Medal of Honor Recipient Hiroshi Miyamura on brutal hand-to-hand combat and life as a POW

our own motor section was dropping white phosphorus bonds on my position so that told me i had to get off of there my name is hiroshi h miyamura i was born in gallup new mexico in october 6 1925. i re-enlisted in june of 49 and the war started in korea in fifth june the 50th a year later and then i was told to report to company h 3rd division 7th regiment 2nd battalion 3rd division and they were training up on the mountain near bampoo and that's when i first when i got up there i met my buddy joe anello and we we became very good friends but that's when i joined the third division you know there was a new experience for me because during my term in world war ii i was with a segregated unit all nothing but japanese-american young men whereas now i was in a segregated non-segregated union so but it was easy for me to get to know people because i that i had no experience i had experience just trying to get along with my fellow americans where a lot of these other boys never left california and they grew up only with mainly with their own nationality so they didn't get to mingle too much with the other fellow americans my military service number listed me as a machine gunner and that definitely what they needed was machine gun most of the time we were farmed out to other rifle companies because they had no heavy automatic weapons all they had there's a m1 or you know rifled it that district him so they needed extra firing power and eventually they came up with a different weapon that was more actually better because there were less jam problems with them and they got along better with a man using one of those weapons instead of heavy weapon heavy weapons required uh 12 men because you needed four to fire the weapons plus carry the ammunition so that was quite a job when you're going up mountains carrying ammunition or the the uh pieces of the machine gun that you're gonna fire but we were mainly farmed out to rifle company it's really um more than i ever thought it would be but i asked the lord to help me to guide me before i went into my first combat area and you know there was a calm after that i never [Music] felt afraid after that and i just did what i felt i was told to do or i always did what i was told to do but i felt i've always had someone protecting me i used to hear bullets who wasn't by me i didn't know they were built because they were cracking so close to my ear and just one slight movement and i wouldn't be here today so things like that but i never worried about that after [Music] asking for help and that i believe is what kept me alive all through my career and it still helped today that's why i'm still here today we were being overwhelmed with the enemy fighting the enemy and i eventually had to make a decision being a squad leader and [Music] i was hesitant because the my superiors never told me i had to hold this position at any cost or anything in fact i never saw them for the time after the time they told me to put my guns up in this particular area and anyway i had to make that decision so i said i can't see them getting killed over this position here when i wasn't even told anything about her so i said okay they told them to leave and head back toward the company area and when they were all gone i ran into some opposition but what really got my attention was our own motor section was dropping white phosphorous bonds on my position so that told me i had to get off of there and start i'd start making my way down and the biggest person i ever saw in my life i ran into and we met face to face this and i recognized him because of his helmet uh cotton helmet or whatever you call headgear and that same instance i took him with the bayonet and shot him and as i pulled back my uh vietnam i didn't know he had a grenade in his hand and he dropped it or threw it at me or something and he hit my leg and i just kicked it and it went off i didn't know i got a piece in my leg but i got up called out of that dugout and made my way down and here's the part that a lot of people don't understand how i got captured and that was something i never felt i would ever become a periodic prisoner or but it happened and it happened when i finally made my way to that road that i knew was there but i didn't know they had put barbed wire across it and i ran into that barbed wire and it got cut up very bad but my focus was on his tank i heard startup his engine start up nice waving that trying to catch it that's why i ran into that wire i'm trying to catch his attention but later i i'm lucky i did but i was on the wrong side of that wire and he'd probably start shooting at me because i i didn't know it was set up there anyway finally the tank pulled out and went so i just dropped to my knees crawled underneath the wire got up ran maybe 50 yards and i just passed out and then i don't know how long i laid there but who woke me up was i heard a lot of troops going by my position but no one stopped to see if i was alive so i said uh just play dead all of a sudden was very quiet but then i hear a voice in english said get up you're my prisoner and i couldn't believe it i turned around had a pistol pointed at my head i said well i better get up so i got up and i wasn't that's when he told me in english he said because i would find out later that all the interpreters were trained in the russian school to learn speak english and he said follow me when i tried to get up that's when i realized that i had a sharpening of my leg and my hands was bleeding all over and [Music] i followed him humbled after him i couldn't put much pressure on my leg he led me to the area where my buddy joe nels said his two guns and it was in the area in a flat place i was up on the hill and he i saw joe and he was uh wounded very bad in a lot of pain and then he told me he lost one man and most of his men were wounded then we were told by this interpreter you're to follow the chinese troops and as they advance you will advance with them and when they pick up prisoners award they're going to join you and then when you get enough prisoners you're going to start marching towards the camp you will be in so we did that for two weeks but the worst part of it is we never got any none of the men got any medical attention we didn't even get any food we were starving as well as hurting but we followed them for two weeks bombed by our own planes during the nights when we stayed in a village this strafe we lost the man or two at almost every village stuff so then they said no we got to start walking during the day and not go to the villages at night this went on for two weeks at the end of two weeks they come the interpreter come to me and said okay this is your ration and they gave us a sack a two and a half feet long about three inches