It has been 83 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor, and we are rapidly saying final farewells to those who were there on that horrific day.

In the year since I last wrote to mark this occasion, the last survivor of the USS Arizona has passed away. Lou Conter died at age 102 on April 1 this year. He had already opted to not be interred aboard the Arizona, and was laid to rest beside his late wife in California. After surviving Pearl Harbor and the devastation of the Arizona, Conter went on to have a long and storied career as a naval aviator.

Make no mistake, Conter’s survival story as a quartermaster aboard the Arizona during the Pearl Harbor attacks is harrowing. But he was also shot down twice during the course of his career as a naval aviator –- and his stories of surviving those shootdowns are as thrilling as the story of his survival of the massive explosion aboard the Arizona.

In September 1943, Conter was shot down off the coast of New Guinea and landed the aircraft in shark-infested waters. His 10-man crew thought they were all going to die. But death would have to wait: Conter instructed his men to “stay together, hold hands and kick slowly, ‘cause there’ll be sharks around … if a shark comes too close, just hit [it] in the nose with your fist as hard as you can,” according to the Maritime Patrol Association.

The men followed his instructions. The entire crew was eventually rescued by a patrol torpedo boat and were back to flying another mission the next night.

The following month, Conter received the Distinguished Flying Cross for a daring series of below-treetop-level rescue flights along Papua New Guinea’s Sepik River, navigating just above the water with minimal clearance on either side of his aircraft. Conter and four other patrol boats would end up pulling 219 Australian coastwatchers to safety, with Japanese troops just a mile away.

Conter’s second shootdown came a few later In December 1943, when his aircraft was accidentally shot down by friendly fire from a U.S. Army Air Forces P-40 Warhawk fighter while attempting to rescue the crew of a downed B-25 bomber, according to Naval History and Heritage Command. While his nose gunner was killed, Conter and the rest of his crew survived and completed their missions, successfully saving the B-25 crew.

On top of the hundreds of submarine patrol missions he flew during World War II, Conter also served as an intelligence officer and combat aviator, flying 29 missions from the USS Bonhomme Richard during the Korean War. After the conflict, he became the first Navy officer to attend the Army’s Special Operations School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and would later develop the U.S. military’s Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training program during the Cold War.

Conter finally retired from service as a lieutenant commander in 1967. He became the last survivor of the USS Arizona after Ken Potts died in April 2023, also at age 102.

Those who are still living are the “teenagers.” The United States Navy, during the 1930’s, required parental permission for anyone under the age of 21 to enlist. However, many parents in the Depression era willingly gave their consent, and many young men were assigned to serve with older brothers – a policy that inadvertently ended up devastating many families after Pearl Harbor. Many 17 and 18 year olds were at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 – and now, they are the only ones left with living memory.

100-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor recalls confusion and chaos during Japanese bombing 83 years ago https://t.co/QpTxqzkvcS pic.twitter.com/0DKPPpapP3

— New York Post (@nypost) December 7, 2024

Bob Fernandez thought he’d go dancing and see the world when he joined the US Navy as a 17-year-old high school student in August 1941.

Four months later he found himself shaking from explosions and passing ammunition to artillery crews so his ship’s guns could return fire on Japanese planes bombing Pearl Harbor, a Navy base in Hawaii.

“When those things go off like that, we didn’t know what’s what,” said Fernandez, who is now 100. “We didn’t even know we were in a war.”

Two survivors of the bombing — each 100 or older — are planning to return to Pearl Harbor on Saturday to observe the 83rd anniversary of the attack that thrust the US into World War II.

They will join active-duty troops, veterans and members of the public for a remembrance ceremony hosted by the Navy and the National Park Service.

Fernandez was initially planning to join them but had to cancel because of health issues.

Dozens of survivors once joined the annual remembrance but attendance has declined as survivors have aged.

Today there are only 16 still living, according to a list maintained by Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors.

Only 16 still able to tell us what they saw with their own eyes.

Fernandez was working as a mess cook on his ship, the USS Curtiss, the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, and planned to go dancing that night at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki.

He brought sailors coffee and food as he waited tables during breakfast. Then they heard an alarm sound. Through a porthole, Fernandez saw a plane with the red ball insignia painted on Japanese aircraft fly by.

Fernandez rushed down three decks to a magazine room where he and other sailors waited for someone to unlock a door storing 5-inch, 38-caliber shells so they could begin passing them to the ship’s guns.

He has told interviewers over the years that some of his fellow sailors were praying and crying as they heard gunfire up above.

“I felt kind of scared because I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” Fernandez said.

Fernandez’s ship, the Curtiss, lost 21 men and nearly 60 of its sailors were injured.

“We lost a lot of good people, you know. They didn’t do nothing,” Fernandez said. “But we never know what’s going to happen in a war.”

When the teenagers are gone, and the last of the 16 living survivors have passed into history, it will be up to us to keep their memories alive, to go to Pearl Harbor ourselves, and pay tribute to our honored dead. It will be up to us to see Pearl Harbor as more than just a tourist attraction, but a sacred place where men lie at rest. And it will be up to us to continue honoring those like Lou Conter, who decided to be buried on land instead.

0700 Hours USS ARIZONA Pearl Harbor #PearlHarbor83 pic.twitter.com/iRIDIXfpDU

— USS Arizona (@USSArizona) December 7, 2024

May those who perished on this day, and those who served honorably after and have left us since, rest in honored glory. And may we give honor to those who still serve as living witnesses for as long as they are still with us.

Featured image: personal photo by Deanna Fisher, taken July 9, 2023, all rights reserved