08/04/2026
THE MISSION THAT LOOKED LIKE MADNESS
Colonel Young Oak Kim: The Korean American Hero Who Helped Open the Road to Rome
A Hope Rising World Special Report
By Hope Rising World Media
LOS ANGELES — History sometimes remembers the soldiers who marched triumphantly into a liberated capital. It does not always remember the men who crawled through minefields, passed beneath enemy observation posts, captured the prisoners who provided essential intelligence—and were then ordered to stand beside the road while others entered the city.
Colonel Young Oak Kim was one of those nearly forgotten heroes.
A Korean American born in Los Angeles in 1919, Kim fought in some of the most brutal campaigns of World War II and the Korean War. He overcame institutional racism, commanded Japanese American soldiers at a time of wartime distrust, received military decorations from several nations and later devoted his civilian life to war orphans, immigrants, victims of violence and underserved communities. The National Museum of the United States Army describes him as one of the most decorated Asian Americans in American military history.
In July 2026, the Republic of Korea’s Overseas Koreans Agency selected Kim as its “Overseas Korean of the Month,” honoring him not only as a soldier but as a model of service to both his ancestral homeland and the nation of his birth. The agency also identified him as the son of Korean independence activist Kim Soon-kwon.
Born American, Raised in the Spirit of Korean Independence
Young Oak Kim was born and raised in the Bunker Hill area of Los Angeles, the son of Korean immigrants Soon Kwon Kim and Nora Koh Kim. His father participated in Korean nationalist and independence activities during the period when Korea was under Japanese colonial rule. Kim therefore grew up with two powerful identities: loyalty to the United States and a deep awareness of Korea’s struggle for freedom.
Racial prejudice sharply limited his opportunities. The Army initially resisted placing Asian Americans in combat positions, and Kim later recalled that one officer told him his eyes and skin were the wrong shape and color. Nevertheless, he entered the Army in January 1941 and was eventually selected for Infantry Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. He graduated in 1943 and received a commission as a second lieutenant.
His first major assignment was to Company B of the 100th Infantry Battalion, a segregated unit composed primarily of second-generation Japanese Americans from Hawaii.
Because Korea had been occupied by Imperial Japan, the battalion commander offered Kim an immediate transfer. Kim refused.
“They’re Americans, I’m American, and we’re going to fight for America.”
That decision became one of the defining moments of his life. A Korean American officer and Japanese American soldiers—men whose ancestral countries had been divided by colonialism—would fight together as Americans against fascism.
Kim trained his soldiers with unusual intensity. He emphasized realistic movement-and-fire tactics, rotated enlisted men through leadership roles and used live am******on and explosives to prepare them for actual combat. His methods were demanding, but his soldiers later understood that the training had helped keep them alive.
Blood and Courage on the Italian Front
The 100th Infantry Battalion deployed to North Africa and entered the Italian campaign in September 1943 as part of the U.S. Fifth Army’s 34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division. Its soldiers fought through mountainous terrain, artillery barrages, minefields, machine-gun positions and fortified German defenses. Their casualties became so severe that the unit earned the name “the Purple Heart Battalion.”
Kim quickly distinguished himself.
During combat in late 1943, he operated as one of the scouts leading a patrol against German machine-gun positions. According to the Silver Star citation, Kim deliberately drew enemy fire so two fellow scouts could locate and destroy German positions with grenades. The patrol eliminated four machine-gun nests and captured seven prisoners.
In another engagement, Kim observed a much larger German force entering his patrol’s area. Although heavily outnumbered, he ordered his men to remain concealed and hold their fire until a German platoon had moved into a vulnerable position. His soldiers then opened fire, maneuvered against the retreating enemy and drove the Germans toward adjacent American forces. The enemy platoon was killed or captured.
Kim was wounded near Santa Maria Oliveto and received his first Silver Star and Purple Heart. He continued fighting through the Italian campaign, including operations associated with Cassino and the Anzio beachhead. Lieutenant General Mark Clark, commander of the Fifth Army, described him as an able and exceptionally tough soldier.
May 16, 1944: The Mission No One Expected to Succeed
By May 1944, Allied commanders trapped at the Anzio beachhead urgently needed to identify the German units defending the route toward Rome. Numerous patrols—including patrols of considerable strength—had failed to capture a prisoner for interrogation.
First Lieutenant Young Oak Kim volunteered.
Shortly after midnight on May 16, Kim, Private First Class Irving M. Akahoshi and several covering soldiers moved through drainage ditches, barbed wire, mines and German outposts near Cisterna. Kim and Akahoshi then advanced beyond their supporting team.
They remained motionless within extremely close range of German soldiers, waiting for daylight and for the enemy’s routine to change. Kim later explained that the plan worked partly because the Germans could not imagine that anyone would be reckless enough to cross the wire and lie directly in front of them.
When daylight came, Kim and Akahoshi crawled across an exposed field under observation from German positions. The official Distinguished Service Cross citation records that they had penetrated approximately 800 yards through the enemy outpost line and crawled another 250 yards across open ground in broad daylight.
They approached a German position from the rear and discovered two armed guards asleep in a slit trench. Instead of using grenades and alerting the entire German defense, Kim and Akahoshi improvised. They simultaneously placed their Thompson submachine guns against the two soldiers, ordered them to remain silent, disarmed them and began the dangerous return journey.
The Americans and their prisoners crawled back through enemy territory, bypassed German listening posts and reached the Allied lines alive.
The information obtained from the prisoners identified enemy units and dispositions in a critical sector. It became part of the intelligence that supported the Allied breakout from Anzio and the advance toward Rome. For extraordinary heroism, Kim and Akahoshi received the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest U.S. Army decoration for valor. General Clark personally presented the awards.
