HONOLULU (AP) — The last living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship that exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor has died. Lou Conter was 102.
HONOLULU — The last living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship that exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor has died. Lou Conter was 102.
Conter was a quartermaster, standing on the main deck of the Arizona as Japanese planes flew overhead at 7:55 a.m. on Dec. 7 that year. Sailors were just beginning to hoist colors or raise the flag when the assault began. “Guys were running out of the fire and trying to jump over the sides,” Conter said. “Oil all over the sea was burning.”
Conter went to flight school after Pearl Harbor, earning his wings to fly PBY patrol bombers, which the Navy used to look for submarines and bomb enemy targets. He flew 200 combat missions in the Pacific with a “Black Cats” squadron, which conducted dive bombing at night in planes painted black. In the late 1950s, he was made the Navy’s first SERE officer — an acronym for survival, evasion, resistance and escape. He spent the next decade training Navy pilots and crew on how to survive if they’re shot down in the jungle and captured as a prisoner of war. Some of his pupils used his lessons as POWs in Vietnam.Conter was born in Ojibwa, Wisconsin, on Sept. 13, 1921. His family later moved to Colorado where he walked 5 miles one way to school outside Denver.
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