- Lou Conter, the last survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack who was aboard the USS Arizona when it exploded and sank, died Monday. He was 102 years old.
- On December 7, 1941, as a quartermaster, Conter was on the ship’s main deck when Japanese planes passed over and began attacking the Hawaiian naval base.
- Contour’s illustrious career would continue long after the attack on Pearl Harbor. A trained pilot and member of the “Black Cats” squadron, Conter was also the Navy’s first Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) officer. He retired in his 1967 year.
The last survivor of the USS Arizona, which exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, has died. Lou Conter was 102 years old.
Mr. Conter died Monday of congestive heart failure at his home in Grass Valley, Calif., his daughter LouAnn Daley said.
The Arizona lost 1,177 sailors and Marines in the 1941 attack that plunged the United States into World War II. Battleship casualties accounted for almost half of the deaths from surprise attacks.
Pearl Harbor attack, USS Arizona survivors remember 79 years later
Conter, a quartermaster, was standing on the main deck of the Arizona at 7:55 a.m. on December 7, 2016, as Japanese planes passed overhead. Sailors had just begun hoisting and hoisting flags when the raid began.
Conter recalled how, 13 minutes into the battle, one bomb penetrated the steel deck and detonated more than a million pounds of gunpowder stored below.
The explosion lifted the battleship 30 to 40 feet above the water, he said in a 2008 oral history interview archived at the Library of Congress. Everything was on fire from the front of the main mast, he said.
“The men were running away from the fire and trying to jump over the side,” Conter said. “The oil in the sea was burning.”
His autobiography, The Lou Contour Story, details how he worked with other survivors to care for the wounded, many of whom were blind and badly injured. He had been burned. The sailors abandoned ship only when the surviving senior officers were convinced that they had rescued all survivors.
The rusting wreckage of the Arizona still lies in the waters where it sank. More than 900 sailors and marines are still buried inside.
FILE – Pearl Harbor survivor Lou Conter, 101, is seen at her home in Grass Valley, California, on November 18, 2022. Conter is the last survivor of the USS Arizona, which exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. He died on Monday, April 1, 2024, due to congestive heart failure, his daughter said. He was 102 years old. (AP Photo/Ricci Pedroncelli, File)
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Contour attended flight school and earned his wings to fly PBY patrol bombers. The Navy used this bomber to search for submarines and bomb enemy targets. He flew 200 combat missions in the Pacific with the “Black Cats” squadron, which conducted night dive bombing in black-painted planes.
In 1943, he and his crew were shot down near New Guinea and had to avoid more than a dozen sharks. One sailor expressed doubts about whether they would survive, to which Mr. Conter replied, “It’s stupid.”
“Never panic in any situation. Survive is the first thing I tell them. Don’t panic or you will die,” he said. They remained quietly stranded until another plane arrived several hours later and lowered the lifeboat.
In the late 1950s, he was commissioned as the Navy’s first SERE officer. This is an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. He spent the next ten years training Navy pilots and crews how to survive if shot down in the jungle and taken as prisoners of war. Some of his students applied his lessons as prisoners of war in Vietnam.
Mr. Conter retired in 1967 after 28 years of service in the Navy.
Conter was born on September 13, 1921 in Ojibwa, Wisconsin. His family then moved to Colorado, where he walked eight miles each way to school outside Denver. His house didn’t have running water, so he tried to join the football team, not so much because he liked the sport but because the players could shower at school after practice.
When he turned 18, he joined the Navy, receiving a monthly salary of $17 and a boot camp hammock.
In later years, Contour became a fixture at the annual memorial service held jointly by the Navy and National Park Service at Pearl Harbor on the anniversary of the 1941 attack. When he didn’t have the energy to participate in person, he recorded a video message to those who gathered and watched remotely from his home in California.
When he turned 98 in 2019, he said he loved going to remember those who lost their lives.
“It’s always good to come back and pay homage to them and give them the highest honor they deserve,” he said.
While many treated the dwindling number of Pearl Harbor survivors as heroes, Mr. Conter refused to accept that label.
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“The 2,403 people who died are heroes, and we have to honor them before anyone else. And I’ve said that every time, and I have to emphasize that,” Konter told The Associated Press in a 2022 interview. I think so,” he said. At his home in California.
