Dennis Fujii, left, speaks with retired Army Gen. David Bramlett before Fujii’s induction into the Gallery of Heroes at the Army Museum of Hawaii at Fort DeRussy on March 15, 2024. (Wyatt Olson/Stars and Stripes)
FORT DERUSSY, Hawaii — A pair of Hawaii natives were inducted into the Army Museum of Hawaii’s Gallery of Heroes in a ceremony Friday, two years after the soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions in Vietnam.
One, Dennis Fujii, 75, occupied a seat of honor during a ceremony on the grounds of the museum on Waikiki Beach.
The other, Edward N. Kaneshiro, died in combat in 1967.
The men had initially been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, but the honor was upgraded in 2022 during a White House ceremony when President Joe Biden presented the Medal of Honor to Fujii, Kaneshiro’s son and two other Vietnam War veterans.
“It’s my honor to be here today to share in the recognition of two of Hawaii’s own, by Hawaii’s own,” Maj. Gen. Reginald Neal, deputy commanding general of mobilization and reserve affairs for U.S. Army Pacific, told the audience during the ceremony.
“By that I mean that our honorees and the honorees’ families have been in Washington, D.C.,” he said. “They’ve been recognized by officials at the highest levels, including the secretary of defense, and yes, even the president of the United States. Even with all that recognition, on many occasions in multiple venues, there’s something special about being at home. There’s something even more special about being in the presence of friends and family, and people with common origins and common roots.”
The U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii was established in 1976 on the site of a former coastal artillery fortification. In 1988, its Gallery of Heroes began inducting recipients of either the Distinguished Service Cross or Medal of Honor for those who had significant ties to the state of Hawaii.
The gallery now has 55 recipients of the Service Cross and 24 of the MOH.
A display at the Gallery of Heroes at the Army Museum of Hawaii in Honolulu shows artifacts from the lives of its two newest inductees, Dennis Fujii and Edward Kaneshiro, who were awarded the Medal of Honor in 2022 for actions during the Vietnam War. (Wyatt Olson/Stars and Stripes)
Left behind
Fujii was born on the Hawaiian island of Kauai and was one of six children, according to an Army biography published in 2022.
He enlisted in the Army while still in the middle of his senior year of high school in 1968.
That same year, he deployed to Vietnam as an assistant machine gunner with the 4th Infantry Division.
His second tour to Vietnam was with the 237th Medical Detachment, 61st Medical Battalion of the 67th Medical Group.
Fujii was crew chief of a medevac helicopter helping South Vietnamese troops who had been wounded in a Laos valley on Feb. 18, 1971. Fujii was wounded several times in a hail of enemy gunfire and mortars, and he was unable to fly out with the wounded-laden chopper.
Fujii spent the night in the field, the sole American among the South Vietnamese troops .The following evening, a reinforced enemy regiment began raining down artillery on Fujii and the troops.
Although not trained to do so, Fujii manned a radio to direct airstrikes.
“For a period of over 17 consecutive hours, Fujii repeatedly exposed himself to hostile fire as he left the security of his entrenchment to better observe enemy troop positions and to direct air strikes against them,” the Medal of Honor citation states.
“At times, the fighting became so vicious that Fujii was forced to interrupt radio transmittal in order to place suppressive rifle fire on the enemy while at close quarters,” the citation states.
Fujii was loaded into a medevac chopper two days after the fighting began, but it took so much fire that it was forced to crash land about four miles away in another South Vietnam army encampment.
Fujii spent two more days there before finally being flown to safety and medical care.
Trench battle
Kaneshiro was born in Honolulu in 1928 and was one of 16 children. He enlisted in the Army in 1959 and served in non-combat overseas tours in Japan and South Korea.
He was an infantry squad leader with the 9th Cavalry Regiment in Vietnam in Kim Son Valley on Dec. 1, 1966, when nearby squads were ambushed by machine gun fire.
Kaneshiro directed his men to the battlespace and saw the enemy was firing while ensconced in a trench.
“Swiftly reading the situation and seeing that fire from the big trench had to be stopped if anyone was to survive, he first deployed his men to cover, then crawled forward to attack the enemy force alone,” Kaneshiro’s Medal of Honor citation states.
“He began by throwing grenades from the parapet while flattened to the ground, successfully throwing the first grenade through the aperture of the bunker, eliminating the machine gunner who had opened the action,” the citation states.
With his remaining five grenades and rifle, he swept solo through the trench and cleared it of enemy fighters, the citation states. He was killed in combat about three months later.
At the Friday ceremony, Neal told the audience that the two newest inductees to the Gallery of Heroes “possessed the innate sense of knowing that there was something worth fighting for, and if need be, worth dying for.”
