"Asiatic sailors are very bitter toward Pearl Harbor for getting caught so neatly after they had been on alert for so long. They ask me, as if I was personally responsible, 'What in hell were you people doing back there anyway, to be caught that way?' Incredible!" Memoirs, page 22

Donald Patrick Finn

Graduating Class 13-29 Aviation Mechanics School, N.T.S. Norfolk, VA Nov. 1940. [detail] War: World War II, 1939-1946 Branch: Navy Unit: VP-22 (Patrol Squadron), Pacific Fleet Service Location: Pacific Theater; Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Rank: Aviation Chief Machinist's Mate

By the end of World War II, Donald Patrick Finn, who served in the Navy in the Pacific Theater, could say he nearly saw it all. He was stationed in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He would serve as an aviation machinist and a gunner in Australia, Bali, the Dutch East Indies, and in the Aleutian Islands. He kept a diary and wrote letters to his sister in which he recorded detailed descriptions of his travels as well as pointed comments about military life, his comrades, and servicemen from other countries.