Pearl Harbor anniversary: Uniform of LI veteran who survived attack among displays at new Suffolk museum

Louis John Acompora’s Navy uniform hangs in a new military history museum in Rocky Point, along with the same oil-soaked dollar that was in his wallet when it was recovered from a sunken battleship at Pearl Harbor.

His family loaned the uniform for display at the new VFW Post 6249 Suffolk County World War II and Military History Museum, across from the VFW on King Road in Rocky Point, which is slated to open Thursday morning for National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.

Acompora was 19 on that quiet Sunday morning when Japanese planes attacked the naval base, where he was stationed on the USS California in the waters off Hawaii.

While the attack was underway, he and other sailors dove off the ship and clung to a life raft as they swam about two miles to Ford Island to safety. Three days later, he sent a Navy-issued postcard to his mother only stating, “I am well.” He came under attack twice more at Guadalcanal and at the Battle of the Coral Sea.

“He didn’t talk much about it. He made it sound like it was no big deal. They took turns on the life raft. He said he hung on the side a bit and swam a bit and got picked up,” his son John Acompora said Wednesday about his late father. “He never made it sound like it was as bad as it was.”

Acompora’s uniform was framed along with the postcard, coins and the dollar bill recovered from his wallet after the ship was raised nearly four months later. It was initially a gift for his 75th birthday and the family loaned it for display after learning of the museum, 13 years after his death.

The museum, which was built in a one-room replica of the former Rocky Point train station, features more than 1,000 artifacts and exhibits from every conflict and war spanning from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror.

Other artifacts include a rifle from 1816, a Confederate carbine , a…