When the USS Nicholas was torpedoed in 1944, Petty Officer Henry Chen — a Filipino-American sailor from San Pedro — found himself alone in the Pacific with Seaman Burke, who had a broken leg and could not swim.
Chen kept Burke afloat for approximately 30 hours using a life jacket, driftwood, and his own body as buoyancy. No food. No water. Sharks all around. His hands cramped so badly that rescuers had to pry them open at the hospital.
He later said: I thought about Thomas's mother, who had sent us both a photograph of her garden. I could not let him drown with that picture in his pocket.
After the war, Chen returned to California as a fisherman. Burke became a lawyer. They spoke every week for the rest of their lives. When Chen died in 2005, Burke placed a photograph of the Pacific on his casket. For the man who kept me above the water.