JOHN FINN’S LAST STAND

MARINE CORPS BASE HAWAII Some-where across the broad, windswept seaplane ramp off Kaneohe Bay, Navy Chief Petty Officer John Finn fought out in the open until he was almost shot to pieces from shrapnel, suffering more than 20 wounds.

As Japanese fighters and bombers pummeled what was then Naval Air Station, Kaneohe Bay — 30 miles northeast of Pearl Harbor along Oahu’s Windward Coast — Finn set up a .30- caliber machine gun out in the open on the ramp and started blasting away at enemy aircraft.

“So this is the actual battlefield,” says amateur historian Ray Rippel, standing on a recent morning not far from where Finn fought. There was the scar of a patched- over bomb crater nearby. “This is where the bombs fell, where the strafing took place. The vast majority of it was on this ramp.”

There were PBY Catalina seaplanes here, used for long- distance reconnaissance and submarine warfare. Kaneohe was one of several airfields across Oahu targeted by the Japanese before they concentrated their attack on the Pacific fleet moored at Pearl Harbor.

Finn, who fought for two hours from his makeshift machine- gun position, managed to survive the attack and live to be almost 101. Before he passed away in 2010, he was America’s oldest- living recipient of the Medal of Honor.

Eighteen sailors and two civilians were killed in the attack at Kaneohe Bay. One Catalina seaplane shot and sunk by the Japanese lies today at the bottom of the bay. Hangars and the seaplane ramp still bear the markings from bomb impacts, and cannon and machine- gun fire.

All are off- limits to the public because this is an active military base.

One of the most unusual war markers from the attack is just up the hill from the seaplane hangars. A mound of rocks and a plaque fix the spot where a Japanese Zero fighter plane crashed after sailors shot it down. The pilot was killed.

Rippel, who authored a history of the base titled Marine Corps Base Hawaii on

the Mokapu Peninsula, says Japanese military personnel who today train here jointly with U. S. service members visit the monument in dress uniforms to pay homage.