The last survivor of the Japanese bombing of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor died Monday at the age of 102.
Lou Conter, who served in the U.S. Navy for nearly 30 years, died of heart failure surrounded by his family at his home in Grass Valley, Calif., his daughter LouAnn Dailey said.
Conter was one of only 335 naval officers to survive the December 7, 1941 attack on Arizona.
The surprise bombing killed 1,177 sailors and marines on board. This accounted for nearly half of the 2,403 Americans killed in the attack, which launched America into the fighting of World War II.
Conter, who joined the military at age 18, was piloting the Arizona and was standing on the main deck when Japanese planes dropped bombs on the U.S. port in Hawaii just before 8 a.m. Sunday.
He recounted the horrific attack many times throughout his life, wrote an autobiography, The Lou Contour Story, detailing his war exploits, and published a 2008 oral history of Pearl Harbor, now housed at the Library of Congress. Interviewed for History.
The veteran said the bomb struck the ship’s steel deck, detonating more than 1 million pounds of gunpowder stored in the Arizona’s belly.
Flames engulfed everything from the bow to the main mast, Conter recalled.
“Everyone came out of the fire and we just grabbed them and put them aside,” Conter said. He told KCRA3. In an interview last year. “They were really bad. When you pick up bodies, the skin on your hands comes off.”
Men began jumping from the ship to rescue from the fire, but the sea was covered in burning oil, he added.
“We started extinguishing the fire and continued to extinguish it until Tuesday,” Konter told a local news outlet.
The Arizona sank, leaving the bodies of more than 900 sailors and Marines at the bottom of the harbor.
Another 20 battleships were sunk or seriously damaged during the bombing raids.
After surviving a Japanese attack, Conter attended flight school and became a member of the Navy’s “Black Cats” squadron, a fleet of black planes that conducted dive-bombing operations at night.
He survived another attack when he and his crew were shot down near New Guinea in 1943. They trawled and evaded the sharks for hours until another plane arrived and dropped the lifeboat.
Contour had a strong will to survive. He told another sailor who plunged into the dark water with him that it was “terrible” that he believed he would die there.
“Never panic in any situation. Survival is the first thing I tell them. Don’t panic or you will die,” he said.
That survival instinct led Conter to become the Navy’s first SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) officer in the late 1950s. Conter, who served in the role for about 10 years, trained sailors how to survive in various wartime situations, including as prisoners of war.
Mr. Conter retired from the Navy in 1967 after 28 years of service.
For many years, he was a regular honoree at the Navy’s annual Pearl Harbor Memorial Ceremony held on December 7th.
The 102-year-old veteran, who was born in Wisconsin and raised in Colorado, had been in hospice care for several weeks after being hospitalized in February.
He died Monday at home with his daughter LouAnn Daley and two sons, James and Jeff at his bedside. He is also survived by his other son, Tony, his son-in-law, Ron Fudge, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Conter will be buried next to his late wife of 45 years, Valerie, in Grass Valley. Valerie passed away in 2016.
“I’m glad he’s at peace. I’m glad he didn’t suffer. I know there were many people waiting for him when he turned, including his wife Val, who he loved dearly. ,” Daly said.
Among those waiting for him may be fellow sailors who died on the Arizona. Many times throughout his life, Conter called those who lost their lives in the attacks true heroes.
“They call a lot of us heroes, but I’ve always said we’re not heroes,” Konter told KCRA 3. “Heroes are the people who lost their lives on the scene that day. They gave up everything. We went back to America. We got married. We had children and grandchildren. I They are still here. They were lost there forever.”
Conter’s death leaves only 19 survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor, according to the Pearl Harbor survivors’ group Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor.
with post wire