in diameter filled with a fine powder and he said you put some in your hand gulp it down and drink some water but it's only supposed to last you two a one week if you run out before then you have to do without okay where we can get the water on our march we had to get water from streams that uh were filled with all kinds of stuff and their wells were because they used human fertilizer when we landed in korea we they were told us don't ever drink their water because they use human manures so we all had to treat our water but we had no choice we had to drink whatever we could water we could find and the sad part of it was that these young men that we had there were many 16 17 old young men in korea serving because they were caught in this war anyway there was about six in that group that said you can't eat this stuff i said if you don't need it because i was already 24 see and uh if you don't need it you're not gonna make it and they still refuse to eat it well we lost those young men on the march towards a can we were in such a so far north there's no possible way several the young guys tried to escape and they just were caught every time they went out there's no way they could uh would see was on one side and the mountains on the other side and there's no way they could escape i can't remember forget the time that before we got captured enough when we were in north korea at 40 and 50 below zero our food did not get up there to us we couldn't even get cigarettes they gave us cigars to smoke and i said if you could give us cigars why can't you give us syrup couldn't get them the transportation the roads were so bad the trucks could not make that the delivery when we evacuated north korea they were mild rations three or four feet or more high we had to destroy all that food that we never gotten when we were there we never had the equipment for that kind of weather or the clothing it's a wonder we didn't all freeze to death but a lot of us got past bitten feet we like i said we buried a man every day for the first year and so many of those cases were men more cases are very very you ever see personal berry bearing your your skin swells up like a balloon i mean you're three times the size of your skin stretches that much and very painful the only shot we ever got while we were in the camp was a cholera shot they told us this is a cholera shot and throughout the asia i guess there's cholera or something that they really were afraid of so they but we also wore it was with square needles because we all scared a scar where they shot us with that collar shot before we left it was just starting to heal but that was the only shot that medical shot that we got i learned that a lot of it was not helping each other surviving on your own they couldn't help you much anyway they didn't have any more not what i had so it was each man had to do the best with what they had they would tell us if tops are going so well there may be an armistice sign so they would assemble us in a big area and they said when you hear your name being called you'll be going home within a week or so so that's what we did every week we disassembled down there and hopefully hear your name being called in person we got to our my group which was about 25 wondering if we were gonna ever be called and when that day came we couldn't believe it so we told the load-up and that they came to load up on this truck and we had to ride that truck for so many miles and then get off the truck and get on a train that train would take us down to the panmunjon area and that's the uh area where the peace talks were going on and all and our american side was uh just across the line there and we were told to head for our american troops and so that's what we did but that's when i noticed the stars stripe and stripes what a beautiful sign and then we were told to form a line and were being de-loused and they said after we get the last you go to the area to get a shower and then they issued us a pair of pajamas in the bathroom and some slippers and just they had cots in another room there and they said lay down on the clots until we called you again well as i was laying on on the car i got a call a fellow sergeant come up to me said there's a fellow from your home state would like to talk to you i said what about i said yeah i don't know just follow me so he led me into another tented area and when i went into the room there was just a general standing on board in the the room with the by the table and he said i was told to report to him and that he happened to be uh general osborne that was the commander of the third division troops that was in korea at the time and when i was reported to him we shook hands he said you know why you're here i said no sir so for the actions on april 24 1951 you received the medal of honor and i'll never forget all i could say is what but he said we'd like you to talk about it if you can and he said the reason no one knows about it it's because they kept it classified that it would not your name would not be released until you were released from the prisoner of war and i gave them the same story that i just practically said to you a few minutes ago that that was uh all i could really and truly remember oh i got to tell you about when i first found out about when i would receive the middle of honor and i received that after i was given a parade in review at fort bliss texas by the commanding general there and now he was discharged given an honorary discharge and then they presented me with a letter from the president of the united states and [Music] i said well i just did our new president eisenhower's president but when i opened the letter and read that he was going to present the medal of honor i couldn't believe it because that's such a high honor for a commanding general such as eisenhower to present now president to present that medal of honor because he was such a respected general well i during my term in italy you heard so much about him that he had the respect of every general in the united nations and all and it was such an honor to be able to receive it from him so i was very happy there but when i got there i found out there were six others to receive it at the same time but of the seven of us that were there to receive the medal i was chosen to be the first one out there and i got so nervous i don't remember much of what happened during the services but i do remember him asking me i know you're nervous but so am i this is the first medal of honor i'm presenting at the white house but it still didn't help me overcome my nervousness so we had a week there in washington that was out of this world [Music] you

Channel: American Veterans Center

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Id: TvUycZhp2U4

Length: 23min 59sec (1439 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 17 2021