WASHINGTON—San Diego Padres catcher Kyle Higashioka received a replica of the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to his grandfather’s World War II unit during a Monday, July 22, ceremony at the National Museum of the United States Army.
The late G. Shigeru Higashioka was part of the 100th Infantry Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit made up Nisei soldiers—second-generation Japanese Americans who demanded the opportunity to join the armed forces even after President Franklin Roosevelt ordered Japanese Americans on the West Coast to be incarcerated in camps.
