MARINE VETERAN WAS ONE OF REGION’S LAST SURVIVORS OF ’41 ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR
JOE WALSH • 1919-2019
Back in 1987, Marine veteran Joe Walsh co-founded the North County chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association because he believed the men he served with on that fateful day of Dec. 7, 1941, “deserved to be remembered.”
Now it’s his turn. On Dec. 21, Walsh passed away after a brief illness at the Pacifica Senior Living complex in Vista. He was 100 years old.
Walsh was the last surviving active member of the association’s Chapter 31, following the death in February of chapter cofounder John Quier, 98, of Fallbrook.
As the chapter’s longtime president, Walsh organized Pearl Harbor Memorial Day services each Dec. 7 at Oceanside Harbor. Over the years, he never missed a single service, including the one held earlier this month, just two weeks to the day before he died.
“I think he was holding on for this year’s service,” said daughter Joan Culver of Fallbrook. “It meant a lot to him.”
At his 100th birthday party in March, Walsh said his memories of that morning 78 years ago were still razor-sharp.
“You don’t forget something like that,” he said.
Then a Marine in the 3rd Defense
Battalion, Walsh was at a color guard ceremony in the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard when the Japanese attack began at 7:55 a.m. He and his fellow Marines manned three anti-aircraft guns, trying to shoot down the invading planes before they could sink the American battleships near the harbor’s entrance.
“I didn’t have time to get scared,” he recalled. “You don’t think about it. You did what you were told to do. You manned your gun and tried to get anyone you could.”
A few weeks after the attack, Walsh was shipped to the desolate Johnston Atoll in the South
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