Pearl Harbor is home to the former Battleship USS Missouri, now open as a memorial. It is also home to the wreck of USS Arizona and the famous memorial that floats just above the sunken battleship that is a grave to over 1100 Americans.
Most people assume that there is only one sunken battleship in Pearl Harbor. They are wrong. There is a second and it is the grave of an American hero.
What is this second ship? Who is this hero and why is his story so uniquely American?
On the Northwest corner of Ford Island in Pearl Harbor is a memorial that is missed by most tourists. Just beyond the memorial is the rusting hulk of a ship.
That ship is the grave of Peter Tomich and 63 other American sailors.
Peter Tomich was born in 1893 in a city called Prolog. It was then a part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. It is today part of Bosnia Herzegovina. As a young man of twenty, he immigrated to the United States.
His motivations for immigrating or for that matter, details of his family and early life are lost to history. In 1917, Tomich enlisted in the United States Army and became an American Citizen.
In 1919, after World War I had ended and Tomich’s army enlistment was completed, he enlisted in the Navy. He would spend the rest of his life serving his new country as a sailor.
Tomich rose through the ranks until by 1941, he was a Chief Water Tender. In 1941, he was assigned to USS Utah.
USS Utah was a battleship, first commissioned in 1911. By 1930, the ship was old and obsolete. The United States had to get rid of a number of old battleships to comply with the London Naval Treaty. Instead of being scrapped, Utah was turned into an anti-aircraft training and target ship.
On the morning of December 7th, 1941, Tomich was performing his duties deep in the bowels of the massive ship, which was berthed on the Northwest corner of Ford Island.
Because of large wooden boards that covered much of the deck of USS Utah, which allowed American planes to practice bombing this ship without damaging it or its crew, the Japanese pilots thought Utah was an aircraft carrier.
USS Utah was torpedoed and badly damaged. The ship began to capsize and order was given to abandon ship.
Tomich did not obey that order.
Instead, he stayed at his post deep inside the ship, keeping vital machinery running as long as possible so his shipmates could escape.
At 8:12 AM, less than 15 minutes into the attack, USS Utah capsized and Peter Tomich gave his life for his adopted nation.
For this devotion to duty and his heroism, Peter Tomich was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
Today Hawaii will be bathed in sunshine. The tropical breezes will blow, fluttering the flags that fly above the tombstones of the fallen Americans we remember today on this Memorial Day.
Peter Tomich has no tombstone. He rests where he fell on USS Utah.
Peter Tomich was a true American. He came here to become an American and when his nation asked, he made the ultimate sacrifice.
Today we give Peter Tomich and millions of others the thanks of a grateful nation.
Rest in peace, Peter Tomich: American.
From the Medal of Honor Citation for Peter Tomich
"For distinguished
conduct in the line of his profession, and extraordinary courage and
disregard of his own safety, during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl
Harbor by the Japanese forces on 7 December 1941. Although realizing
that the ship was capsizing, as a result of enemy bombing and
torpedoing, Tomich remained at his post in the engineering plant of the
U.S.S. Utah, until he saw that all boilers were secured and all fireroom
personnel had left their stations, and by so doing lost his own life."
