President Clinton yesterday upgraded the World War II decorations of 21 Asian-American heroes to the coveted Medal of Honor, including at least 10 men from Hawaii.

For ethnic groups whose fighting ability and even patriotism were once doubted by the nation’s leaders, the action 55 years after the war is the final stamp of commendation.

Clinton signed documents accepting Pentagon recommendations of higher honors for men who had received the Army’s second-highest medal, the Distinguished Service Cross. Seven are still living. Eleven were killed in action.

Nineteen names on the list are those of Japanese Americans who fought in Europe with the racially segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team or 100th Infantry Battalion. Among those receiving the medal: U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, 75, who lost his right arm in battle as a platoon leader with the 442nd in Italy.

Another medal recipient, Francis Wai, an infantry captain, was of Chinese and Hawaiian ancestry. A UCLA football star before the war, Wai was killed during Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s 1944 liberation of the Philippine island of Leyte.

Recipient Rudolph Davila, 84, of Vista, Calif., is of Filipino and Spanish ancestry.

Presentation of the medals at an outdoor White House ceremony on June 21 will bring to 462 the number of Medals of Honor awarded for the highest gallantry in World War II, in which 15 million Americans served in uniform. Only two fighting men of Asian or Pacific island ancestry, Army Pvt. Sadao Munemori and Sgt. Jose Calugas of the Philippine Scouts, previously had received the blue-ribboned medal for that conflict.

Asian-American veterans say the additional Medals of Honor validate a long drive for justice. Suspecting that wartime prejudice had limited their recognition, veterans of the 442nd and 100th persuaded U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, to sponsor 1996 legislation that ordered a Pentagon search for Medal of Honor candidates among Asian Americans and Pacific islanders.

The law was patterned on an Army study that led to the 1997 award of Medals of Honor to seven black World War II soldiers. No blacks had won the medal during the war because of a biased "racial climate," the Army admitted.

At least four of the Asian Americans named yesterday to receive the Medal of Honor were originally recommended for it by their commanders. They got the Distinguished Service Cross instead.

The Asian-American medal study provoked controversy. When Army historian James McNaughton described the project in 1998 to the Legion of Valor, a group whose members earned the Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Navy Cross and Air Force Cross, he was beset with protests about race-based "political correctness."

Former Legion of Valor President Mike Gilroy now says: "I think there probably would be a concern about it being a politically motivated thing, but it needs to be done."

The citations of those being upgraded speak of astonishing acts of courage: enemy machine guns and tanks silenced by men who charged at point-blank range; wounded comrades carried to safety through galling fire.

‘Hard to believe’

The living recipients, making no claims of past discrimination, were quietly delighted when aides to Army Secretary Louis Caldera phoned them with the news.

"It was hard to believe it," Shizuya Hayashi, 82, of Pearl City said. "During the war, we didn’t think about medals. We just wanted to do our job. I was surprised they gave us medals."

Under Akaka’s bill, the Army reconsidered 104 Asian Americans and Pacific islanders who had won the Distinguished Service Cross. The Navy reopened the files of the single Asian American who had won its equivalent medal, the Navy Cross. A Navy decorations board ruled that Cmdr. Gordon Chung-hoon didn’t merit higher commendation.

Historians at the Army’s Presidio of Monterey in California unearthed the old citations of 47 Japanese Americans, one Korean American, one Hawaiian-Chinese American, 54 Filipinos and one Filipino American. Davila, who served in the Third Army in Europe, is the lone Filipino American.

Army lawyers determined that 23 Filipinos who got the Distinguished Service Cross from MacArthur were ineligible by law for the Medal of Honor. They had served in the Philippine Army or constabulary, not the U.S. Army.

But 25 Philippine Scouts, attached to the U.S. Army, were considered for the top-ranking medal. None were recommended for it by the Army’s three reviewing boards of senior generals, headed by Gen. Eric Shinseki before he became Army chief of staff in June.

Heavily decorated units

Their dominant share of the new Medals of Honor won’t surprise wartime admirers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Infantry Battalion.

After months of initial suspicion by military leaders, political lobbying by Japanese Americans in Hawaii won the community’s young men the right to serve in 1942. The 1,300-member 100th and later the 4,500-member 442nd were organized in Hawaii and fought in France and Italy.

One-third of the units’ enlistees volunteered from Mainland relocation camps where 110,000 Japanese Americans had been interned by presidential order. At least four of those named yesterday for the Medal of Honor left the camps to go to war.

The Asian-American units, which were commanded by whites, were thrown into the thickest fighting. Casualties were heavy. Their loss of 650 men killed and 8,836 wounded marked the highest casualty percentage among Army formations.

At the same time, the 442nd and 100th were the most decorated units of their sizes in Army history. A partial medal count, updated yesterday: 20 Medals of Honor, 48 Distinguished Service Crosses, 560 Silver Stars, 4,000 Bronze Stars, 9,468 Purple Hearts.