As Hawaii gets ready to salute its veterans at a variety of events, one Pearl Harbor survivor received an extra honor Thursday at Navy Hale Keiki School.

Michael “Mickey” Ganitch, 97, who was on the USS Pennsylvania on Dec. 7, 1941, and fought with the battleship through the entire war, thought he was coming out to Hawaii to talk to children about his part in history.

Instead, about 150 kindergarten through fifth-grade students helped celebrate a surprise — the dedication of their new library in honor of the California man and other Pearl Harbor veterans.

Ganitch said he was thinking, “which class are we going to? I look, and there’s nobody in the classrooms. And a whole bunch of people out here (on the school grounds). I didn’t know what was going on.”

About two dozen youngsters in the “Young Patriots Club” sang “God Bless the U.S.A.” and a new sign was unveiled for the “Michael M. Ganitch Memorial Library in remembrance of all who served at Pearl Harbor.”

Ganitch, wearing a Pearl Harbor survivor cap and his service ribbons on an aloha shirt, said it was an “extreme honor” to receive the recognition. “These kids are just great,” he said, and then posed for pictures in a sea of youngsters. Ganitch’s wife, Barbara, is with him on the trip.

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Ganitch was a 22-year-old working in the navigation department on the Pennsylvania and readying for a football game against sister ship the USS Arizona.

“I had my football uniform on. We were going to play USS Arizona for the fleet football championship,” he recalled. “That day I had all my padding on. My battle station lookout — I had to climb up in the crow’s nest with my football uniform on. In fact, there was an old trapdoor to get up there. I pulled myself through with all my padding on.”

The attack was like a bad dream, Ganitch said.

“We’d been talking about it there for months — whether we’d get in a war with Japan or not, but we figured no one would bother us (in Hawaii) because we had eight battleships in port there,” he said. “(Japan) would be crazy to attack us.”

Ganitch served on the Pennsylvania through the war and was involved in mid-1946 in two nuclear weapons tests on warships at Bikini Atoll — the Pennsylvania included — during what was known as “Operation Crossroads.”

For the “Able” airborne detonation, he was about 10 miles away, and for the “Baker” subsurface test he was at a distance of 4 to 5 miles, he said.

School Principal Monique Raduziner said school officials got to know Ganitch six years ago at a December 7 ceremony “and he stopped and talked to our kids, and we fell in love with him.”

Master Sgt. Ismael Reyna, whose daughter, Karsyn, 8, attends the school, was there for the ceremony in his Army uniform.

“It’s interesting because of the connection that the kids have with him (Ganitch),” Reyna said, referencing the “respect and just the things that they recognize about his service.”

Raduziner said almost all the kids at Navy Hale Keiki School are part of military families. The Greatest Generations Foundation flew Ganitch out for the library dedication, she said.

Ganitch said he gives talks at schools and clubs between 25 to 30 times a year.

“I’m just glad to be here, and these wonderful kids mean an awful lot to me,” Ganitch said. “I try to tell them, they are the future of our country. … We got a start on it there, now it’s up to them to take care of this country.”