The American Legion Sadao Munemori Post 321 presented its 24th scholarship in the name of Sadao Munemori to graduating senior YingJun Tan on April 26 at the Abraham Lincoln High School Junior ROTC awards ceremony in Los Angeles.
Cadet Col. Tan was the class battalion commander and will attend Harvard University, majoring in biology and premed. She was the Los Angeles Unified School District’s top All-City Cadet Colonel. She also won awards as platoon drill team and rifle team commander, for marksmanship and having the highest cumulative academic grade point average for the entire battalion.
Coincidently, her sister Yingyin Tan, who is now attending Caltech, was last year’s scholarship awardee.
Master Sgt. (retired) Herbert Harris and Sgt. First Class (retired) Jeffrey Page, Army instructors, conducted the awards program.
Munemori was a 1940 graduate of Lincoln High and is buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles. On April 5, 1945, while serving with A Company, 100th Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, in Seravezza, Italy, he became the first Japanese American Medal of Honor recipient of 23 awarded from World War II to the Vietnam War.