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World War I's greatest fighter ace survived 21 days adrift in the Pacific during WWII -- but he was not a pilot this time. He was a passenger on a B-17 that went down near the Gilbert Islands, and his ordeal tested every limit of human endurance.

In 2014, President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to Private First Class Thomas W. Wong, a US Army nurse who had been killed at the Battle of Manila in 1945. Wong had been originally awarded the Distinguished Service Cross but was upgraded to the Medal of Honor in 2014 after a Pentagon review found that Asian American soldiers had been systematically discriminated against in the medal award process during WWII. At least 20 other Asian American soldiers received similar upgrades as a result of the review.