At the age of 102, one of the last two survivors Ken Potts from a US battleship that sank during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 has passed away.
Howard Kenton Potts, a 20-year-old crane operator from Utah, was transporting supplies to the USS Arizona on 7 December 1941, when Japan launched an attack.
A total of 1,177 sailors on the ship were slain, representing nearly half of the casualties sustained by the United States in the attack.
The United States entered World War II following the attack.
Mr. Potts, also known as Ken, passed away in the home he shared with his wife of 66 years in Utah, according to Randy Stratton, the son of Pott’s wartime companion and shipmate.
Stratton was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that Mr. Potts had “all his marbles” but “knew that his body was kind of shutting down on him” in the days leading up to his passing.
Mr. Stratton added,
“He merely hoped he would get better, but it turned out otherwise.”
Potts, a native of Illinois, enlisted in the US Navy for the first time in 1939.
On the morning of December 7, 1941, while he was transporting supplies to the USS Arizona, Japanese aircraft began attacking U.S. naval facilities at Pearl Harbor.
Mr. Potts used his boat to rescue sailors who had been thrown into the water and transfer them to a nearby island once the attack began.
He was still in the harbor when Arizona detonated and sank just nine minutes after being attacked.
Mr. Potts told the National Guard in a 2021 interview,
“I still see and feel it… most of the time as a nightmare.” “The entire location was on fire. “The water was on fire because the oil was ablaze.”
Later, Mr. Potts was tasked with recovering corpses from Arizona.
“That,” he told the National Guard. “Was a hell of a job.”
More than 900 mariners are still entombed in Arizona, which is still submerged in Pearl Harbor.
Lou Conter, a California resident and the sole remaining Arizona survivor, is 101 years old.
The United States declared war on Japan the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Germany and Italy declared war against the United States on December 11, prompting the United States to declare war against them.
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