There was nothing yet infamous about December 7, 1941, when Fr Aloysius Schmitt woke up aboard the battleship the USS Oklahoma to celebrate Mass that Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor.

But just minutes after the liturgy ended, a surprise Japanese attack was underway. Fr Schmitt and a number of other sailors who were in one of the ship’s flooding compartments and was trapped in a compartment with other sailors. They managed to find a small porthole that provided a way out of the ship.. He helped man after man to escape through a small porthole. Sailors urged him to flee, too, but Schmitt declined and continued to point sailors to safety.

In the frantic moments that followed, survivors reported that Fr Schmitt scuppered his own chance of escape and instead helped 12 men through the porthole to safety. When the compartment flooded, cutting off the last means of escape, Schmitt died.

Schmitt, Aloysius Herman, LTJG