The story is sometimes presented online as “the crazy mission.” That exact description is not part of the official citation. Yet the verified details—mines, barbed wire, an overnight infiltration, a daylight crawl beneath German observation and the capture of two armed enemy soldiers—show why later generations described it in such dramatic terms.
The Road to Rome—and the Recognition They Were Denied
After the Anzio breakout, the 100th Infantry Battalion advanced toward Rome. At Lanuvio, German forces had established an interlocking network of machine-gun positions that stopped two battalions from another American regiment.
On June 2, the 100th was ordered to attack.
Within approximately 36 hours, the battalion knocked out nearly a dozen machine-gun positions, crossed or cleared minefields and shattered what Go For Broke National Education Center describes as the last major German stronghold on the road to Rome. The cost was terrible: 15 soldiers killed, 63 wounded and one missing.
The battalion had helped open the road. Kim’s prisoner-capture mission had provided valuable intelligence. The soldiers expected to enter Rome with the victorious Fifth Army.
Instead, on June 4, only about 10 kilometers from the city, the 100th was ordered to stop beside the road while other American troops and vehicles passed them and entered Rome. The Japanese American soldiers who had paid such a high price were denied the public triumph they had earned.
This historical fact makes Kim’s story even more powerful. Heroism does not always receive immediate applause. Sometimes those who open the road are not allowed to march at the head of the parade.
After Rome, the 100th joined the newly arrived 442nd Regimental Combat Team but retained its original battalion name in recognition of its extraordinary combat record. The combined formation continued fighting near Livorno, Hill 140, Pisa and the Arno River before deploying to France.
France: Liberation, Wounds and an Escape from Capture
In October 1944, Kim and the 100th Battalion fought in France, helping secure Bruyères and advance toward Biffontaine in the Vosges Mountains.
At Biffontaine, German gunfire tore through Kim’s hand. While he was being evacuated by a litter team, a German patrol surrounded the group. Kim refused to accept capture. During the confusion, he and medic Richard Chinen slipped into the forest and made their way back to American lines. Headquarters had already received a report that Kim was dead.
His injuries ended his World War II combat service. He received another Purple Heart and French recognition for his wartime service. France later appointed him to the Legion of Honor.
Returning to War for the Land of His Parents
Kim left the Army after World War II and established a successful business in Los Angeles. When the Korean War began in 1950, however, he returned to military service.
He arrived in Korea in 1951 and served with the 31st Infantry Regiment of the 7th Infantry Division. He worked in intelligence and operations, commanded a South Korean guerrilla unit and participated directly in combat operations against Chinese and North Korean forces.
South Korea’s Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs credits Kim with helping organize defensive forces during the Chinese spring offensives of 1951 and with leading troops in the battles of Guman Mountain, Tapgol and Geumbyeong Mountain. His forces were among the United Nations units that advanced most rapidly to the Kansas Line. He received another Silver Star and a Bronze Star for his Korean War service.
After being seriously wounded and receiving treatment in Japan, Kim returned to the front. Promoted to major, he assumed command of the 1st Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment. The U.S. Army recognizes him as the first Asian American to command a regular American combat battalion in wartime.
His leadership was not limited to combat. Kim persuaded his battalion to support a Seoul orphanage caring for more than 500 children. Soldiers provided money, food and supplies for approximately 18 months while continuing to fight at the front.
A Soldier Who Continued Serving After the Shooting Stopped
Kim remained in the Army after Korea. He served as an instructor at Fort Benning and at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, held assignments in Germany and returned to South Korea as a military adviser. He was promoted to colonel in 1965 and retired in 1972.
His military career brought him 19 decorations and medals, according to the National Museum of the United States Army. Among the principal honors associated with his service were the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, Bronze Stars, multiple Purple Hearts, the French Croix de Guerre and Legion of Honor, Italian military valor decorations and South Korea’s Taeguk Order of Military Merit.
Retirement did not end his service.
Kim helped establish or lead organizations supporting health care, immigrant families, education, civil rights, victims of domestic and sexual violence, veterans and Asian American history. His work included involvement with the Korean Health, Education, Information and Research Center; the Center for Pacific Asian Families; the Korean American Coalition; the Korean American Museum; the Japanese American National Museum; and the Go For Broke Educational Foundation.
He remained especially devoted to preserving the history of the Japanese American soldiers with whom he had fought. He helped lead the effort to build the Go For Broke Monument in Los Angeles and promoted educational programs teaching future generations about the 100th Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
Kim died of cancer on December 29, 2005, at age 86. His legacy lives through the Young Oak Kim Academy in Los Angeles, the Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies at the University of California, Riverside, and the Col. Young-Oak Kim Armed Forces Reserve Center at Camp Humphreys in South Korea.
The Hope Rising World Tribute
Colonel Young Oak Kim’s greatness cannot be measured only by the prisoners he captured, the enemy positions he helped destroy or the medals placed on his uniform.
His greater achievement was his refusal to surrender to hatred.
As the son of a Korean independence activist, he chose brotherhood with Japanese American soldiers. As an American who suffered discrimination, he continued defending American freedom. As a battlefield commander, he protected children who had lost everything. And after surviving two wars, he fought poverty, violence, prejudice and historical forgetfulness.
He was wholly Korean in heritage and wholly American in citizenship—not divided between the two, but strengthened by both.
The mission near Cisterna appeared almost impossible. Yet courage is not the absence of danger. Courage is the decision that a human life, a soldier’s duty or the freedom of a people is worth advancing toward—even when the road ahead looks like madness.
Hope Rising World honors Colonel Young Oak Kim: soldier, liberator, humanitarian and bridge between nations. His life reminds us that the greatest victory is not merely defeating an enemy. It is rising above hatred and using one’s strength to protect humanity.
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