My grandfather was born and raised in Ireland.
Didn't come to the United States till he was 19 years old.
And he wanted to do one thing: be an American, see?
I had figured out
that I was going to make the Navy my career.
What's a career?
It's 20 years, minimum.
NARRATOR: During the early morning hours of December 7th, 1941,
aviation ordnance chief John Finn
was enjoying a well earned off-duty Sunday
in the tropical paradise of Kaneohe Bay,
a naval air station on the northeast side of Oahu.
Unbeknownst to Finn and the rest of the station's crew,
they were to become the first victims of a lethal Japanese armada
making its way toward its primary target:
Pearl Harbor.
Kaneohe Bay was a new station.
I think we got it going in 1938.
My squadron was the last one to get there.
VP-11 and 12 were already there and well in operation
when my squadron arrived there, too, with their brand new planes.
They'd also just built beautiful
--I mean, nice quarters for enlisted men.
My wife and I, we had a three bedroom quarter,
and we'd just gotten into it, oh, maybe several months,
right on the base.
And it's about a mile from where our quarters were located,
at the base of this Kualoa Hill,
down to the bayfront,
where they launched and retrieved these big patrol planes.
Now, come December the 7th,
and it was early in the morning.
The quarters were so new, we didn't even have curtains up on the windows yet.
And I saw a plane flash by there.
Hey-- in all my naval knowledge,
--it happens to anybody --you know certain things.
What the hell?
Why is that plane not flying the flight plan?
Why is it a single engine plane?
Hey, our planes got two--
Hey, all of a sudden...
--who's firing machine guns?! That's my business.
I mean, the war is now there, right now.
One minute, I'm warm in bed with a pretty blond,
and the next minute, I'm down there...
...and the Japs are there. Okay.
I got in my car, and Eddie Sullivan came out, we didn't even say good morning.
I always give him a ride to the parachute loft. He didn't have a car.
I got on that road that led down to the hangars.
Made a big curve around the base of that hill.
And I got about halfway around that hill, now.
And I heard a plane approaching from the rear.
A big roar, astern of me.
And I looked at that old, dirty, red meatball --it was a red ball on both wings.
I said, "Sully, this is the real McCoy."
"It's the G.D. Japs."
He said, "Yeah."
Didn't say a word.
I threw that old Ford into second gear,
And man, from then on, I broke every speed law that was ever set.
I'm on my way to the hangar, now, full bore.
I looked to my left, and I saw some black smoke
coming from the bay side of that hanger.
I had to run from my car to the armory.
It was a good 50 yard dash across the hangar alone.
And just as I got into the hangar there,
I heard machine guns going off.
When I got out there, on my left was Robert J. Peterson
manning a .30 caliber machine gun.
Over here was my big Indian boy from Oklahoma, Bucky Walters.
He was manning a .50 caliber gun.
And they had the guns right smack as close as they could get
to the wall of the hangar.
A hangar's a huge building.
All right. I said, "Pete, for God's sake, move your gun out--
--you're going to shoot the top of Bucky's head off!"
He says, "We can't, Chief. They're shooting at us!"
I grabbed Bob's machine gun
and I dragged it out there, I guess, about 25 yards.
I wanted to be able to see over that hangar. You can't see through it.
And I didn't know at that time, just where all these planes were coming from,
but I could see where they'd been.
Planes were starting to catch fire.
So I shot at a Jap plane.
I'd be a liar if I said I hit him.
You don't shoot a plane out of the air with a .30 or a .50-caliber,
or even 20, 40 millimeter guns --they can riddle a plane,
and the damn thing will still keep on flying, and maybe make it back to base.
But I'd be the worst shot in the world if I didn't hit some of them.
NARRATOR: Although hit by shrapnel in 21 places,
Chief Finn continued to return the Japanese fire
and coordinate his comrades' defensive maneuvers.
It was only after the attack was over and his men were out of danger,
that he was persuaded to seek medical treatment.
I was going back and forth, kicking a fanny here,
or screaming and hollering.
I was a chief. I was a live chief.
I had a 35-man ordnance crew.
And of course I got the hell shot out of me.
But it didn't kill me.
And if you ain't dead, you can still manage
to monkey around a little bit.
The ceremony took place on the 15th of September,
right on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise in Pearl Harbor.
Admiral Nimitz was there.
And he said,
"Do not think for an instant
this is the nitty-gritty. Do not think for an instant
that we have the enemy on the run.
He is a tough, determined, brave, sagacious enemy."
He used four or five adjectives to describe the Jap action.
And he says,
"But we are making progress."
You don't know what that meant to me, when he said,
"But we are making progress."
Because everywhere, it seemed, out there in the Pacific,
we were getting our socks knocked off by the Japs.
And the monetary damage
is just one thing.
The big loss there
was the loss
of all those men when the Arizona toppled over,
and the Oklahoma laid over. And all throughout the fleet,
there was a loss of life here, there and everywhere.
My deed was...
was inconsequential, the way I see it.
Some of those guys, you just cannot believe what they did.
What they were fighting for was our freedom
and our right to liberty...
...and justice...
and love of God, whatever God you choose to worship,
to have that freedom.