Peter Tomich

Biography

Tomich was an ethnic Croat from Herzegovina born as Petar Herceg (family nickname 'Tonić') in Prolog near Ljubuški, Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He immigrated to the United States in 1913, and joined the US Army in 1917.

World War I

Tomich served in the US Army during World War I, and enlisting in the US Navy in 1919, where he initially served on the destroyer USS Litchfield (DD-336).

World War II

By 1941, he had become a chief watertender on board the training and target ship USS Utah. On December 7, 1941, while the ship lay in Pearl Harbor, moored off Ford Island, she was torpedoed during Japan's raid on Pearl Harbor. Tomich was on duty in a boiler room. As Utah began to capsize, he remained below, securing the boilers and making certain that other men escaped, and so lost his life. For his "distinguished conduct and extraordinary courage" at that time, he posthumously received the Medal of Honor. His Medal of Honor was on display at the Navy's Senior Enlisted Academy (Tomich Hall). Later, the decoration was presented to Tomich's family on the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier in the southern Adriatic city of Split in Croatia, on 18 May 2006, sixty-four years after US President Franklin D. Roosevelt awarded it to him.

Medal of Honor citation

"For distinguished conduct in the line of his profession, and extraordinary courage and disregard of his own safety, during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor by the Japanese forces on 7 December 1941. Although realizing that the ship was capsizing, as a result of enemy bombing and torpedoing, Tomich remained at his post in the engineering plant of the U.S.S. Utah, until he saw that all boilers were secured and all fireroom personnel had left their stations, and by so doing lost his own life."

Family

Peter's relative Vidoje Tomich was killed on April 3, 1999, during US SFOR operation to destroy part of Belgrade–Bar railway passing thru Bosnia, during NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

Legacy

The destroyer escort USS Tomich (DE-242), 1943–1974, was named in honor of Chief Watertender Tomich.

The United States Navy Senior Enlisted Academy in Newport, RI is named Tomich Hall in honor of Chief Watertender Tomich.

The Steam Propulsion Training Facility at Service School Command Great Lakes is named in honor of Chief Watertender Tomich.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Headquarters Conference Room in Washington, D.C., is named the Peter Tomich Conference Center.