John Finn, A Hard Man to Kill

image by @zapomicron, deposit photos

John William Finn was awarded the very first Medal of Honor during World War II, and for his actions he earned the nickname “A Hard Man to Kill.” At age ninety-nine, he stood (with the aid of walking sticks) beside President Obama as a wreath was laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He lived to be one hundred years old, proving his nickname to be fitting.

But what did he do during the attack at Pearl Harbor?

Finn talked about that day in interviews that can still be found on YouTube. In one, he recalled the moment he suddenly realized what was happening.

“The war is now there, right now. One minute I’m warm in bed with a pretty blonde” (his wife) “and the next minute I’m down there.”

Finn was not stationed at Pearl Harbor itself. Instead, he was at Kaneohe Bay, a base on the northeast side of Oahu, across a narrow stretch of the island from Pearl Harbor. In the fog of war, it is not absolutely certain that Kaneohe Bay was hit before Pearl Harbor proper, though many believe it was. At the very least, it was struck in the first wave.

He mentioned that he and his wife had only recently moved into their new quarters and had not yet put up curtains. That meant he saw a plane flash past his window. Instantly, his mind began working. By this point, he had already been in the Navy for years, and most of his assignments had involved working around planes.

He saw the plane and knew immediately that it was not a PBY—the planes used by his squadron. His first thought was practical. "It’s Sunday. Who is flying low over the quarters and not following the flight pattern? Then he noticed the planes were single-engine. And that the machine guns were firing too slowly." (Japanese aircraft machine guns fired at a slower rate than American ones.)

A sailor’s wife pounded on his door and told him he was wanted down at the hangar.

image from deposit photos

Finn jumped into his old Ford, but did not immediately speed. The posted speed limit on base was twenty miles per hour. About halfway around a hill, he heard a plane roaring up behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the red “meatballs” on the wings. It was a Japanese plane.

“I threw that old Ford into second gear,” he said, “and from then on I broke every speed law that was ever set.”

Finn was a Chief Petty Officer, with about thirty-five men under his command. When he arrived at the armory, two of his men were already manning machine guns. He also realized that depth charges, each containing around five hundred pounds of TNT, were stored in the building. He immediately ordered one of his men to get those depth charges out of the building. Then he went out to take over the .50-caliber machine gun.

When describing the events later, Finn said simply that he dragged the machine gun away from the hangar so he could see over it. He did not dwell on the fact that this placed him completely out in the open, with no cover. He manned that position for the next two and a half hours.

When asked if he shot down any planes, he laughed and said, “You can’t shoot down a plane with a .50-cal.”

When asked whether he hit the first plane he saw, he replied, “I’d be a liar if I said I hit it…but I’d be the worst shot in the world if I didn’t hit some of them.”

Finn later said he suffered 21 shrapnel wounds. His Medal of Honor citation states that he was “painfully wounded many times,” and some sources also note gunshot wounds to his shoulder and foot, though in this particular interview he did not mention those injuries. Despite his wounds, he continued to command his men. Only when the attack was over, and under direct orders, did he leave his post. He did not report to sick bay until the following day and spent the next two and a half weeks there recovering.

Finn summed up his actions this way, “My deed was inconsequential the way I see it. Some of the guys, you just cannot believe what they did.”

Pearl Harbor is often remembered as a single catastrophic morning, but it was experienced in thousands of fiercely individual moments. John Finn’s was just one of them.

There is a television show I enjoy called Major Dad. In one episode, a character asks, “So the Marines reward stubborn officers?”

The reply: “They name ships after them.”

image by photowrzesien, deposit photos

It is fitting, then, that the modern U.S. Navy includes the USS John Finn.

There were many men at Pearl Harbor, and many left their stories behind. If you’d like to read another account by a Pearl Harbor veteran—and hear how a single postcard shut down an entire post office—you can learn more here.