BRISTOL, R.I. (AP) – The nation’s oldest living recipient of the Medal of Honor plans to participate in one of the nation’s oldest Independence Day celebrations by riding a rebuilt version of the car he rode to war.

John Finn, a 96-year-old retired Navy lieutenant, will join Bristol’s Fourth of July parade on Tuesday as he reunites with the 1938 Ford Deluxe he drove to Naval Air Station in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, when Japanese aircraft attacked the base just before they bombed Pearl Harbor.

Finn, then 32, remembered hearing the sound of airplanes overhead as he laid in bed on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.

He jumped into his car and drove it to the base, where he shot at Japanese fighters from an exposed position – the only place possible for a machine gun set-up.

Finn suffered 21 shrapnel wounds, but his car wasn’t even scratched.

Although hit repeatedly in the chest, stomach, left arm and left foot, Finn did not leave his position until the Japanese left and he was ordered to see a medic.

“I stopped quite a bit of shrapnel, but I guess it just wasn’t my day to die,” Finn told the Providence Sunday Journal in a phone interview from California, where he lives.

Finn received the first Medal of Honor of World War II a year after the attack. It was also the only medal given for the defense of Kaneohe Bay. Finn retired from the Navy in 1947.

To honor Finn, the Saratoga Museum Foundation refurbished Finn’s car using another 1938 Ford Deluxe that Foundation president Frank Lennon bought in Pennsylvania two years ago. The Pennsylvania car was used as a base while parts from Finn’s car were built on it.

“The focus wasn’t the car,” said Lennon, who met Finn in 1998. “This was always about honoring Frank by bringing him out to ride in the Bristol parade.”

Finn has donated the car to the foundation, which is seeking to turn the Saratoga, a decommissioned aircraft carrier, into a military museum at Quonset Point in North Kingstown.

“I would say that sailors don’t go to war in cars. They go in ships,” said Finn, who is not from Rhode Island. “But, by golly, I did go to war in my own car.”

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Information from: The Providence Journal, http://www.projo.com/

AP-ES-07-02-06 1326EDT