President Joe Biden on Friday posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor to five minority soldiers from the Korean War who may have been denied the nation's highest decoration for valor by a 1950s Army that was still resisting orders to desegregate.
Biden also upgraded the awards of the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award for valor, to the Medal of Honor for two other soldiers who served in Vietnam -- Pvt. 1st Class Kenneth David, who was to be at the White House to receive the award, and Capt. Hugh R. Nelson Jr., who received the award posthumously.
One of the five from the Korean War was the late Army Gen. Richard E. Cavazos, the first Hispanic four-star general whose Distinguished Service Cross for leading mostly Puerto Rican troops in the segregated 65th Infantry Regiment in 1953 was upgraded to the Medal of Honor.
Cavazos already had been the recipient of numerous tributes to his legacy of service, including the action in 2023 by a congressional commission set up to remove Confederate names from military bases to rename Fort Hood in Texas, which had been named for Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood, as Fort Cavazos.
The other posthumous recipients of the Medal of Honor from the Korean War were: Japanese American Pvt. 1st Class Wataru Nakamura; African American Pvt. 1st Class Charles R. Johnson: African American Cpl. Fred B. McGee; and Pvt. Bruno R. Orig, who was of Filipino descent.
In his opening remarks at the White House ceremony, Biden said the Medal of Honor recipients epitomized the American ideal that "all men are created equal."
"We haven't always lived up to it, but we've never ever walked away from it," Biden said. "Today, I want to say clearly, we never ever will."
In a statement to Military.com on Friday, the Army said that the awards to Cavazos, Nakamura and Orig were made pursuant to laws providing for reviews to determine whether prejudice may have been involved in denying the Medal of Honor. There was no immediate response from the Army on whether the Medal of Honor awards to Johnson and McGee also were the result of special reviews.
Over the years, the Defense Department and the White House have ordered periodic reviews to determine whether minority service members may have been denied the Medal of Honor because of prejudice.
In 1997, President Bill Clinton awarded the Medal of Honor to seven Black service members, and in 2014 President Barack Obama awarded the Medal to 19 Black, Hispanic and Jewish Army veterans who "were previously overlooked for the Medal of Honor due to their racial or ethnic backgrounds," the White House said in a statement.
Of the 3,515 recipients of the Medal of Honor prior to Friday's ceremony since the 1860s, 93 were Black; 59 Hispanic; 35 Asian or Pacific Islander; 33 Native American; and 18 Jewish, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
The seven recipients awarded Friday fought in two fundamentally different wars, at different times, and in different units, but all displayed the "above and beyond" selfless commitment to duty that merits the Medal of Honor. In interviews arranged earlier by the Army, the families of the recipients attested to the values of the recipients that aided them in combat.
His Faith Drove Him Back Up the Enemy Hill
Richard Edward Cavazos was born in Kingsville, Texas, in 1929 and attended Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University) in 1951, where he played on the football team and was a distinguished graduate of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps program.
He deployed to Korea as a first lieutenant and platoon leader with Company E, 2nd Battalion, 65th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, and was awarded the Silver Star for his actions on Feb. 25, 1953, in leading his troops to repel a Chinese enemy force and then going forward under fire to capture and bring back a prisoner.
Then on the night of June 14, 1953, Cavazos, now as commander of Company E, led his troops in assaults on entrenched enemy positions and inflicted heavy casualties but was forced to withdraw under a fierce enemy barrage.
Cavazos regrouped his unit and attacked three more times and remained alone on the enemy outpost to search for missing men, according to the citation for his Distinguished Service Cross that has now been upgraded to the Medal of Honor.
"Exposed to heavy hostile fire, Lt. Cavazos located five men who had been wounded in the action" and brought them back to safety. He then "remained alone on the enemy outpost to search the area for the missing men," and safely brought back five more wounded men.
The 65th Infantry Regiment, known as the "Borinqueneers" from the Indian name for Puerto Rico, fought admirably in the breakout from the Pusan perimeter and in assisting in covering the Marine withdrawal from the Chosin Reservoir, according to an Army release.
The first and second battalions of the 65th also "executed the last battalion-sized bayonet charge in Army history, routing Chinese forces occupying two strategically vital hills" near Seoul, the Army release said.
But the reputation of the 65th had been sullied in the fall of 1952 when more than 100 members of the 65th faced court-martial charges for allegedly refusing to attack an area known as Jackson Heights, according to the Army's Center for Military History. The charges were eventually dismissed by Army Secretary Robert Stevens.
In interviews with the families of the Medal of Honor recipients arranged by the Army, Tommy Cavazos, the general's son, said some of the issues with the 65th Regiment could be attributed to the language barrier for the Anglo officers in the segregated unit, but his father spoke Spanish as the son of Mexican American parents.
