Banco de dados da Segunda Guerra Mundial (WW2DB)

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseRobert Toshio Kuroda was born in ʻAiea, Oʻahu, US Territory of Hawaiʻi in Nov 1922 to immigrants originally from Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. He enlisted in the United States Army in Mar 1943 and volunteered to join the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was consisted mostly of Americans of Japanese ancestry. On 20 Oct 1944, near Bruyères, France, Staff Sergeant Kuroda found his squad pinned down by heavy German fire. Alone, he advanced to a machine gun nest and killed three Germans with grenades and then wounded or killed at least three others with rifle fire. Realizing that there was another German machine gun nest on a nearby hill, he picked up a killed American officer's submachine gun, advanced toward the second position, and killed all Germans occupying that position. He was killed by a sniper shortly after. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. He was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. In Jun 2000, his award was upgraded to the Medal of Honor, which was presented by US President Bill Clinton to Robert Kuroda's brother, Ronald Kuroda. In 2021, a French civilian found Kuroda's high school class ring in the woods near Bruyères with a metal detector; the ring was returned to Kuroda's surviving relatives in 2022.

Robert Kuroda Mapa Interativo

Photographs

Robert Kuroda Timeline