John William Finn

"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 hes gone. You might not get fifteen or twenty seconds- thats 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, dont 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 hadnt 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 didnt have to shoot him. And you could never find that fuckin truck. Always somebodys 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."

"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. Ive got a copy of that. But I wasnt 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 didnt 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."

"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 enemys 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."