International Courant
HONOLULU — Lou Conter, the final residing survivor of the battleship USS Arizona that exploded and sank through the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, has died. He was 102.
Conter died Monday at his house in Grass Valley, California, of congestive coronary heart failure, his daughter Louann Daley stated, including that she was sitting subsequent to him together with two of her brothers, James and Jeff.
The Arizona misplaced 1,177 sailors and Marines through the 1941 assault that thrust the US into World Conflict II. The battleship’s deaths account for nearly half of these killed within the assault.
Conter was a quartermaster and stood on the primary deck of the Arizona as Japanese planes flew overhead at 7:55 a.m. on December 7 of that yr. Sailors have been simply starting to lift colours or increase the flag when the assault started.
Conter recalled how a bomb penetrated the metal decks 13 minutes into the battle, releasing greater than 1,000,000 kilos of gunpowder saved beneath.
The explosion lifted the battleship 30 to 40 toes out of the water, he stated throughout a 2008 oral historical past interview saved on the Library of Congress. Every thing from the mainmast up was on hearth, he stated.
“Guys have been operating out of the hearth and making an attempt to leap over the edges,” Conter stated. “Oil was on hearth all over the place within the sea.”
His autobiography ‘The Lou Conter Story’ tells how he and different survivors cared for the wounded, lots of whom have been blind and badly burned. The sailors didn’t abandon ship till their senior surviving officer was assured that that they had rescued all residing people.
The rusting wreck of the Arizona nonetheless lies the place it sank. Greater than 900 sailors and marines are nonetheless buried there. Solely 335 Arizona crew members survived the catastrophe.
Conter attended flight faculty after Pearl Harbor and earned his wings to fly PBY patrol bombers, which the Navy used to seek for submarines and bomb enemy targets. He flew 200 fight missions within the Pacific with a ‘Black Cats’ squadron, which carried out dive bombing raids at evening in black-painted plane.
In 1943, he and his crew have been shot down within the waters off New Guinea and needed to keep away from sharks. One sailor expressed doubt that they might survive, to which Conter replied, “nonsense.”
“By no means panic in any scenario. Survival is the very first thing you say to them. Do not panic, in any other case you may be lifeless,” he stated. They have been quiet and treading water till one other aircraft arrived hours later and dropped a rescue boat for them.
Within the late Nineteen Fifties, he was appointed the Navy’s first SERE officer – an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. For the subsequent decade, he educated Navy pilots and crew members on survive being shot down within the jungle and captured as prisoners of conflict. A few of his college students used his classes as prisoners of conflict in Vietnam.
Conter retired in 1967 after 28 years within the Navy.
Conter was born in Ojibwa, Wisconsin, on September 13, 1921. His household later moved to Colorado, the place he walked 5 miles to highschool outdoors Denver.
He enlisted within the Navy after turning 18 and was paid $17 a month and a hammock for his bunk mattress in boot camp.
Conter turned more and more weak in latest months and was hospitalized for 10 days in February, his daughter stated. Since returning house he has been in a hospice.
He advised his household he beloved them and thanked them for being with him and caring for him at house.
‘I am glad he is at peace. I am glad he did not endure. I do know when he transitioned, there have been so many individuals ready for him: his spouse Val, who he beloved dearly,” Daley stated.
Conter can also be survived by a son, Tony, and a stepson Ron Fudge, and lots of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Funeral preparations have been pending. The household plans to bury him in Grass Valley subsequent to his late spouse Valerie, who died in 2016 after 45 years of marriage.
After Conter’s dying, there at the moment are 19 survivors of the assault on Pearl Harbor nonetheless alive, in accordance with Kathleen Farley, California state president of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. In response to a tough estimate by army historian J. Michael Wenger, there have been roughly 87,000 troops on Oahu on December 7.
In his later years, Conter turned a fixture on the annual Pearl Harbor memorial ceremonies collectively organized by the Navy and the Nationwide Park Service to mark the anniversary of the 1941 assault. When he was unable to attend in individual, he took he recorded video messages for individuals who gathered from his house in California and watched from a distance.
In 2019, when he was 98, he stated he appreciated to recollect the individuals who misplaced their lives.
“It is all the time good to return again and pay respect to them and provides them the very best honor they deserve,” he stated.
Though many handled the shrinking group of Pearl Harbor survivors as heroes, Conter refused the label.
“The two,403 males who died are the heroes. And we should honor them above all others. And I’ve stated that each time, and I feel it must be emphasised,” Conter advised The Related Press in a 2022 interview at his house in California.
Lou Conter, the final survivor of the USS Arizona after the assault on Pearl Harbor, dies on the age of 102
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