The 65th had gone through "a series of commanders who spoke no Spanish," and "it was an extraordinary bit of luck for the men of that unit" when his father arrived, Tommy Cavazos said.
Tommy Cavazos described his father as "very much a humble, ordinary man," but also a "man of deep faith that drove him up the hill that night in 1953 to collect the men of his company and get them to safety."
But his father "knew he couldn't get everybody off that field, he knew he couldn't get everybody home, and I think he was always haunted by that," Tommy Cavazos said.
He said his father was guided by the firm belief that "the Army provided the opportunity for ordinary citizens to raise their hands, take their oaths and do the extraordinary job of protecting this country."
Charged the Enemy Twice with the Bayonet
In response to Japan's Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt on Feb. 19, 1942, signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast to internment camps.
The presidential order made an "enemy alien" out of 21-year-old Wataru Nakamura of Los Angeles, who was sent to an internment camp in Arkansas, but "as soon as he could, he enlisted in the Army" to prove that he was a loyal American, his nephew, Gary Takashima, said last week.
"A lot of the men in the camps wanted to prove their loyalty to the country, show the country that they belonged here," Takashima said.
Nakamura went on to serve with the segregated, all Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team that became legendary in the fierce fighting of the Italian campaign. The actions of the "Go For Broke" 442nd set its soldiers apart as the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in U.S. military history, according to the National World War II Museum.
More than 4,000 Purple Hearts were among the numerous decorations awarded to members of the unit. On July 15, 1946, President Harry Truman met with members of the 442nd on the Ellipse behind the White House to present them with a Presidential Unit Citation and state: "You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice, and you have won."
Nakamura stayed in the Army Reserve after the war and was called up when the North Korean People's Army crossed the 38th Parallel in a general attack on South Korea.
Pvt. 1st Class Nakamura was assigned to Company I, 38th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, which was holding positions in rugged terrain near the North Korean village of P'ungch'on-ni, just north of what is now the Demilitarized Zone.
On May 17, 1951, enemy forces attacked and severed communications between Nakamura's platoon and the company command post. He volunteered to go out before dawn on May 18 to check the line and make repairs, not knowing that enemy troops had stayed behind and were waiting at positions formerly held by U.S. troops.
Nakamura moved forward until he came under fire and then "rushed the enemy with a fixed bayonet and singlehandedly destroyed a hostile machine gun nest and drove the enemy from several bunkers they had captured," according to the citation for his Distinguished Service Cross, which has now been upgraded to the Medal of Honor.
When he ran out of ammunition, Nakamura withdrew but met up with a U.S. party ascending the hill. After quickly briefing the officer in charge, Nakamura "re-armed himself and returned to the fight."
Nakamura "wiped out an enemy position and attacked the remaining bunker, killing one and wounding another enemy soldier before he was mortally wounded by enemy grenades," the citation said.
The Best Heroes Are Ordinary People
It took the Pentagon and the White House more than 70 years to realize that Charlie Johnson rated the Medal of Honor, but he had long been a legend in the Army's 3rd Infantry Division.
In 2011, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Phillips, then-deputy commanding general of the 3rd ID, led a contingent of 3rd ID troops to a crowded ceremony in the Arlington High School gym in Dutchess County, New York, to make the posthumous award of the Silver Star to the family of Johnson.
"Charlie Johnson -- soldier, American citizen -- was a brother. His memory is a memory of brotherhood; you need not wear a uniform to accept that," Phillips said, according to an Army report. "In a terrible night, June 12, 1953, Charlie had a lot of decisions to make. Charlie took action, his values guided him, and he got his buddies to safety."
Joining the presentation ceremony was Don Dingee, who was a football teammate of Johnson's at Arlington High and also one of the wounded soldiers who was saved by Johnson in the desperate fight at "Outpost Harry" in the Choran Valley about 60 miles north of Seoul.
"Charlie saved my life not once but twice that day," Dingee said. "The front of [the] foxhole was hit, and Charlie pulled me to safety before he ran off to save more soldiers."
Dingee later joined Phillips in unveiling a bronze statue in the new Johnson Hall at the high school depicting Johnson dragging Dingee to safety.
His Silver Star citation stated that Johnson, while serving as a Browning automatic rifleman with Company B, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd ID, "acted with complete disregard for his personal safety to ensure the safety of his fellow soldiers" during an attack.
Johnson dragged "one soldier through the trenches while under direct artillery, mortar and small-arms fire to a secure bunker, stopping only to clear the path of enemy soldiers in close-combat operations," the citation said.
