LAST SURVIVOR OF USS ARIZONA PASSES

Lou Conter at USS Arizona Memorial, 2015

Lou Conter, the last living survivor on board the USS Arizona during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, has died. He was 102. He had been in hospice for the past four weeks. Conter died Monday morning while surrounded by family in Grass Valley, California, his daughter confirmed

Conter was only 18 when he enlisted in the United States Navy. The Germans had just invaded Poland, and war was on the horizon."I said, 'OK, I'll sign up,' so I signed up for four years, and I was going to leave at 5:45 that night." After boot camp, the Denver native was assigned to the USS Arizona. "March of 1940, the fleet went north of Hawaii for exercises," he said. The fleet ended up docking at Pearl Harbor. The Arizona was one of 100 ships anchored to the piers.

Conter worked as a quartermaster. He was at his post on a warm December morning in 1941. "It was five minutes to 8, and the first plane came across."

What happened next is something he and America vividly remember more than 80 years later.

"As soon as they came in, we knew what was happening. We knew for six months we were training hard for fighting the Japanese at war. They were dive bombing, and they were right down the ship's edge. We didn't have time to look up and see what was coming. They were already right down at the water's edge. It lasted for about 40 minutes. We took a 50-60-hundred-pound bomb alongside the number two turret. It went through five decks in the forward lower handling room and blew the power up there for the number one and number two turret, and the whole bow came up out of the water."

Thick black smoke quickly filled the Oahu sky. The bombs just kept falling.

“Guys were coming out of the fire, and we were just grabbing them and laying them down. They were real bad. You would pick them up by the bodies, and the skin would come off your hands."

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 torpedo bombing at night in planes painted black.

In 1943, he and his crew where shot down in waters near New Guinea and had to avoid a dozen sharks. A sailor expressed doubt they would survive, to which Conter replied, “baloney.”

“Don’t ever panic in any situation. Survive is the first thing you tell them. Don’t panic or you’re dead,” he said. They were quiet and treaded water until another plane came hours later and dropped them a lifeboat.

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 retired in 1967 after 28 years in the Navy.

Conter had hoped to make one last trip to Hawaii in December but decided he didn't have the strength to do so. "They call a lot of us heroes, and I've always said we are not the heroes. Heroes are the ones right there that day that lost their lives. They gave everything up. We got back to the States. We got married. We had kids and grandkids. We are still here. They were lost forever right then and there."

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