Hero from Hawai'i lands in Aviation Hall of Fame

By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

Dennis M. Fujii, a lifelong Hawai'i resident and Vietnam War hero, was inducted this spring into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame. His picture hangs at the Army Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker, Ala.

Dennis M. Fujii

They were actions that, for a while, the young soldier thought would land him in the brig.

It was February. The North Vietnamese had continued to stream into South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh trail, which cut through Laos. That supply line needed to be severed, but American voters didn't want to see the war extended into a neighboring country.

"The president had promised the American people that no American soldiers would do any of the fighting," Fujii said. "There would be no American soldiers on the ground."

Fujii was there, but not to fight. He was a crew chief aboard an Army ambulance helicopter. The crew's mission was to fly into Laos, guarded by two Cobra gunships, and pick up wounded South Vietnamese soldiers.

"We were taking all kinds of fire — the aircraft was taking all kinds of hits, and I didn't know how long we could stay in the air," Fujii said.

The aircraft commander decided to turn back to Vietnam. The two Cobras broke off to refuel.

Fujii said he was relieved to be headed back to safety, but the feeling didn't last long. At some point soon after the gunships had left, the pilot in command changed his mind, and headed back into Laos.

"So next thing I know," he said, "we're back in it again. Huge anti-aircraft guns, big puffs of smoke following the aircraft all the way in. But we made it."

The pilots put the helicopter down on a hill, and Fujii jumped out on one side, a medic on the other.

"And we each started grabbing the wounded and throwing them on board," he said. "Literally picking them up — they were smaller than we were — and throwing them. They were screaming, but there were rounds exploding all over the place and we couldn't stay."

They piled as many wounded soldiers into the helicopter as they could, then took off. The aircraft didn't make it far. A round exploded through its nose just as it lifted from the ground.

"The pilots jettisoned the doors and we scattered," Fujii said.

Crawling along the battlefield, rounds whizzing by, Fujii and two medics made it into a nearby bunker. They'd lost track of the pilots.

"I said, 'Paul, I'm hit,' " Fujii said. The medic checked him out.

"But you're not too bad," Paul said.

After 45 minutes of hunkering in the bunker, the rescue helicopter came. Braving a gauntlet of enemy fire, the youngest medic ran for the helicopter. Paul followed. The pilots, who had found sheltered on the other side of the wreckage, ran for it, too.

One of the pilots, a man who had been in Vietnam for about two weeks, was hit and paralyzed from the waist down. The other, the aircraft commander, tried to pry the radio free from the nose of the wrecked air ambulance before getting into the rescue chopper. He was killed.

Fujii, at the bunker, prepared to make his run.

"Just as I got out," he said, "a mortar round hit and blew me back in."

A barrage of gun and mortar fire followed. If the pilots didn't take off immediately, they weren't going to make it out. Fujii wasn't going to make it through the rain of fire alive, anyway.

"I waved them off," he said.

The rescue ship rose to safety. The battle raged on around Fujii, and it wasn't going well.

Between 3,000 and 5,000 North Vietnamese soldiers had the hill surrounded and were bearing down, Fujii said. The South Vietnamese started out with about 500 soldiers, but were quickly whittled down to a force of about 125. The enemy soldiers kept coming.

A South Vietnamese colonel asked Fujii to help out until he could get himself aboard the first helicopter that touched down. Fujii found a radio, and started calling in air support. The battle raged on.

Two days later, a rescue helicopter made it to the ground. Fujii jumped aboard.

"There were so many choppers coming in," he said, that we had to maneuver to get out. The enemy was 25 yard away, and shooting at the helicopter."

The rescue chopper was hit, caught fire and went down, crashing into another hill. Fujii was stranded — again.

"Believe me," he said, "I was trying to get out of there. I wasn't trying to do the John Wayne thing."

Another two days passed before Fujii was able to board a third rescue helicopter and escape the battlefield. He still keeps in touch with the pilot that flew him out. At the time though, all he could think about was President Nixon.

"I was a nervous wreck," he said. "The president had said no Americans on the ground, but I was an American, and I was calling in gunships — fighting. I wasn't even an officer. I didn't want to be responsible ... It was nerve wracking."

He hadn't slept while on the battlefield. He had one meal. He hadn't had any water. When the helicopter landed at Camp Eagle, someone gave him milk. He drank three glasses.

"It was so wonderful to have something cool to drink," he said. "I was so glad to be alive."

Everyone was nice to him at the hospital, he said, but he thought it worrisome that they kept him in a ward by himself. They told him he had to be debriefed. Part of the debriefing went like this:

"We're going to send you home on convalescence. Don't say anything bad about the war."

"OK," Fujii said.

When the first leg of his flight terminated in Okinawa, a sergeant met him at the airport and escorted him to a VIP lounge, then escorted him to his connecting flight. The escorting worried Fujii.

"They are going to court-martial me," he thought.

When his plane finally touched down in Honolulu, Fujii was scared. His shoulder hurt — it still had stitches in it. A stewardess asked him to stay on the plane until everyone else had left. Probably so he could meet the military police quietly, he thought.

When the plane had emptied, he braced himself and stepped out into the Honolulu sunshine.

"And a band started playing," he said. "Hundreds of people were there. And Gov. Burns. And a motorcade ... "

His family from Kaua'i was there, too, flown in for the occasion, and they were all put up in a Waikiki hotel.

"It was beautiful," Fujii said.

For his service during the Vietnam War, Fujii was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, the Purple Heart, two Air Medals and a Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palms.

In 1971, he was named Soldier of the Year, and flown to Washington to meet the secretary of the Army.

Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.