'The whole harbor was afire.' Ken Potts, one of the last two remaining survivors of the USS Arizona battleship, which sank during the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, has died at 102.
Dozens of ships either sank, capsized or were damaged in the bombing of the Hawaii naval base, which catapulted the U.S. into World War II.
Sailors were tossed or forced to jump into the oily muck below, and Potts and his fellow sailors pulled some to safety in their boat. The Arizona sank just nine minutes after being bombed, and its 1,177 dead account for nearly half the servicemen killed in the attack. Today the battleship still sits where it sank eight decades ago, with more than 900 dead entombed inside.
Potts recalled decades later that some people were still giving orders in the midst of the attack but there was also a lot of chaos. He carried his memories of the attack over the course of his long life.Stratton noted that the only remaining survivor from the Arizona is now“This is history. It’s going away,” Stratton said, adding: “And once gone, who tells all their stories?”so they could join their shipmates, but Potts didn’t want that, according to Stratton.
“‘I’ve been cremated once. I’m not going to be cremated twice,’” Donald Stratton joked, according to the younger Stratton, before“They had that all throughout their lives. They had the sense of humor, and they knew sooner or later they would pass,” Randy Stratton said. “Our job now is to keep their memories alive.”AP NEWS
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