Pearl Harbor: Ken Potts, one of the last USS Arizona survivors dies at 102 

One of the last two survivors of the USS Arizona battleship that was sunk during Pearl Harbor in 1941 died at age 102, days after his birthday. 

Howard Kenton Potts, known as Ken, died on Friday at his home in Provo, Utah, according to Randy Stratton, son of Donald Stratton—Pott’s shipmate onboard the Arizona. 

Potts was born and raised in Honey Bend, Illinois. He enlisted in the Navy in 1939 and was working as a crane operator moving supplies to the Arizona on the day of the Pearl Harbor Attack on December 7, 1941. 

That fateful day, a loudspeaker ordered sailors to go back to their ships, Potts said in a 2020 oral history interview with the American Veterans Center.

"When I got back to Pearl Harbor, the whole harbor was afire," He said in the interview. "The oil had leaked out and caught on fire and was burning."

Several ships were hit by the bombing of the Japanese planes—some of which sank or capsized. Sailors were jumping out of the boats, onto the oily water below, Potts said. He tried rescuing as many as he could by pulling them onto his boat. 

The USS Arizona was one of the ships that were bombed during the attack. It only took nine minutes to sink completely, along with 900 men who were trapped inside. The death toll of the Arizona—1,177—accounts for almost half of the servicemen who were victims of the attack. 

"Even after I got out of the Navy, out in the open, and heard a siren, I’d shake," he said.

Stratton said Potts was still doing well and was happy to celebrate his birthday on April 15 but was having a hard time getting out of bed. 

"But he knew that his body was kind of shutting down on him, and he was just hoping that he could get better but (it) turned out not," Stratton said.