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With honor, 64 years later

Croatian kin of a Naval hero killed at Pearl Harbor will finally receive his Medal of Honor

BY TIMOTHY M. PHELPS | WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF

May 3, 2006

WASHINGTON - Peter Tomich, a Croatian-American from Astoria, rests in an underwater grave at Pearl Harbor, one of the U.S. Navy's greatest war heroes after he went down with the USS Utah while trying to get other men out alive during the Japanese attack.

He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942. But because the Navy could find no relatives in the United States, the medal itself became a kind of orphan, traveling from one display to another. It is said to be the only such medal in more than 100 years not to find a proper home.

No more. A 9-year campaign by the New York Naval Militia in Jericho to present the medal to Tomich's relatives in Croatia, long resisted by the Navy, was recently approved by Navy Secretary Donald Winter, according to his spokeswoman, Capt. Beci Brenton.

The chief U.S. naval officer in Europe, Adm. Henry Ulrich, is scheduled to present the medal to Srecko Tonic, a retired lieutenant colonel of the Croatian Armed Forces, at a ceremony aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise while it is in port in Split, Croatia, on May 18.

Tonic is the grandson of Peter Tomich's cousin, John Tonic, who emigrated with him to the United States but apparently did not stay.

"As an American it's such a wonderful occurrence that this great nation, after 65 years, would honor the memory of a great naval war hero and spend the time and effort to dignify his medal and his family," said Robert Rosen, a shopping center magnate based in Jericho who commands the New York Naval Militia, the naval equivalent of the New York National Guard. Rosen is a retired admiral in the Naval Reserve.

But the story of how this happened is a lot more complicated, and very nearly did not have a happy ending for the family in Croatia.

It starts Dec. 7, 1941, when Peter Tomich, then 48, was a top enlisted man on the Utah, an aging battleship relegated to the ignominious role of target ship, used for target practice, by the Navy.

But that day it was hit by the Japanese, and they were not practicing.

According to the medal citation, Tomich remained at his station in the bowels of the ship, trying to keep the boilers from exploding so he could get as many men as possible out of the ship alive before it sank.

"Get topside, go ... the ship is turning over ... you have to escape now" he yelled to his men, according to the Web site ussutah.org.

He is considered so important in naval history that an escort ship, the USS Tomich, was named in his honor in 1943. The Naval War College in Newport, R.I., named a classroom building Tomich Hall after him in 1989. The medal was displayed for a time on the USS Tomich, and later at the Utah State House. It then went to the Navy Museum in Washington, according to court records.

An associate of Rosen in the Naval Reserve, Robert Lunney, a Westchester lawyer and retired naval officer as well, went to Tomich's hometown in Croatia nine years ago to do genealogical research in hopes of getting the medal to Tomich's family, where it is supposed to be. He located John Tonic's family, which designated Srecko Tonic to receive the medal.

The Navy refused, unsure that Srecko Tonic was indeed Peter's next of kin, in part because of the different spelling, and asserting that it was not required to hand over the medal anyway, according to court records. Lunney felt so strongly that he sued the Navy after having himself designated by the family as the trustee of Tomich's estate. He lost in Manhattan federal court, but an appeals court agreed with the Navy that the courts had no jurisdiction in the military matter.

The matter might have stayed there, with the medal remaining an orphan at the Navy Museum in Washington, but for a recent encounter in Croatia between a high-ranking Pentagon official and a representative of the family, who asked for help getting the medal, according to diplomatic sources. This time, after further research, the Navy relented.

Rosen defended the Navy's handling of the case.

"This is the nation's highest award," he said. "We must take great care to make sure it was the right person, the right family, because of the high dignity of this medal. Sometimes, in a large organization there is bureaucracy, and frankly I respect that."