President Barack Obama next month will award the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, to two U.S. Army soldiers who died in the Korean War.
The families of Privates First Class Anthony Kaho’ohanohano and Henry Svehla will attend a White House ceremony for the awards on May 2 commemorating the two soldiers’ “conspicuous gallantry,” the White House said in a statement today.
Kaho’ohanohano will be cited for engaging enemy forces with his firearm, grenades, and in hand-to-hand combat to protect the withdrawal of friendly forces, the statement said. He died in battle on Sept. 1, 1951.
Svehla led a counterattack against enemy troops and when a grenade landed nearby and he threw himself on it to protect his comrades. He died on June 12, 1952.
The medals will be the fourth and fifth awarded by Obama as president.
Obama has awarded only one to a living honoree, to U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta last year for heroism in Afghanistan.
He has also awarded the medal to U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Jared C. Monti, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2006, Robert J. Miller, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2008, and Richard L. Etchberger, who died in Vietnam in 1968.
More than 3,400 Medals of Honor have been awarded since Congress authorized them in 1861.
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