USS Arizona Survivor Lou Conter Arrives in Hawaii for Commemoration

From the December 4, 2019, Military.com site "Pearl Harbor survivors gets hero's welcome as he arrives to mark attack's anniversary" by William Cole.  Honolulu Star Advertiser.

USS Arizona survivor Lou Conter flew in on Hawaiian Airlines Airbus A321 from Sacramento, California, along with fifty family members.  The plane was welcomed at Hawaii's Daniel K. Inouye International Airport through a watery arch formed by two fire trucks.

Mr. Conter was on the Arizona's stern that day in 1941 when a Japanese  aerial bomb pierced the bow of the battleship, igniting a million pounds of gunpowder.  He helped badly injured men get off the ship after that.

A total of 1,177 men were killed on the Arizona that day.  Today, Mr. Conter is one of only three survivors of the ship still alive.  He is in Hawaii partly for the internment aboard the Arizona of shipmate Lauren Bruner who died September 10 at age 98.

"We have to bury Lauren Bruner on Saturday, so [I] had to come back," Conter said sitting in his wheelchair.  "I'll come out every year I can until I'm gone.  I'm only 98," he added with a laugh.

--GreGen