Bismarck Tribune

By KAREN HERZOGBy KAREN HERZOG

George Moch was serving on a submarine base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941.

That Sunday morning, members of his crew who weren't among the few staying on the submarine were lined up for roll call when planes flew overhead.

It took Moch a moment to register that the planes carried the red insignia of the rising sun - "not ours," he said.

In fact, one pilot looked out, smiled and waved, he said.

Then the bombs and torpedoes did their work.

On Wednesday, Pearl Harbor survivor George Moch, still trim at 86 - "spiffy" as Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., observed - received a flag, white stars on a blue field showing in the triangular wooden frame.

Moch, now of Bismarck but formerly from the Hazelton-Braddock area, was unable to attend the 65th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor memorial Dec. 7, 2006, but the flag presented to him Wednesday is one that has flown above the USS Arizona, sunk that day and remaining where it came to rest in 38 feet of water, ever since. The American flag flies over the Arizona night and day; Moch's flag flew over the Arizona on Dec. 7, 2005.

As one of a dwindling number of Pearl Harbor survivors, Moch's family is replete with veterans, from destroyer and battleship crew members to torpedomen, from World War II to Korea to Vietnam. He himself enlisted in the Navy just a year before Pearl Harbor, in December 1940. He chose theNavy, he said, because his father had been in the Navy, in the old country, he said.

Commander Ed Nieuwsma, of Strasburg, saluted Moch and spoke at the presentation ceremony at the North Dakota Heritage Center.

"There's not many of us landlocked sailors from Emmons County around,"Nieuwsma said. "You don't turn your back on your shipmates.

"You did it all," he said to Moch. "You won your war."

Dorgan presented the flag and a certificate to Moch, in honor, he said, of all those who left farms and homes and went halfway around the world to serve their country.

Accepting the flag, Chief Motor Machinist Moch (retired) said, "It's been a long time ago and I haven't forgotten, those who dove and tried to swim through the flames," and the men entombed still in the Arizona.

"It was a terrible day, and it lasted forever."