura: I would like to thank the Fairfax-Lee chapter
of the Association of the U.S. Army for inviting me to
celebrate today's guest of honor. I sincerely apologize for
my absence at this event.
Recognizing the awesome deeds of our men during the Korean
War during the 50th Anniversary of that conflict is a
humbling task. And, today, we meet to recognize the heroism
of one particular soldier, Mr. Hiroshi H. Miyamura. Mr.
Miyamura's story is not only one of tremendous courage, his
has an element of intrigue. Mr. Miyamura is also America's
first secret hero.
Mr. Miyamura is a native New Mexican, and still resides
there. He enlisted in the Army during World War II and served
in a unique special Japanese-American regiment, but the war
ended before he saw combat. He got out of the service after
WWII and went back to Udall where he married his sweetheart,
who had been in an American Internment Camp during the war.
One year after reenlisting in the Army Reserves, North
Korea invaded South Korea. At this time, Corporal Miyamura
was activated and assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division. For
his actions on the night of April 24, 1951, Mr. Miyamura was
awarded the Medal of Honor. However, his citation was
classified top-secret and filed away in the Department of the
Army's tightest security vault. On April 25, he was captured
and held as a Prisoner of War (POW) for more than twenty-
seven months.
When Sergeant Miyamura, who was promoted while in
captivity, was finally released on August 20, 1953, in a POW
exchange between the United Nations command and the
Communists, he was greeted by Brigadier General Ralph Osborne
and informed for the first time that he had been awarded the
Medal of Honor. According to General Osborne, the citation
had been held top-secret because ``if the Reds knew what he
had done to a good number of their soldiers just before he
was taken prisoner, they might have taken revenge on this
young man. He might not have come back.'' Sergeant Miyamura
was presented the Medal of Honor by President Eisenhower on
October 27, 1953.
Words will fail to appropriately encompass the gratitude
and indebtedness Americans have to Mr. Miyamura and his
compatriots. The freedom and prosperity we enjoy is a
constant reminder of our Veterans' contribution. As a fellow
New Mexican and admirer of the sacrifices you made for our
great country, I personally thank you, Mr. Hiroshi H.
Miyamura.
Sincerely yours,
Pete V. Domenici,
U.S. Senator.
____
[From Military History, Apr. 1996]
For More Than Two Years, Hiroshi Miyamura's Medal of Honor Was a
Tightly Guarded Secret
(By Edward Hymoff)
It was the beginning of a long, chilly April night in 1951.
Red Chinese bugles howled and whistles shrieked for the
umpteenth time. ``They're comin' again,'' the slightly built
corporal whispered to his machine-gun detail. Flares burst
above the ridge, and an enemy mortar barrage again began to
creep toward the American positions.
The ghostly light of falling flares played across the face
of the machine-gun section's
[[Page S2726]]
leader, accentuating the young soldier's Asian features. He
could have been mistaken for the enemy, but for the uniform
he wore and his New Mexican accent. Shells straddled the
trench. The bugles and whistles grew louder as shadowy
figures clambered up the steep, shell-pocked slope.
``Stay put,'' snapped the corporal. He yanked his bayonet
from its scabbard and clamped it on his carbine. ``Cover
me,'' he ordered. He pulled himself from the trench,
slithered a few feet on his belly and then sprang upright and
charged the advancing enemy soldiers.
More than two years later, U.S. Army Sergeant Hiroshi H.
Miyamura remembered that rainy night of April 24, 1951, as if
it were yesterday. He had been the Company H, 7th Infantry
Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, corporal who had ``charged''
that night. Now, on August 20, 1953, Miyamura climbed down
from a Soviet-built military truck with 19 fellow prisoners
of war at a place called Panmunjom, which he had heard
mentioned while in a Communist Chinese prison camp in North
Korea. He and his repatriated POW buddies were hustled into
military ambulances for a 15-minute drive to another
unloading point, Freedom Village, where doctors, nurses and
medics took over.
Pale and undernourished, the newly freed Americans shucked
off their faded blue Chinese uniforms and showered. They were
examined by doctors, dusted with DDT and issued oversize
fatigues. Each former POW was then handed a large canteen cup
filled with ice cream. If the doctors declared them
physically and mentally up to it, they were interrogated by
intelligence officers and then led out to meet the press.
As Sergeant Miyamura (who had been promoted while in
captivity) was led to the microphones and news cameras, he
was greeted by Brig. Gen. Ralph Osborne, the Freedom Village
commander, who raised his hands for silence. ``Gentlemen of
the press,'' the general announced. ``I want to take this
occasion to welcome the greatest V.I.P., the most
distinguished guest to pass through Freedom Village.
``Sergeant Miyamura, it is my pleasure to inform you that
you have been awarded the Medal of Honor.'' Miyamura was
visibly shaken. ``What?'' he gulped. ``I've been awarded what
medal?''
During the nearly 130 years that the Medal of Honor has
been awarded for ``conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at
the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty,'' none of
the other recipients have learned about the honor quite the
way that 27-year old Sergeant Miyamura did. Nineteen months
before his release from captivity, a Medal of Honor citation
dated December 21, 1951, had been filed away in the
Department of the Army's tightest security vault. Classified
``top-secret,'' it was finally removed from its Pentagon
security vault at the start of Operation Big Switch, the
exchange of POWs between the United Nations command and the
Communists, and delivered to U.S. Eighth Army headquarters in
Seoul shortly after the Korean armistice was signed in late
July 1953.