In September 2014, troops of the 3rd ID, and the family and friends of Johnson, gathered at Fort Stewart, Georgia, to dedicate a fitness center in his name for heroism under fire during the Korean War.
In a statement at the dedication, Johnson's siblings, Edward, Glenn and Juanita Mendez Johnson, said that "despite our grief, we were not surprised that he would give his life to save others. The best heroes are ordinary people who accomplish extraordinary deeds."
The Comic Book 'Forgot His Melanin'
Cpl. Fred McGee of Steubenville, Ohio, was portrayed as a superhero in the March 1953 edition of Heroic Comics, published by Famous Funnies. "Don't worry about me, McGee, save yourself," a wounded soldier tells McGee in the comic strip. McGee replies, "I'll get you back to the medics, pal" as he fires at an attacking enemy.
But there was a problem with how McGee was depicted in the comic book. "There was a glaring inaccuracy. They forgot his melanin." McGee was a Black man, but "they made him a white soldier" in the comic book, Victoria Secrest, McGee's daughter, said in a video interview arranged by the Army.
McGee earned the Silver Star for his actions in the battle for Hill 528 while serving with Company K, 17th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, near Tang-Wan-Ni, Korea, on June 16, 1952.
In his unit's assault on fortified enemy positions, McGee used a light machine gun to put out a heavy volume of fire on the enemy despite intense enemy machine gun and mortar fire aimed his way, his medal citation said.
McGee moved with his weapon several times to keep up covering fire for the assault and knocked out an enemy machine gunner who had been aiming deadly flanking fire on the Company K troops.
When his squad leader was killed, McGee assumed command and moved forward to a more exposed position to deliver more fire on enemy positions. When the order to withdraw came, McGee volunteered to remain "behind to assist in the evacuation of the wounded and dead," the citation said.
"Though wounded himself, he heroically exposed himself to intense enemy machine gun and mortar fire to assist his wounded and dead comrades," the citation said.
Secrest said she began lobbying for the upgrade of her father's Silver Star to the Medal of Honor in the 1990s. "He did what his country asked him to do," she said.
Her daughter, Kristen Lee Bailey, said that when she first heard of her grandfather's courage under fire, "it came as no surprise, because he was always selfless, loving and honorable in everything he did."
McGee died in 2020; in 2023, Ohio officials named a portion of State Route 151 in Jefferson County the "Cpl. Fred B. McGee Memorial Highway" in honor of his service during the battle of Hill 528.
The Gettysburg of the Korean War
Bruno Orig was 11 years old and living in Honolulu when the Imperial Japanese fleet attacked Pearl Harbor. From then on, his dream was to join the military. "He lived through Pearl Harbor and enlisted right out of high school" in the Army, said his nephew, Chuck Allen.
By 1951, Orig was serving with Company G, 2nd Battalion, 23d Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, in Korea, and on Feb. 15, his company and regiment, bolstered by a French battalion, were in a desperate fight in the bitter cold in a battle near the crossroads village of Chipyong-ni.
The U.S. and United Nations forces had been in full retreat for hundreds of miles since October 1950, when the Chinese People's Liberation Army crossed into Korea and began a series of wave assaults.
"The American commander, Gen. Matthew Ridgway, decided to make a stand at Chipyong-ni to give the rest of the Army time to recover," according to an account by the Army Heritage Center Foundation. The fighting that followed was "as intense and as frantic as any in which the infantrymen had ever participated," but Ridgway's gamble had worked.
The Chinese offensive was thrown back at Chipyong-ni, which turned out to be the high point for the PLA's operations south of the 38th Parallel and led to the battle being dubbed the "Gettysburg of Korea." For his part in the battle, Orig was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously.
He had been returning from a mission to lay wire but dropped that task to come to the aid of wounded troops who were still under attack, according to his medal citation.
"With complete disregard for his own safety, he went to the aid of these men and remained in an exposed position in order to administer first aid to them," the citation said.
He made several trips to the rear to bring the wounded to safety and, while returning from one of those trips, he volunteered to take over a machine gun. "Private Orig placed such effective fire on the enemy that a withdrawing friendly platoon was able to move back without a single casualty," but his position was soon overrun.
Later that day, when the lost ground was recaptured, Orig was found dead beside his weapon and the area in front of his gun was littered with enemy dead," the citation said.
'He Was Where He Wanted to Be'
The first Medal of Honor ever awarded to a graduate of the Citadel, the military college in Charleston, South Carolina, has been approved posthumously for Capt. Hugh R. Nelson Jr., a member of the Citadel Class of 1959.
