As a sergeant with the Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Inouye led an assault in Italy's Po Valley against the Germans on April 21, 1945. He was shot in the stomach but kept creeping toward two machine gun nests, destroying both with grenades and rifle fire.

Then a German rifle grenade fired from 10 yards away shattered and severed his right arm.

"I looked at it, stunned and disbelieving. It dangled there by a few bloody shreds of tissue, my grenade still clenched in a fist that suddenly didn't belong to me anymore," Inouye and coauthor Lawrence Elliott wrote in his 1967 autobiography, "Journey to Washington."

Inouye pried his own live grenade out of his right hand and threw it at the German gunman, who was killed by the explosion. He continued firing his gun until he was shot in the right leg and knocked down the hillside. Badly wounded, he ordered his men to keep attacking.