General Osborne began reading aloud from the citation that
had been handed to him less than a half-hour before. ``On the
night of 24 April, Company H was occupying a defensive
position near Taejon-ni, Korea, when the enemy fanatically
attacked, threatening to overrun the position. Corporal
Miyamura, a machine-gun squad leader, aware of the danger to
his men, unhesitatingly jumped from his shelter. . . .''
As the general continued reading, Sergeant Miyamura clearly
recalled those events. A major Chinese offensive had cracked
the U.N. line. The 3rd Division had been ordered to pull
back. H Company withdrew under a heavy enemy mortar barrage
followed by two separate battalion-size probes. Miyamura was
positioned between a light and a heavy machine gun, directing
their fire. Shortly before midnight, the Chinese again
advanced up the slope. He called out to his gunners, ``Short
bursts, short bursts!'' and switched his carbine to automatic
fire, squeezing off short bursts. He also hurled grenades
down the slope.
The attackers were finally stopped. Twenty minutes or a
half-hour passed. Then, enemy mortar rounds again fell along
the ridgeline. Flares popped overhead, and the bugle calls
and whistles resumed, along with shrieks of ``Kill! Kill!
Kill dam `mericans!''
Miyamura hurled more grenades and emptied his carbine. The
shadowy figures moving up the slope toward his position
dropped before his fire. Off to his right, the heavy machine
gun blasted away. There was silence from the .30-caliber
light-machine-gun position on his left. He clambered from his
hole and crawled to his left flank. The light weapon and its
crew were gone. Had they bugged out?
No. A runner must have instructed them to withdraw. But why
hadn't the runner touched base with him? Crouching low,
Miyamura dashed toward the heavy-machine-gun position but
stumbled across a body and fell flat on his face. A flare
popped overhead, and he dropped flat beside the body. It was
one of H Company's runners. No wonder he hadn't gotten the
message to withdraw.
Miyamura found two of the four GIs in the machine-gun
position hit by shrapnel, and he dressed their wounds.
Instructing them to cover him, he clamped his bayonet on
his carbine and left the emplacement, sliding down the
slope toward the enemy. Minutes later, there were
agonizing cries in the darkness from the direction he had
gone.
``. . . Wielding his bayonet in close hand-to-hand combat,
killing approximately 10 of the enemy,'' General Osborne
continued. The Chinese soldiers had been cautiously moving up
the slope when Miyamura suddenly appeared in their midst.
Jabbing and slashing, he scattered one group and wheeled
around, breaking up another group the same way. Miyamura then
ran back up the slope and slid into the machine-gun position.
He ordered the gunners and the two wounded riflemen to fall
back; he would cover them. Suddenly he was alone and
frightened. He leaned against the machine gun and waited. It
didn't take long. Bugles and whistles sounded, and the
``Kill! Kill!'' chant of the enemy grew louder and closer.
``. . . As another savage assault hit the line, he manned
his machine gun and delivered withering fire until his
ammunition was expended,'' the general went on. Miyamura
broke up that attack, and when he ran out of ammunition he
began hurling grenades in the enemy's direction. It was time
for him to withdraw, but first he had to destroy the heavy
machine gun. He placed a grenade, its pin pulled, against the
gun's open breach, then ran into a nearby trench.
Loping down the trench, Miyamura turned a corner and
slammed into an enemy soldier. Both recoiled, but Miyamura
was faster; he shot the Chinese soldier wounding him. The
Chinese soldier then lobbed a grenade in Miyamura's
direction, but he kicked it back. It exploded, killing the
enemy soldier and wounding Miyamura in the leg. ``. . . He
killed more than 50 of the enemy before his ammunition was
depleted and he was severely wounded,'' the general continued
reading.
Miyamura recalled the nightmarish events leading up to his
capture. The eastern horizon was beginning to grow lighter,
and the enemy soldiers were now pouring off the ridge he had
evacuated. He spotted a friendly tank that had been staked
out to cover the withdrawal, now preparing to pull out.
Miyamura ran desperately toward it, only to stumble into
American barbed wire. Sobbing in pain, he heard the tank
rumble away.
``When last seen, he was fighting ferociously against an
overwhelming number of enemy soldiers,'' the general
continued. But that wasn't quite the way it happened,
Miyamura remembered. He managed to free himself from the wire
and dropped into a small shellhole, throbbing with pain from
the barbed-wire punctures and from the grenade-fragment wound
in his leg. Enemy troops swarmed down the back slope and
walked by the hole in which he lay, ignoring what they
thought was a dead GI. If he could last through the day
playing dead, he might be able to make it back to his own
lines when night fell. A lone enemy soldier stopped beside
him and leveled a U.S. Army 45-caliber pistol at his head.
``Get up,'' he ordered in English. ``I know you're alive. We
don't harm prisoners.''
Four days later, a 3rd Division task force slashed its way
back to the position Miyamura had evacuated. Miyamura was not
among the dead GIs who lay there with more than 50 enemy
dead, scattered on both slopes of his position.
Why was Miyamura's Medal of Honor citation classified top-
secret? General Osborne explained: ``If the Reds knew what he
had done to a good number of their soldiers just before he
was taken prisoner, they might have taken revenge on this
young man. He might not have come back.'' Sergeant Hiroshi H.
Miyamura, America's first secret hero, was formally presented
his Medal of Honor by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a
White House ceremony on October 27, 1953.
Miyamura has since visited Washington several times as an
invited guest at presidential inaugurations. A career as an
auto mechanic and service station owner made it possible for
him to send his three children to college. Miyamura is now
retired in his hometown of Gallup, N.M., and ``doing the many
things that I now have time for.'' An avid freshwater
fisherman, he spends much of his time trout fishing in the
many lakes in the Southwest.
____________________