Nelson was cited for his actions on June 5, 1966, while flying a combination search-and-destroy and reconnaissance mission near the small U.S. base at Moc Hoa in Long An province along infiltration routes used by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong from sanctuaries in Cambodia.
Nelson, of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, then 28 years old, was serving as the pilot and aircraft commander of a UH-1 Iroquois ("Huey") helicopter, although the initial citation for his award of the Distinguished Service Cross identified the aircraft as an AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter.
The Huey, with three other service members aboard, came under heavy ground fire and crash-landed in the middle of enemy positions at high speed, knocking unconscious all four aboard the helicopter.
Nelson was the first to revive and immediately began to pull the other crew members from the aircraft. He went to the left side of the Huey and "ripped off the door with his bare hands and removed a dazed specialist who had been pinned in the cargo compartment," according to his award citation.
Another crew member managed to evacuate on his own as Nelson crawled into the Huey to pull out the last crew member. By now, the enemy was raking the area with small-arms fire at close range.
Nelson then "forced the specialist to the ground and, using his own body as a human shield to cover his comrade, saved the life of his fellow soldier at the sacrifice of his own," the citation said. "Through his gallant efforts, he enabled a crew member to send a signal with a smoke grenade to supporting aircraft," which drove off the enemy and rescued all three survivors.
At Dec. 20 interviews arranged by the Army, Nelson's daughter, Debbie McKnight, and son, Hugh R. "Tripp" Nelson III, recalled their father's devotion to duty and selfless commitment to those in his charge. They also credited Air Force veteran Ted Curtis, a 1964 graduate of the Citadel, for doing the research that led to the upgrade of their father's Distinguished Service Cross to the Medal of Honor.
McKnight said she was five years old when her father was leaving for Vietnam -- "he lifted me up. I told him not to go," she said. She also recalled when Army officials came to their home to inform the family that Nelson had been killed in action. "My Daddy was gone, and he was never coming back," she said. "He gave his life for another in battle."
"Our father thought he was doing what was right. He was where he wanted to be," Tripp Nelson said. In his selfless act covering the body of a crew member against enemy fire, his father's body may have been hit by as many as 15 to 20 rounds, Tripp Nelson said.
Helping Veterans, His Life's Goal
The 101st Airborne Division was going back in May 1970 into the forbidding A Shau Valley, often called the "Heart of Darkness" by the troops who served in I Corps in the northern sector of what was then South Vietnam, and 19-year-old draftee Kenneth David was part of the operation.
A year earlier, the 101st had fought from May 10-20, 1969, to take Hill 937, better known as "Hamburger Hill," only to abandon the area less than three weeks later.
Elements of the 101st began moving into the A Shau in May 1970 to take up positions at an abandoned U.S. post called Fire Support Base Maureen, and on May 7, 1970, North Vietnamese regulars began coming at them with satchel charges in a battle that would later become emblematic of political and moral crosscurrents that divided the nation during the Vietnam War.
The medic who would tend to the wounds of David and others was Pvt. Kenneth Kays, of Mount Vernon, Illinois. He was a conscientious objector who would not carry a weapon. He initially had gone to Canada to avoid the draft but came back when the Army agreed to let him serve as a medic.
Part of Kays' left leg was blown off during the battle, but he tied a tourniquet around it and continued to tend to the wounded. He would later be awarded the Medal of Honor by President Richard Nixon in a White House ceremony, but would struggle with what became known as post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction that led to his suicide in 1991.
David has cited Kays as an inspiration in his ongoing work as an adjutant with the Disabled American Veterans chapter in Girard, Ohio.
"Seven guys got killed" in the combat on May 7, 1970," David told the Warren, Ohio, Tribune Chronicle in 2023. "Another guy took his life in [1991] from the horrors of what he went through in losing his leg. These names and faces I still see today. These are my brothers who never came home to get old and gray like the rest of us."
David received the Medal of Honor for his actions while serving as a radio-telephone operator with Company D, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, near Fire Support Base Maureen.
His medal citation stated that, "upon the initial assault and without hesitation, David handed his radio to his platoon sergeant and moved forward to the defensive perimeter, unleashing a barrage of automatic weapons fire on the enemy."
"Each time the enemy attempted to concentrate its fire on the wounded inside the perimeter, David jumped from his position and yelled to draw enemy fire away from his injured comrades and back to himself."
"Although wounded by an exploding satchel charge and running perilously low on ammunition, he tossed hand grenades toward the attackers to effectively counter their fire," the citation said.
In a video interview arranged by the Army last month, David said the Medal of Honor would give him more status "to help more veterans" in his work for the DAV. "I think maybe people will listen more," he said, "and that's my goal for the rest of my life."
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