On June 4, the Yorktown was hit by Japanese dive bombers and was in trouble. Karetka was aboard a destroyer, the USS Hughes, which was part of the Yorktown/s escort fleet of two cruisers and five destroyers. A signalman, his duty perch was atop a high post on the ship to send signals to others in the Yorktown group.

The Yorktown, despite its protection, next was hit by torpedo planes and finally by a submarine, sealing it's fate. The ship was ordered abandoned, and all but those who were already casualties were transferred to the other ships. Or so it was thought.

Wounded in the stomach during the air attacks, Pichette was in Yorktown's sick bay, along with an unconscious mate, George K. Weiss of Pennsylvania. At one point, Weiss regained consciousness, heard the abandon-ship call, and heard one sailor yell to another, "Leave him, he's gonna die anyway."
Peter E. Karetka shows Margaret Walkama, left, and Jani Fox a picture of the USS Hughes, the vessel from which Walkama's brother, Norman Pichette, was buried at sea in 1942.
Story by: David A. Vallette; Staff Writer; copyrights & property; Sunday Republican newspaper; Springfield, MA
Photo by Matthew Cavanaugh; copyrights & property; Sunday Republican Newspaper,  Springfield, MA
In July 1942, it was a War Department telegram that gave Elizabeth B. Pichette notice her son had become a casualty of war. "Further details are not available," the wire stated. Later, the death certificate arrived. The only other information, which arrived in 1943, came in a letter from the naval doctor in whose arms Pichette had died. The family should be proud of the way he faced his death, said the doctor.

But Karetka, while he never knew Pichette personally, had carried for 58 years what he had seen Pichette do at the Battle of Midway. A seaman second class, nicknamed Buster, Pichette was on the Yorktown at Midway, a battle that turned the tide of the war in the Pacific against Japan.
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