HONOLULU (AP) — Lou Conter, the final residing survivor of the USS Arizona battleship that exploded and sank in the course of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, has died. He was 102.
Conter handed away on Monday at his house in Grass Valley, California, following congestive coronary heart failure, his daughter, Louann Daley mentioned, including she was beside him together with two of her brothers, James and Jeff.
The Arizona misplaced 1,177 sailors and Marines within the 1941 assault that launched the US into World Battle II. The battleship’s lifeless account for practically half of these killed within the assault.
Conter was a quartermaster, standing on the primary deck of the Arizona as Japanese planes flew overhead at 7:55 a.m. on Dec. 7 that yr. Sailors had been simply starting to hoist colours or increase the flag when the assault started.
Conter recalled how one bomb penetrated metal decks 13 minutes into the battle and set off greater than 1 million kilos (450,000 kilograms) of gunpowder saved under.
The explosion lifted the battleship 30 to 40 toes (9 to 12 metes) out of the water, he mentioned throughout a 2008 oral history interview saved on the Library of Congress. The whole lot was on fireplace from the mainmast ahead, he mentioned.
“Guys had been working out of the fireplace and making an attempt to leap over the edges,” Conter mentioned. “Oil everywhere in the sea was burning.”
His autobiography “The Lou Conter Story” recounts how he joined different survivors in tending to the injured, lots of them blinded and badly burned. The sailors solely deserted ship when their senior surviving officer was positive that they had rescued all these nonetheless alive.
The rusting wreckage of the Arizona nonetheless lies the place it sank. Greater than 900 sailors and Marines stay entombed inside. Solely 335 Arizona crew members survived.
Conter went to flight college after Pearl Harbor, incomes his wings to fly PBY patrol bombers, which the Navy used to search for submarines and bomb enemy targets. He flew 200 fight missions within the Pacific with a “Black Cats” squadron, which performed dive bombing at night time in planes painted black.
In 1943, he and his crew the place shot down in waters close to New Guinea and needed to keep away from sharks. A sailor expressed doubt they might survive, to which Conter replied, “baloney.”
“Don’t ever panic in any state of affairs. Survive is the very first thing you inform them. Don’t panic otherwise you’re lifeless,” he mentioned. They had been quiet and treaded water till one other aircraft got here hours later and dropped them a lifeboat.
Within the late Fifties, he was made the Navy’s first SERE officer — an acronym for survival, evasion, resistance and escape. He spent the following decade coaching Navy pilots and crew on how one can survive in the event that they’re shot down within the jungle and captured as a prisoner of warfare. A few of his pupils used his classes as POWs in Vietnam.
Conter retired in 1967 after 28 years within the Navy.
Conter was born in Ojibwa, Wisconsin, on Sept. 13, 1921. His household later moved to Colorado the place he walked 5 miles (eight kilometers) one option to college outdoors Denver.
He enlisted within the Navy after he turned 18, getting $17 a month and a hammock for his bunk at boot camp.
Conter had been getting weaker and weaker in current months and was hospitalized for 10 days in February, his daughter mentioned. He had been in hospice since returning house.
He instructed his household he beloved them, thanked them for being with him and taking good care of him at house.
“I’m glad he’s at peace. I’m glad he didn’t undergo. I do know when he transitioned over, he had so many individuals there ready for him – his spouse Val, who he beloved dearly,” Daley mentioned.
Conter can be survived by one other son, Tony, and a stepson Ron Fudge, and lots of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Funeral preparations had been pending. The household plans to bury him in Grass Valley, subsequent to his late spouse Valerie, who died in 2016 after that they had been married for 45 years.
With Conter’s loss of life, there are actually 19 survivors of the Pearl Harbor assault nonetheless residing, based on Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. About 87,000 army personnel had been on Oahu on Dec. 7, based on a tough estimate compiled by army historian J. Michael Wenger.
In his later years, Conter grew to become a fixture at annual remembrance ceremonies in Pearl Harbor that the Navy and the Nationwide Park Service collectively hosted on the anniversaries of the 1941 assault. When he lacked the energy to attend in individual, he recorded video messages for many who gathered and watched remotely from his house in California.
In 2019, when he was 98, he said he preferred going to recollect those that misplaced their lives.
“It’s at all times good to come back again and pay respect to them and provides them the highest honors that they deserve,” he mentioned.
Although many handled the shrinking group of Pearl Harbor survivors as heroes, Conter refused the label.
“The two,403 males that died are the heroes. And we’ve bought to honor them forward of all people else. And I’ve mentioned that each time, and I feel it needs to be pressured,” Conter instructed The Related Press in a 2022 interview at his California house.
