JFK’s daughter Caroline and grandson Jack recreate his heroic dive off the Solomon Islands to rescue himself and his stranded U.S. Navy PT-109 crew after being capsized by a Japanese destroyer 80 years ago

Caroline Kennedy, the US Ambassador to Australia and the last living child of former President John F. Kennedy, famously honored her father’s World War II rescue.

The Ambassador’s office marks 80 years to this day since JFK – when the captain of a PT-109 patrol torpedo boat off the Solomon Islands in World War II – heroically swam his crewmen to shore after a Japanese destroyer capsized them on August 2, 1943 .

His daughter Caroline, 65, and her 29-year-old son Jack returned to the same crystal-clear waters on Wednesday, mimicking President Kennedy’s 2.4-mile swim from Naru Island to Olasana Island.

“It gave me a newfound appreciation for the heroism of my father and his crew, and the Solomon Scouts,” she said. “It was so meaningful doing this with my son Jack.”

In a separate post on Tuesday, she wrote, “This place made President Kennedy the man he was.

President Kennedy, a junior naval officer at the time, commanded the patrol boat PT 109 off the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean

It’s where he first experienced the responsibility of leadership – the knowledge that the life and safety of his crew depended on him. He risked his own life to save theirs. That became the way he lived his life.”

PT 109 sank on August 2, 1943, after being hit by the Japanese warship Amagiri and cut in half near Gizo, the main city of the Solomon Islands.

Two members of Kennedy’s crew were killed when the boat was hit.

Kennedy and 10 other survivors swam for 15 hours to reach a nearby island.

He dragged an injured survivor, engineer Patrick Henry McMahon, by swimming with a strap from McMahon’s life jacket between his teeth.

Later they swam to another island where coconuts could be eaten.

Kennedy carved a message into a coconut and gave it to a native islander to take to the rescuers.

He later received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for those actions, as well as the Purple Heart Medal for his wounds.

Caroline Kennedy (pictured left), the US Ambassador to Australia and the last living descendant of former President John F. Kennedy, honored her father’s famous rescue during World War II with son Jack (pictured right)

Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, right, and his crew of PT 109 are shown somewhere in the South Pacific, July 1943

The incident was dramatized in the 1963 film PT 109, which starred Cliff Robertson as a young JFK.

Patrol torpedo boats, such as the PT 109, had mahogany hulls.

Plywood was used for the internal structures, card houses and gun turrets.

They were 25 meters long and were powered by 12-cylinder petrol engines.

The boats were mainly used to attack surface ships, but they were also used to lay mines and smoke screens, to rescue downed airmen and to carry out intelligence operations.

Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, is the last survivor of the president’s and wife Jacqueline’s four children.

On Tuesday, Ambassador Kennedy commemorated the 80th anniversary of swimming in a separate post

It’s where he first experienced the responsibility of leadership – the knowledge that the life and safety of his crew depended on him. He risked his own life to save theirs. That became the way he lived his life,” she wrote

Kennedy was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for those actions, as well as the Purple Heart Medal for his wounds

She has served as a diplomat under the last two Democratic presidents and held the ambassadorship to Japan under President Barack Obama.

Kennedy previously served as the US ambassador to Japan under President Barack Obama, and is one of the most prominent members of her famed political family – if not one of the more reserved.

She briefly considered running for the United States Senate seat in New York that her uncle Robert once held in 2009.

Kennedy, shared a touching moment last year with the children of two Solomon Islands residents who saved her father’s life.