Vietnam War Veteran’s Dying Wish To Visit Pearl Harbor Is Fulfilled

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — When a Vietnam maestro quickly stopped in Hawaii on his approach home from war, he vowed to lapse one day to respect a people who perished during a conflict on Pearl Harbor. With only reduction than dual months to live, Joseph Hooker satisfied his longtime dream on Wednesday.

The Marine Corps veteran, who has heart illness and cancer, trafficked from his home in Essex, Maryland, to Honolulu to revisit a site of a Japanese conflict that pushed a United States into World War II. The Dream Foundation, that grants wishes for those who have life expectancies of a year or less, organised for a journey.

Hooker’s hermit and sister-in-law, who are his caregivers, took turns pulling him in a wheelchair as they went on a private debate of a battleship USS Missouri.

The Hawaii dream stems from a 20-minute stop in a islands in 1971 as Hooker headed home from Vietnam, Hooker pronounced from his Waikiki hotel room Tuesday. He was let off a boat only prolonged adequate to make a phone call to his family and eat some ice cream. He betrothed to come behind someday “to respect a group and women that gave their life during Pearl Harbor.”

More than 4 decades later, Hooker visited a mark where Japan surrendered on a rug of a USS Missouri and got a singular look inside a captain’s cabin. “I’ve never seen a battleship like this before,” he said.

The Dream Foundation’s new program, Dreams for Veterans, done Hooker’s wish possible. In applying, Hooker wrote a minute observant that he longed to revisit Pearl Harbor to “learn, hold and know what happened there.”

In a letter, he described willingly enlisting in a Marine Corps when he was 17, saying, “My heart was revelation me that we was a Marine and that we was going to work tough and sight to be a best.”

Veterans mostly see Pearl Harbor as a pitch of because they served in a military, pronounced Jessie Higa, a proffer historian for Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, who accompanied a Hookers on their tour. “They served to offer those before them,” she said.

The flashy maestro changed adult by a ranks to turn a sergeant.

“My dream was to see Pearl Harbor,” Hooker pronounced while resting in a Missouri’s captain’s cabin — a plcae where presidents have visited. “I can go home now and rest in peace.”

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