World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseYeiki Kobashigawa was born in Hilo, Hawaiʻi, US Territory of Hawaiʻi in Sep 1917 to Japanese immigrants Shintsu and Kame Kobashigawa originally from Okinawa. He and his eight siblings grew up in Waiʻanae, O‘ahu, Hawaiʻi. When he was about 12, he dropped out of school to work as a laborer as his father had fallen ill. He was drafted into the US Army in Nov 1941 and was assigned to the 298th Infantry Regiment of the Hawaiian National Guard. He later volunteered to be part of the 100th Infantry Battalion, which was consisted of mostly Japanese-Americans. He was deployed abroad with the rest of the 100th Infantry Battalion in Aug 1943, initially in North Africa, and then landing in Italy in Sep 1943. On 2 Jun 1944, near Lanuvio in Italy, Technical Sergeant Kobashigawa played a key role in silencing four German machine gun positions. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross award for the day's actions. He retired from military service with the war's end, married Haruko Miyashiro, and worked as a maintenance mechanic for Hawaiian Cement. He rarely spoke about the war, and his children did not know about the Distinguished Service Cross until the 1980s when his daughter Jill Kobashigawa stumbled upon the mention of his father's bravery when studying history on a school-sponsored field trip. His Distinguished Service Cross was upgraded to the Medal of Honor, and Kobashigawa received the award from US President Bill Clinton at a ceremony in Washington DC, United States in Jun 2000. He passed away in Mar 2005 and was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, United States. At the time of this writing, his Medal of Honor is on display at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.

Yeiki Kobashigawa Interactive Map

Photographs

Yeiki Kobashigawa Timeline