Hiroshi "Hershey" Miyamura was born in Gallup in 1925. He enlisted in the Army in World War II but did not see action. The Korean War proved to be a very different story. On a dark April night in 1951, Corporal Miyamura's company was holding a defensive position on a hill by the Imjin River when thousands of Chinese soldiers swarmed over the American position amidst a cacophany of bugles and whistles. Miyamura, a machinegun squad leader, leapt into the fray, dispatching numerous soldiers with his bayonet. Another assault forced Miyamura's company to withdraw, but he remained to provide covering fire. Although wounded, he managed to kill fifty enemy soldiers before he ran out of ammo. His comrades-in-arms last saw him fighting in a sea of attackers and presumed him dead.
Unbeknownst to the US military, Miyamura was taken to a North Korean prisoner of war camp where he remained in savage conditions fo 28 months, losing 50 pounds. In the meantime, a Top Secret decision was made to award Miyamura the Medal of Honor, but no mention was made in case he had survived and was being held prisoner. In August 1953 he was among fellow liberated POWs at Freedom Village near Panmunjom when he learned that he had been awarded his nation's highest military honor.
In 2007 the former Gallup Junior High School was renamed Miyamura High School after the state's only Medal of Honor winner from the Korean War.
POW, Medal of Honor; Hiroshi Miyamura; Asian Heritage and Culture in New Mexico;
Heroes Among Us: New Mexico’s Medal of Honor Recipients