John William Finn

Lieutenant John William Finn (24 July 1909 – 27 May 2010) was a sailor in the United States Navy who, as a chief petty officer and aviation ordnanceman, received the United States military's highest decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his actions during the attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II. Though ordnancemen are only responsible for performing maintenance on guns and handling of munitions, Finn – when the Japanese bombed Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay during the 7 December attack – earned the medal by firing a machine gun from an exposed position throughout the attack, despite being repeatedly wounded. At the time of his death, Finn was the oldest living Medal of Honor recipient, the last living recipient from the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the last living United States Navy recipient of World War II.

Note: Edited interview transcript featured in Beyond Glory: Medal of Honor Heroes in their Own Words (2003) by Larry Smith, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, hardcover, pages 53-69.

• I fired at the Japs for the next two hours and a half. All I did was shoot at every one I could find. You dont knock 'em down out of the air. That plane is doing close to two hundred knots, just a flick, and he's gone. You might not get fifteen or twenty seconds- that's a long blast. I kept firing till the last Jap left, but I did lots of things in between. There were lulls. I said to Sully when he showed up, 'Get those God damn things, those bomb-handling carts, out of here!' And he said a stupid thing: 'Where shall I take 'em?' I said, 'Take 'em out and disperse 'em in the brush. Whatever you do, don't put 'em all in one place. And immediately I went back out and fired some machine gun again. Next time, I come back, there were those God damn things all in the corner. They hadn't been moved. Well, I made up my mind I was gonna kill Sullivan. I thought he lost his nerve and ran out and hid someplace, because there was one or two cases where guys hid in the bushes.
  Well, what happened, he had gone off to find the squadron truck. He was doin' exactly what I told him. I didn't have to shoot him. And you could never find that fuckin' truck. Always somebody's got it off somewhere else. He finally traced the truck and come back to the hangar with it, but now he needed the tractor to get the squadron door open. It was a brand-new hangar, and you needed the tractor or all three hundred men in the squadron to open that door.'
  • p. 61

• I got the Medal at one PM on September fifteenth, nineteen forty-two, on board the USS Enterprise in Pearl Harbor. It was awarded by Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. He made a good speech. I still remember his words. He said, 'Do not think for an instant that we have the enemy on the run. He is a tough, sagacious, brave, determined enemy.' Then he said, 'But we are making progress,' so that made me happy. Then he come up, praised me, said laudatory remarks about my 'magnificent courage,' one thing and another. I've got a copy of that. But I wasn't courageous. All I was doing, I was pissed off and mad, and I was doing exactly what I thought I would do if there ever come a war. But I never dreamed that I might fight in a war. You didn't think of that. But anyway, he came up to me, and he had kind of a little bit of an old farmer way of talking- you know, he was born and raised in Texas- and he said, 'Finn, it gives me great pleasure to pin, or, ah, hang, this medal around your neck.' I was standing there, of course, I was naturally at attention, here was my admiral. The ship was under repair and there was more racket around there with air hoses and crap all over the deck and banging and hammering everywhere. But during that ceremony, they stopped all the noise. Nimitz gave out twenty-five awards. I was number one in line. I think there were two Navy Crosses, and other awards.
  • p. 67-68

• [They have] whatever it takes to go out and do what they did to get the Medal of Honor, whatever it is- the guts, the courage, or whatever. They had the guts, and stupidity too. I didn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain. But I was mad a lot of the time, pissed off. I can truthfully say that I don't remember being scared to death. But I was God damn mad. Anger, hunger, and sex; those are the greatest instincts that we've got. Those are things we are born with. What else is there?
  • p. 68-69

• For extraordinary heroism distinguished service, and devotion above and beyond the call of duty. During the first attack by Japanese airplanes on the Naval Air Station, Kaneohe Bay, on 7 December 1941, Lt. (then A.C.O.M.) Finn promptly secured and manned a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on an instruction stand in a completely exposed section of the parking ramp, which was under heavy enemy machine-gun strafing fire. Although painfully wounded many times, he continued to man this gun and to return the enemy's fire vigorously and with telling effect throughout the enemy strafing and bombing attacks and with complete disregard for his own personal safety. It was only by specific orders that he was persuaded to leave his post to seek medical attention. Following first-aid treatment, although obviously suffering much pain and moving with great difficulty, he returned to the squadron area and actively supervised the rearming of returning planes. His extraordinary heroism and conduct in this action were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.
  • Citation for the Medal of Honor awarded to Finn, presented on 15 September 1942 by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz aboard USS Enterprise (CV-6) at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii[1]

• Today, the oldest living recipient of the Medal of Honor is John Finn, who was decorated for action on Pearl Harbor Day. Born in 1909, John joined the Navy in 1926, and, loquacious as we all tend to be when we findally grasp that we have too many stories and not enough time, he will transfix anyone who cares to listen with tales of what it was like to grow up before the First World War and to ply the Yangtze River as a young sailor aboard an American gunboat.
  In 1941, he was stationed in Kaneohe Bay, with a squadron of Navy patrol planes. Rudely rousted from bed by the cacaphony of the Japanese bombs destroying the fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, John raced from his quarters, sped to the hangars that housed his aircraft, and manned a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on an exposed section of a parking ramp. For the next two hours, Finn, in the open and suffering from more than twenty shrapnel wounds in his back and stomach, blasted at the attacking enemy planes, hitting many of them and not relinquishing his post until the attack was over. Even when we were young, those of us who were raised on stirring John Wayne war movies assumed there was more than a little hyperbole and cinematic license in them. But for forty years I have known a man whose real-life exploits render the movies limp, pallid, and ineffectual in contrast. Art can often approximate life, but it has a hard time doing it justice.
  • Jack H. Jacobs, If Not Now, When? Duty and Sacrifice in America's Time of Need (2008), p. 272

• Not long ago, I asked John what he was doing at the precise moment when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. "Truth be told, my boy," John said, "I was in bed with a good-looking gal." I asked if he ever saw her again. "See her again?" said John. "She was my wife for sixty years!" Then he slapped his knee and bellowed with laughter.
  • Jack H. Jacobs, If Not Now, When? Duty and Sacrifice in America's Time of Need (2008), p. 272