The Terrible Death Of Kiyoshi K. Muranaga of Los Angeles, Honoring Him For His Extraordinary Action During WWII.
The Terrible Death Of Kiyoshi K. Muranaga of Los Angeles, Honoring Him For His Extraordinary Action During WWII.
U.S. Army Private First Class Kiyoshi K. Muranaga of Los Angeles, California, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions on June 26, 1944, near Suvereto, Italy.
Muranaga was born to Japanese immigrant parents and was a Nisei, which means he was a second-generation Japanese-American. He and his family were interned at the Granada War Relocation Center in Colorado during World War II.
He joined the Army in May 1943 and volunteered to be a part of the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team, mostly made up of Japanese-Americans from Hawaii and the mainland.
Muranaga was killed on the first day of action for the 442nd in Italy while single-handedly manning his squad’s mortar weapon in an attempt to destroy an enemy artillery gun.
He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on June 26, 1944. He was one of the 22 Asian American soldiers who received their medals in 2000.
Related topic
Nile Clarke Kinnick Jr. (July 9, 1918 – June 2, 1943) was an American naval aviator, law student, and college football player at the University of Iowa. He won the 1939 Heisman Trophy and was a consensus All-American.
He died during a training flight while serving as a United States Navy aviator in World War II.
Kinnick was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951, and the University of Iowa renamed its football stadium Kinnick Stadium in his honor in 1972.
On June 2, 1943, Ensign Kinnick was on a routine training flight from the aircraft carrier USS Lexington off the coast of Venezuela in the Gulf of Paria.
He had been flying for over an hour when his Grumman F4F Wildcat developed an oil leak so severe that he could neither reach land nor the Lexington,
whose flight deck was already crowded with planes preparing for launch anyway. He followed standard military procedure and executed an emergency landing in the water but died in the process.
Rescue boats arrived on the scene eight minutes later but found only an oil slick. His body was never recovered. He was one month and seven days away from his 25th birthday and was the first Heisman Trophy winner to die.
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