Ken Potts Death – The family members of 102-year-old Ken Potts mourn his death. Ken, one of the survivors from USS Arizona battleship in 1941 has died at age 102. He was survived by his beautiful wife, Doris and other family members. The death of Ken Potts removes one of just two surviving witnesses to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Randy Stratton’s late dad, Donald Stratton, was a close friend and shipmate of Howard Kenton Potts’ in Arizona, and he reports that Potts passed away on Friday at the home he shared with his wife of 66 years in Provo, Utah.
USS Arizona battleship survivor passed away
Stratton stated that Potts “had all his marbles,” but that he has been having trouble getting out of bed recently. On the 15th of April, Stratton called Potts to celebrate his 102nd birthday. Potts joined the Navy in 1939 after growing up in Honey Bend, Illinois. The Utah National Guard reported in 2021 that on the morning of December 7, 1941, he was working as a crane operator transporting supplies to the Arizona when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
According to an oral history interview he gave to the American Veterans Center in 2020, Potts revealed that he jumped aboard a boat after hearing a loudspeaker command the sailors back to their vessels. The bombardment of the Hawaii naval base, which precipitated the United States’ entry into World War II, resulted in the loss of dozens of ships.
After being thrown or forced to leap into the oily sludge below, some seamen were rescued by Potts and his crew. Nine minutes after being bombed, the Arizona sank, taking with it 1,177 lives and roughly half of the sailors killed in the attack. Eight decades after it sank, the battleship is still there, with the bodies of more than 900 people still within. Decades later, Potts recalled that amid the confusion of the attack, some people were still issuing orders.
He lived with the trauma of the assault for the rest of his life. Stratton said that Lou Conter, aged 101 and residing in California, is the last known survivor of the Arizona. This, my friends, is a historic moment. And after (Conter) is gone, who shares all their stories?” Stratton stated.
Stratton claims that unlike a number of other Arizona survivors, Potts did not have his ashes placed on the sunken battleship. Many Arizona survivors, according to Stratton, have a similar dark sense of humor. Even though his father was badly burned in the attack, he refused to have his ashes sent back to the ship in an urn.
Ken Potts obituary and funeral arrangements will be released by family members
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