Lou Conter, the last known survivor of the battleship Arizona that sank amid the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, died Monday at age 102.
Mr. Conter, then 20, was a Navy quartermaster on watch duty when the Japanese struck on Dec. 7, 1941.
He was knocked from the quarterdeck station down to the deck by a blast and then helped wounded sailors, according to the Arizona Final Salute website.
His gallantry helped save around 20 sailors, according to a release from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
At one point, a Japanese munition struck the battleship’s forward turrets, igniting more than 1 million pounds of gunpowder, according to the Navy Times.
“Guys were running out of the fire and trying to jump over the sides. Oil all over the sea was burning,” Mr. Conter, who became a lieutenant commander, said in a 2008 interview for the Library of Congress.
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After the ship was abandoned, he rowed to shore. The 1,177 sailors and Marines killed on the Arizona accounted for nearly half of the deaths from the attack, which forcefully entered America into World War II.
Only 335 survived on the Arizona, with many of the dead entombed in the wreckage of the battleship, which still rests at Pearl Harbor.
Mr. Conter went on to become a naval aviator, flying more than 200 missions in the Pacific theater of World War II, according to The Associated Press.
He later flew combat missions in the Korean War, created the Navy‘s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program, and served as a military adviser to Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, according to a Facebook post from the Pacific Historic Parks’ USS Arizona Memorial.
“Lou Conter epitomized what it meant to be a member of the Greatest Generation, Americans whose collective courage, accomplishments and sacrifices saved our country,” Pacific Historic Parks CEO Aileen Utterdyke said in the post.
With his death, 19 known Pearl Harbor survivors are still alive, Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors’ California Chairwoman Kathleen Farley told AP.