By AUDREY McAVOY (Associated Press)
HONOLULU (AP) — The final living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship, which exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, has died. Lou Conter was 102.
Conter died at his residence in Grass Valley, California on Monday after struggling with congestive heart failure, according to his daughter, Louann Daley.
The 1941 attack on the Arizona claimed the lives of 1,177 sailors and Marines, marking the beginning of the United States' involvement in World War II. The casualties from the battleship accounted for almost half of those killed in the unexpected assault.
Conter, a quartermaster, was on the main deck of the Arizona when Japanese aircraft flew over at 7:55 a.m. on Dec. 7 that year. The sailors had just begun to raise the flag when the attack commenced.
Conter remembered how a bomb pierced the steel decks 13 minutes into the battle, igniting more than 1 million pounds (450,000 kilograms) of stored gunpowder.
During a 2008 oral history interview stored at the Library of Congress, he described how the explosion hoisted the battleship 30 to 40 feet (9 to 12 meters) out of the water. He recounted that everything from the mainmast forward was engulfed in flames.
“People were fleeing the fire, attempting to leap over the sides,” Conter mentioned. “The sea was covered in burning oil.”
His autobiography “The Lou Conter Story” narrates how he and other survivors tended to the wounded, many of whom were blinded and severely burned. The sailors only abandoned ship when their highest-ranking surviving officer was confident they had rescued all those still alive.
The rusting remains of the Arizona still rest in the waters where it sank. Over 900 sailors and Marines are still entombed inside.
Following Pearl Harbor, Conter attended flight school and earned his wings to pilot PBY patrol bombers, which the Navy utilized for submarine detection and bombing enemy targets. He completed 200 combat missions in the Pacific with a squadron known as the “Black Cats,” which undertook nighttime dive bombing in black-painted planes.
In 1943, he and his crew were shot down near New Guinea and had to evade a dozen sharks. When a sailor expressed doubt about their survival, Conter responded, “nonsense.”
“Never panic in any situation. Surviving is the first thing you tell them. Don’t panic or you’re done for,” he said. They remained calm and stayed afloat until another plane arrived hours later and dropped them a lifeboat.
In the late 1950s, he became the Navy’s inaugural SERE officer, responsible for training Navy pilots and crew on survival, evasion, resistance, and escape techniques if they were shot down in the jungle and taken captive as prisoners of war. Some of his students applied his teachings as POWs in Vietnam.
Conter concluded his 28-year Navy career in 1967.
Conter was born in Ojibwa, Wisconsin, on September 13, 1921. His family later relocated to Colorado, where he walked five miles (eight kilometers) to attend a school outside Denver. Since his home lacked running water, he tried out for the football team—less for a love of the sport and more so that he could shower at school after practice.
He joined the Navy after he became 18, receiving $17 per month and a hammock for his bed at boot camp.
In his later years, Conter regularly attended annual memorial events in Pearl Harbor hosted by the Navy and the National Park Service to mark the anniversaries of the 1941 attack. When he was too weak to go in person, he made video messages for those who gathered and watched from his home in California.
When he was 98 in 2019, he mentioned that he enjoyed going to honor those who lost their lives.
“It’s always good to come back and show respect to them and give them the highest honors they deserve,” he said.
Although many considered the declining group of Pearl Harbor survivors as heroes, Conter rejected that label.
“The 2,403 men that died are the heroes. And we’ve got to honor them ahead of everybody else. And I’ve said that every time, and I think it should be emphasized,” Conter told The Associated Press in a 2022 interview at his California home.
