Notice Nearby

Decorations register · Notice Nearby

No rights-safe contemporary likeness is on file. The record is the decoration and the writing, not an invented face.

Thomas Friday Keahanui Hema

1921–1950

Soldier (wartime enlisted rank not stated on VA #VeteranOfTheDay profile)

U.S. Army; WWII: Company A, 399th Infantry Regiment, 100th Infantry Division (France / Saarland / Heilbronn). Korea: 5th Regimental Combat Team (“Hawaiian Regiment”); George Hill near Chingong-ni, Pusan Perimeter, 2 Sep 1950

Documented decorations

Thomas Friday Keahanui Hema’s Bronze Star and Purple Heart are named together in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ #VeteranOfTheDay profile of his World War II and Korean War service. This decorations page records those two types from that VA sentence. It will not invent a Combat “V” or an oak-leaf tally the paragraph does not carry.

Born in 1921 and raised on Oahu, Hema entered the Army in August 1944, reached France with the 399th Infantry of the 100th Infantry Division, and later re-enlisted. With the 5th Regimental Combat Team in Korea he was killed by a chest wound on 2 September 1950 while defending George Hill near Chingong-ni during the last major North Korean push on the Pusan Perimeter. He is interred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. The Bronze Star and Purple Heart are the published decoration names here.

This name is not yet on a war-roll essay. The decorations above are the documented public record this register will stand on until that essay is written.

A publisher register — not a verification

This decorations register is publisher-curated from public records — Medal of Honor Society citations, published general orders, and official Army, Navy, and Marine Corps biographies. It is not a verified-veteran product. Notice Nearby does not certify service and does not issue badges.

A paid or unpaid memorial does not enroll anyone here. Checkout, VET50, and a family’s mention of service on an obituary are not applications to this list. We add a name only when a public official source names the decoration.

Claiming a decoration that was not awarded is stolen valor. It is a disrespect to those who earned the medal and, in some cases, a federal crime. This register will not invent an award to fill a page.

These pages are a historical register. They are not Legal Publication, not a newspaper notice, and not proof that a statute was satisfied.