Lou Conter, last survivor of USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor attack, dies at 102

Lou Conter, the final survivor of the USS Arizona, the Navy battleship that was sunk – with a loss of 1,177 lives – during the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, has died at age 102.

Lou Conter, the final survivor of the USS Arizona, the Navy battleship that was sunk – with a loss of 1,177 lives – during the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, has died at age 102. Conter was surrounded by family at his home in Grass Valley, California, and passed away peacefully on Monday, according to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and Pacific Historic Parks, citing Conter’s daughter Louann Daley. Through interviews, a book and by attending services, Conter ensured the public remembered the bombing, which blew the battleship 30-40 feet out of the water and left many who survived with horrific injuries. The veteran, a 20-year-old quartermaster, helped rescue fellow crewmen on the morning of December 7, 1941, which marked the US entry into World War II. Conter was on the USS Arizona deck “when a Japanese armor-piercing bomb hit one million pounds of gunpowder stored in the ship’s hull,” he detailed in his autobiography “The Lou Conter Story: From USS Arizona Survivor to Unsung American Hero.” “Guys were coming out of the fire, and we were just grabbing them and laying them down,” Conter told CNN affiliate KCRA in an interview last year. “They were real bad. You would pick them up by the bodies, and the skin would come off your hands.”