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A Pearl Harbor veteran will share his experiences with students at Warsaw Community High School Friday in the first of two WCS Veterans Day programs.
John Latko, of Hammond, will speak at a Veterans Day convocation Friday at 1:30 p.m. in the WCHS Tiger Den.
Latko was stationed on the U.S.S. West Virginia during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The West Virginia was docked on "Battleship Row," behind the U.S.S. Oklahoma and next to the U.S.S. Tennessee and the U.S.S. Arizona, Latko said in a phone interview Monday.
He was a 21-year-old Marine private, Latko said, and at the time of the attack was waiting on the deck of the ship to go on liberty and play in a baseball game at the munitions dump, which was guarded by Marines.
He never got there.
According to the Pearl Harbor Web site, 106 sailors from the West Virginia, including its captain, were killed in the attack; the ship sank. The Oklahoma capsized, killing 429 men, and the Arizona sank, killing 1,177 men. The Tennessee took two bomb hits, but only five sailors were killed.
Latko said his first thought, when the bombs and torpedoes were exploding and ships were capsizing, was, "What's my mother going to say?
"No mother wants her son to go to war," he said.
Still, Latko managed to save the life of a fellow sailor, an act that was captured on film in a now-famous photo. Fifty years later, at a Pearl Harbor memorial service in Washington, D.C., he met the man whose life he saved.
Now he talks about the attack at schools and relates his experiences to students, because, he said, "some of them don't know anything about Pearl Harbor."
The event is open to the public, and other veterans are encouraged to attend.
Tuesday, on Veterans Day, the Warsaw middle schools will present their annual concert at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. in Lakeview Middle School gym. The public also is invited to the concert, and veterans in attendance will be honored during the program.
For more information about the concert, call Edgewood Middle School at 267-5828 or Lakeview Middle School at 269-7211.
For more information about the WCHS program, call the school at 267-5174.
