How many arizona survivors are still alive

Although Donald Stratton was severely injured after the USS Arizona went down, he worked hard to regain his strength and convinced the draft board to allow him to re-enlist in the Navy.

John Anderson was one of a handful of USS Arizona survivors until he passed away at 98 years old in late At the time, Anderson did not know that Jake did not survive and he ended up taking a small boat back to the wreckage to look for his brother. James Bilotta died at the age of 98 and is one of the few ex-Marines on this list.

Bilotta joined the Marines when he was just 19 years old and two years later was eating his breakfast when the first bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor. After surviving the attack, Bilotta stayed in the military until he was honorably discharged in at the end of World War II.

Bilotta returned to Massachusetts and met his wife not long after. The couple eventually settled in Derry in and raised a family together. I married a wonderful woman and I have wonderful children. What other man can be that blessed? Lonnie Cook was one of the few living Pearl Harbor survivors before he passed away at the end of July Cook had been facing increased health challenges and he started a GoFundM to help with his continued care. Due to his declining health, Cook no longer attended Pearl Harbor related events and the last time he visited the Pearl Harbor Memorial in Hawaii was on the 70 th anniversary of the attack.

Cook had just taken a shower on the USS Arizona and made plans to explore Honolulu just a few moments before the first wave of attacks at Pearl Harbor. Initially, Cook and his fellow crew members thought nothing of the rumbling as they were below deck, but chief turret captain informed them that the Japanese were bombing the fleet.

Cook rescued as many people as he could as the Arizona sank and immediately volunteered the next day to go back to sea. Lonnie Cook had never received the 12 battle stars he earned from his time in the Pacific, but he was finally presented with them in Lauren Bruner was one of the oldest and last living survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack before his death in the Fall of , just a few months shy of his 99 th birthday. Bruner and the team were compiling biographies, personal stories, and portraits and hope that one day visitors to Pearl Harbor will be able to access this information.

Bruner was only 21 years old when the attack took place and he was known for being the next-to-last man to leave the Arizona.

In late , Bruner released his memoir titled Second to the Last to Leave USS Arizona , which is one of the most detailed personal accounts of the events that took place on December 7, Unlike some of the other survivors, Potts is more reluctant to talk about what happened on December 7, He also rarely participates in Pearl Harbor memorial events, but did show up for the 75th anniversary because the family of another former survivor, Don Stratton, had worked so hard to organize the event.

At the time of the attack, Potts was a coxswain and was transporting goods onto the Arizona when chaos broke out. Potts was later assigned to the diving crew that was tasked with retrieving bodies from the sunken part of the ship. Potts currently resides in California and says that he is still in excellent health and that two members of his family lived to Marine Corps Hilda Perez.

Conter joined the Navy just a few months after high school and was only 20 years old on December 7, According to an interview from , Conter went to the Arizona right after boot camp. He and 10 other men were detailed to recover the dead on the Arizona, and he recalled seeing ashes blowing off the ship that he realized had been men. Potts was a crane operator on the Arizona, he told the American Veterans Center in a video interview in late As he was pushed in a wheelchair to see the parked Navy Super Hornet at Provo Airport, Potts was asked whether he was ready to get in and go for a ride.

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Read more Mahalo for reading the Honolulu Star-Advertiser! Log in now to continue reading this story. Activate Digital Account Print subscriber but without online access? The attack that turned the Arizona into an inferno killed 1, sailors and Marines, and Stratton barely made it off alive, burned over two-thirds of his body.

Born July 14, , Stratton was raised in the small Nebraska town of Red Cloud and joined the Navy in the fall of , he wrote in the memoir, which was coauthored by Ken Gire. Within a couple of months, he was one of the roughly 1, men serving aboard the USS Arizona. On the morning of Dec. At one point, a bomb ignited the forward magazines, causing a catastrophic explosion. When they did, you could hear them sizzle.

My legs were burned from my ankles to my thighs. My face was seared.