My Time with Hiroshi Miyamura at the White House By Kenneth Riege
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I have had the extreme honor of getting to spend time with Gallup’s Favorite Son and one of our nation’s greatest heroes - Mr. Hiroshi “Hershey” Miyamura. Earlier this year Hershey invited me to go with him to the Medal of Honor Convention in Annapolis, MD. The dates of the convention were September 12th through the 16th. While visiting with Hershey, he asked me if I had ever been to the White House, which of course I replied, “No,” and he then asked if I had ever met a U.S. president, which again, I replied, “No.” Hershey stated, for the MOH Convention trip, we would leave on September 11th. Part of the trip involved each of the MOH recipients and one guest going to the White House to meet the president. Hershey has of course done this quite often, and I was honored to have this experience at least once. That’s just how Hershey is, always thinking and doing for others. We flew from Albuquerque to Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport and then changed planes to proceed to Baltimore. On that flight there were five Medal of Honor recipients. It was so cool to be surrounded by such greatness. The pilot came out to greet the MOH recipients and informed us that he was a fighter pilot with the U.S. Air Force, and he was so honored to be flying with five MOH recipients on 9/11. We arrived in Baltimore, and Hershey got to visit with his fellow MOH recipients as they shared stories of their lives and 50
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families. That was quite a “pinch yourself” moment to realize I was sitting with our nation’s finest. Wednesday came, and everyone was very excited to visit the White House. Many of the MOH recipients had already met President Trump. Hearing their stories and being at the White House was a tremendous honor. After clearing through security, we loaded onto several buses with a heavy police escort to the White House. I will admit I was a bit nervous. We arrived to a great fan fair of many different high-ranking military and civilian officials and proceeded to the East Wing. While waiting to meet with the president, we were greeted with music and White House
officials welcoming us. Again, another one of those “pinch me” moments when you realize you are standing in the White House with 34 of our nation’s Medal of Honor recipients waiting to meet the president of the United States. WOW! After about an hour, we were taken to a room to meet the president. There were Medal of Honor recipients from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Hershey and I were second in line behind WWII MOH Recipient Mr. Hershel “Woody” Williams. Woody’s grandson asked me if I had been there before. I told him I hadn’t, and he asked me if I was nervous, which strangely enough, I wasn’t at that moment. I had it in my mind to thank the president for an action he had done several months earlier.
It was back in June, when the president of France was visiting, and he and President Trump planted a tree from Belleau Wood. This means so much to me as my grandfather Pvt. Paul Emerson Riege fought at the Battle of Belleau Wood during WWI with the USMC. Our time came to meet the President, and I kept playing through my mind what I was going to say. That worked until I saw him, and the only thing that went through my mind at that time was, “Oh! That’s the president of the United States.” At that point the only thing I could say was, “It’s a great honor to meet you, sir,” and he said, “Oh no, the honor is all mine. Thank you for coming and welcome to the White
