Sadao Munemori, a Private First Class in the 100th Infantry Battalion, known as the “Go For Broke” unit made up of Japanese-Americans, earned the Medal of Honor posthumously on this day in Italy, when he made numerous single-man rushes on German machine gun nests that had pinned down his company. Honor and remember him!

Munemori had knocked out two positions with grenades when a German potato masher dropped into a fighting hole that he and two other Americans held. Munemori jumped on the grenade, absorbing the blast and saving the lives of his fellow soldiers. 

Munemori was born in Los Angeles in 1922 and worked as a mechanic in Glendale, volunteering for the Army in November 1941, a month before Pearl Harbor. After the Japanese surprise attack, Munemori’s parents were forced into the internment camp at Mazanar, in the Owens Valley in California. 

Munemori fought with the 100th Battalion throughout Italy, and was part of the unit when it saved the encircled “Lost Battalion” of the Texas National Guard in October er 1944. He was known as an easy going soldier who wanted to be called by his childhood nickname, “Spud”. He and his fellows soldiers were trying to pierce the “Gothic Line”, the last German defensive positions in norther Italy, less than a month before the end of the War, when he was killed in action. He was only 23 years old. 

Munemori’s mother received the Medal of Honor on his behalf at Fort Macarthur, where he had started his enlistment in the Army. Munemori was the first Japanese-American to earn the Medal of Honor as well as the only one who received it right after the War, as opposed to as part of a general review of Distinguished Service Medals in the 1990’s.