SAN DIEGO — Retired Navy Lt. John W. Finn, the oldest Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, died Thursday at a veterans’ nursing home in Southern California at age 100.
Finn enlisted in the Navy just before his 17th birthday and went on to become the first man to receive the nation’s highest military award for heroism during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, according to a Navy statement. He was the oldest of 97 Medal of Honor recipients from World War II still living.
Despite head wounds and other injuries, Finn, the chief of ordnance for an air squadron, continuously fired a .50-caliber machine gun from an exposed position as bullets and bombs pounded the Naval Air Station at Kaneohe Bay in Oahu. He then supervised the rearming of returning American planes.
“Here they’re paying you for doing your duty, and that’s what I did,” Finn told The Associated Press before his 100th birthday. “I never intended to be a hero. But on Dec. 7, by God, we’re in a war.”
Finn received the Medal of Honor on Sept. 15, 1942.
He later served as a limited-duty officer specializing in anti-aircraft guns in San Diego, Hawaii, Washington and Panama and aboard aircraft carriers, the Navy said. He retired in 1956 after three decades of service, but he continued to help young sailors and stayed active in Navy organizations, said Lt. Aaron Kakiel.
