Dec 7, 2016 5 min read

Editor’s note: This article originally published Sunday, November 10, 1996.

Sam Moses freely admits to fearing for his life during much of his service in World War II.

As a radio operator and waist gunner in the U.S. Army Air Force, his unit was subject to enemy fire nearly every time his plane took off on a mission.

“My whole life in the service was scary,” said Moses, 77, a Donora native who now lives in the Eastern Pennsylvania community of Huntingdon Valley.

Moses also considers himself to be the luckiest veteran in the war.

He survived the Dec. 7, 1941, surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

On another mission, Moses was rescued, uninjured, by English missionaries after his B-57 plane loaded with four, 1,000-pound bombs was shot down Nov. 18, 1942, in shark-infested water in the Coral Sea.

The pilot and co-pilot were killed in the attack by 30 Japanese Zeros. Another pilot who just happened to be along for the ride brought the plane down safely in the ocean. They remained in a life raft for 24 hours while paddling their way to an island, where they were taken in by missionaries.

In all, his crew was credited with shooting down 15 Japanese Zeros and sinking five enemy ships.

“I gotta be the luckiest guy in the world,” said Moses, who enlisted in the military in 1940 upon graduating a year earlier from Donora High School, knowing full well he was about to be drafted.

He was assigned to training at Pearl Harbor and awakened about 7:55 a.m. to sounds of explosions that he thought were part of U.S. military exercises.

“Someone came in and said: ‘It’s not the (U.S.) Navy. It’s the Japs,’ ” Moses said.

“It was like chaos. Of course we were all in bed,” he said of the surprise attack that killed 2,300 American servicemen.

Moses and others in his unit first went to airplane hangars only to find most planes shot up or destroyed. Next, they went to ball fields but left because gasoline tanks were nearby, and they feared they, too, would be bombed.

He survived simply by being in the right place at the right time. Two days later, he was moved across the inlet to Hickam Field for two months to guard the entrance to Pearl Harbor.

Moses, who achieved the rank of technical sergeant, will return to his hometown to serve as honorary parade marshal Monday for the 50th anniversary of the first Veterans Day parade held in that borough.

He was among 21,000 mid-Mon Valley men accepted to serve in World War II, the Donora Herald-American reported Dec. 12, 1947. The war also claimed the lives of 65 soldiers from Donora.

Of the 21,000 who volunteered, 72 percent made good as pilots, navigators, bombardiers, engineers and gunners, the newspaper reported that year in an article on the first parade, which drew nearly 10,000 on that rain-soaked day.

“You boys represent the cream of the crop, otherwise you wouldn’t have been accepted,” said the main speaker that day, Maj. Lawrence A. Floro, who also recruited 52,000 troops from the region during World War II.

Moses will speak at a noon luncheon Monday in the Donora American Legion, three hours before the parade will begin.

Persian Gulf War veteran Mary Rhoads of California Borough, who suffers from unexplained health problems associated with active duty, was to be guest speaker for services at 10:45 a.m. in Delsandro Memorial Park on Meldon Avenue, midway between Fifth and Sixth streets.

She had to cancel because she was hospitalized once again in the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Pittsburgh. Rep. Frank Mascara, D-20th District, will replace Rhoads as speaker.

Rhoads, a retired U.S. Army reservist, survived a Feb. 25, 1991, Iraqi Scud missile attack on her military housing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The attack killed 13 members from her unit, the 14th Quartermaster Detachment, Greensburg.

Rhoads was going to discuss her illnesses and what Veterans Day means to her.

“It’s an honor that I’m a veteran and that vets are being honored across the country,” she said.

Rhoads is a 1974 graduate of Canon-McMillan High School and one of only a few Gulf War veterans receiving full military disability involving a Persian Gulf syndrome claim. The syndrome is associated with undiagnosed illnesses that thousands of veterans across the country are experiencing. Many believe they are sick because of exposure to chemical or biological warfare in the war.

Moses is a son of Asa and Anna Moses, who owned and operated a confectionery store in Donora. He was discharged from the Army in 1945 and awarded the Silver Star and Distinguished Flying Cross medals and a presidential citation.

After returning home from the war, he earned a bachelor of science degree in economics from the University of Pittsburgh. He retired in 1985 after managing a Sears and Roebuck store in Philadelphia for 15 years.

His most memorable experience during his retirement was playing golf with President Clinton in Sept. 1995 in Hawaii during the 50th anniversary of the Japanese surrender in World War II.

Sam Moses died Saturday, March 2, 2013.