Mona Crandell Hook, left, and Marsha Strand, both from the Comstock Quilters and Quilts of Valor, prepare to present a quilt to Charles Sehe when he visited Nevada in 2015.
One of Nevada’s most heralded World War II veterans who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor more than 80 years ago and saw the battleship guns blazing against the shores of Normandy died Sunday at his home in Mankato, Minnesota.
Charles Sehe, 101, who served his entire military career during the second world war aboard the battleship USS Nevada (NN36), had been in declining health.
Sehe, a member of the Greatest Generation who survived a horrific depression in the late 1920s and global war, was born Feb. 26, 1923, in Geneva, Illinois. Six months after graduating from high school in June 1940, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the Great Lakes Naval Recruiting Station north of Chicago. From 1940-1946, the Navy assigned Sehe to the USS Nevada until he left the military.
During the early morning hours on Dec. 7, 1941, Sehe, along with his shipmates on the USS Nevada, were a ringside witness to the Japanese surprise attack on Oahu and specifically Pearl Harbor, the largest U.S. military base in the Pacific. While the Japanese planes launched torpedoes to sink or damage many of the ships on Battleship Row, the USS Nevada became the only battleship to sail away from its quay during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Sehe served with his shipmates when the ship earned her second battle star at Attu in the Aleutian Islands May 11-30, 1943, and a third battle star on June 6, 1944, by destroying Nazi bunkers for the Fourth Infantry Division at Utah Beach. The Nevada earned two more battle stars in Europe before returning to the Pacific Theater. In 1945, the Nevada earned her sixth and seventh battle stars by destroying Japanese gun emplacements when Marines captured Iwo Jima and Okinawa, respectively, in the final year of fighting.
Sehe, who earned a doctorate degree in zoology in 1957 from the University of Iowa, returned to Nevada almost a decade ago to attend a memorial service on the east side of the Capitol Building. Nevada Appeal columnist Ken Beaton remembers the Oct. 14, 2015, visit well.
“When Charles’ wheelchair entered the lounge for gate C10, seeing the total surprise on his face as he was greeted by at least 50 people in the area waving small American flags, cheering and clapping,” Beaton wrote. “Charles was filled with emotion as he placed both hands to the sides of his face. At that moment he became a Nevadan.”
Official Navy photo
Charles Sehe served on the USS Nevada during World War II as a young sailor.
John Galloway, director of the USS Nevada project, flew Sehe out to Nevada in March 2016 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the ship’s commissioning. Galloway had kept in contact with the Sehe family over the years. Recently, he sent some items to Sehe including a replica of the new Nevada license plate featuring the USS Nevada.
“I sent him a number of items, cards and a jacket with a path and crest I made,” Galloway said.
During the March visit, Galloway remembers Sehe telling him that “here in Nevada, I feel the spirit, I feel the soul when the ship is in the state, not Pearl Harbor.”
Gallaway said the number of sailors is rapidly dwindling from both Pearl Harbor and D-Day.
Sehe attended a memorial service that afternoon on the east side of the Capitol Building. He rang the bell from former Gov. Brian Sandoval’s deck for his shipmates who did not return home. During the attack on Pearl Harbor, 60 sailors died and 109 suffered wounds aboard the USS Nevada and 11 more died during a Kamikaze attack in the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945.
Sehe thanked the many people who attended.
“I was proud to serve on your ship, a ship you've never seen but have such love for and devotion to,” he said.
Sandoval, a history buff who is now president of the University of Nevada, Reno, said Monday he was saddened to learn of Sehe’s death.
“Charles was a brave man who served in the U.S. Navy on the USS Nevada from 1940-1946,” Sandoval said in a written statement to the Nevada News Group. “He was the last man left to have fought at both Pearl Harbor and D-Day in Normandy, and one of the last two men who served on the USS Nevada, along with Dick Ramsey, who is now the sole survivor of that ship. Charles served our country admirably, and his legacy of courage and dedication to freedom remains. Lauralyn and I send our thoughts and prayers to the Sehe family, and all who knew Charles.”
An iconic photo taken of Sehe receiving a quilt sewn by the Comstock Quilters during his 2015 visit is now on the cover of a military book, “Legacies of the Silver State: Nevada Goes to War.” The stories tell of World War II veterans who have a tie to Nevada.
“The expression of his face in that photo says it all,” said Marsha Strand, who started the Comstock Lode Quilters for the Quilts of Valor Foundation in December 2014.
Strand said she and fellow quilter Mona Crandell Hook remember Sehe’s remarkable smile and expression.
“I really honor these guys,” she said. “My father was in the Navy, and my husband was in the Navy but not World War II. They went through a lot,” Strand said, referring to Sehe as humbled. “I do remember (Sehe) was really thrilled to ring the bell. That was special for him.”
Sandoval also had the opportunity to meet Ramsey in 2023 when the USS Nevada sailor was honored before a Nevada football game on Nov. 4. On the following day, Ramsey laid a wreath at the USS Nevada memorial behind the Nevada state capitol in Carson City.
Ramsey said he was saddened to learn of Sehe’s death. When they served together on the USS Nevada, they didn’t know each other because half the crew was on duty at night, the other half during the day. Ramsey, now the last living USS Nevada veteran, joined after Pearl Harbor along with the other veterans such as Cliff Burks and Ansel Tupper. Ramsey recently celebrated his 101st birthday on Nevada Day, and Sehe would’ve been 102 years old on Feb. 26.
“People usually stayed on their part of the ship,” Ramsey said.
Official U.S. Navy Photograph
The USS Nevada is underway from his dock during the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941.
Ramsey and Sehe struck up a friendship at the post-war USS Nevada reunions and shared stories and details of their service and home lives. The two sailors kept in contact with each other as they grew older and would recall some of the harrowing skirmishes involving the battleship that resulted in few losses.
“The Nevada was a ship that someone was looking after us,” said Ramsey, who was coincidentally born on Nevada Day, Oct. 31, 1923. “It was the most decorated, tough ship in the Navy.”
Ramsey crafted one of his statements to Sehe based on a comment Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the former commander of Allied forces in both World War II and the Korean War, made to Congress in 1951 after he retired.
“Old sailors never die; they just fade away.”