Croatian-American Pearl Harbor hero gets monument in Ljubuški

The monument in honour of Petar Herceg “Tonić” unveiled this week in Ljubuški (Photo credit: hercegovina.info)

ZAGREB, 7 Dec (Hina) – A monument was unveiled on Thursday in Ljubuški, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in memory of Petar Herceg “Tonić”, a US Navy sailor who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his action in World War II when he sacrificed his life to help other sailors leave the capsized USS Utah in Pearl Harbour.

Petar Herceg, who was later anglicized as Peter Tomich, was a United States Navy sailor of Croat descent. He was born in the village of Prolog near Ljubuški and died in Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941 when he remained in a boiler room to secure the boilers and make sure that other men could escape from the USS Utah, torpedoed during Japan’s raid on Pearl Harbor. He risked his life to save the crew of the USS Utah.

Immediately after WWII, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to decorate that sailor posthumously. Later, the decoration was presented to Tomich’s family on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise in the Adriatic city of Split in 2006, 64 years after US President Roosevelt awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour, the highest US award, to him.

The medal is now on display in a gallery in Ljubuški.

Addressing today’s monument-unveiling ceremony, Mayor Vedran Markotić said that erecting this monument in Ljubuški was a tribute to the courage and commitment of Petar Herceg.

Petar Herceg “Tonić” (Photo: Naval Historical Center Online Library of Selected Images/Public domain)

Bosnia and Herzegovina Croat leader Dragan Čović said that the Croats should be proud of Herceg, whose actions bespoke the faith, strength and tenacity of his people.

In attendance at the ceremony were representatives of the US defence sector and the US embassy in Sarajevo.

Tomich was an ethnic Croat from Herzegovina born as Petar Herceg (family nickname ‘Tonić’) in Prolog near Ljubuški, during the Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He immigrated to the United States in 1913, and joined the US Army in 1917.