Gregg K. Kakesako
Gregg K. Kakesako worked for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Gannett News Service as a congressional correspondent, and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser for more than four decades as a government, political and military affairs reporter, and assistant city editor.
Updated August 2022
Stories from This Author
Aloha, France — Part 2
March 23, 2023 • Gregg K. Kakesako
Read Part 1 >> A visit in 1960 by then Army Master Sgt. Wilbert “Sandy” Holck (442nd’s Cannon Company), as an international gesture of goodwill, established a sister-city relationship between Bruyères and Honolulu, 7,500 miles away. A 442nd RCT granite monument and a sculpture “The Ties of Friendship” by Shinkichi Tajiri (3rd Battalion, Company M) was erected in a small forest clearing near Biffontaine. Scores of veterans and their families have made pilgrimages to the Vosges area visiting not only …
Aloha, France — Part 1
March 22, 2023 • Gregg K. Kakesako
In October 1944, soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team liberated the French villages of Bruyères, Belmont and Biffontaine just 20 months after the regiment was formed 80 years ago with majority Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans) who had volunteered to prove their loyalty to a country that had labeled them as “enemy aliens,” 4-C, ineligible for combat after Pearl Harbor. Today, even after nearly eight decades, the people and children of these French villages in the remote Vosges forests of …
80 Years of 100th — Part 2
Nov. 11, 2022 • Gregg K. Kakesako
Read Part 1 >> Although Albert Matsumoto, 97, never served in combat, he still maintained close ties to his fellow 100th Infantry Battalion soldiers, according to his daughter Sheila Wakai. He joined the unit in 1945 and served for two years in Italy. Because he was divorced and lived alone in a condominium a block from the Club 100 clubhouse, Matsumoto looked forward to getting together daily with fellow veterans to have breakfast and spend the day. To show his …
80 Years of 100th — Part 1
Nov. 10, 2022 • Gregg K. Kakesako
The 80th Anniversary Committee of the 100th Infantry Battalion Veterans organization compiled a list of known survivors here and on the mainland who served in the World War II 100th Infantry Battalion. With this publication there are 12 known surviving Nisei warriors—nine in Hawai‘i and three on the mainland. Working with the committee here and the Go For Broke National Education Center in Los Angeles, The Hawai‘i Herald tried to reach the 12. Four of the 100th Infantry Battalion veterans’ …
Two Hawai‘i Soldiers Receive Medal of Honor
Aug. 2, 2022 • Gregg K. Kakesako
Surrounded and stranded for two days in a forbidden Laotian South Vietnamese firebase, the country’s newest Medal of Honor recipient—Kaua‘i-born Spec. 5 Dennis M. Fujii—described the operation and rescue mission as the scariest he experienced in his nearly three years of combat and believed it would be his last. Fujii, 74, and Staff Sgt. Edward Noboru Kaneshiro—who also fought in the Vietnam War more than half a century ago—were the latest recipients of the nation’s highest military award for valor—the …
