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. He was 102.Howard Kenton Potts died Friday at the home in Provo, Utah, that he shared with his wife of 66 years, according to Randy Stratton, whose late father, Donald Stratton, was Potts' Arizona shipmate and close friend.Related video above: Americans remembered the Pearl Harbor attack on its 81st anniversary in December 2022Stratton said Potts "had all his marbles" but lately was having a hard time getting out of bed. When Stratton spoke to Potts on his birthday, April 15, he was happy to have made it to 102."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.Potts was born and raised in Honey Bend, Illinois, and enlisted in the Navy in 1939.He was working as a crane operator shuttling supplies to the Arizona the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when the Pearl Harbor attack happened, according to a 2021 article by the Utah National Guard.In a 2020 oral history interview with the American Veterans Center, Potts said a loudspeaker ordered sailors back to their ships so he got on a boat."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."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."Even after I got out of the Navy, out in the open, and heard a siren, I'd shake," he said.Stratton noted that the only remaining survivor from the Arizona is now Lou Conter, who is 101 and living in California."This is history. It's going away," Stratton said, adding: "And once (Conter is) gone, who tells all their stories?"Several dozen Arizona survivors have had their ashes interred on the sunken battleship so they could join their shipmates, but Potts didn't want that, according to Stratton."He said he got off once, he's not going to go back on board again," he said.Stratton said many Arizona survivors shared a similar dry sense of humor. That included his own father, who was severely burned in the attack and also did not want to return to the ship as ashes in an urn."'I've been cremated once. I'm not going to be cremated twice,'" Donald Stratton joked, according to the younger Stratton, before his death in 2020 at age 97."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."Potts is survived by his wife, Doris. Information on other survivors was not immediately available.

Related video above: Pearl Harbor families push for identificationWhen Japanese bombs began falling on Pearl Harbor, U.S. Navy Seaman 1st Class David Russell first sought refuge below deck on the USS Oklahoma.But a split-second decision on that December morning 80 years ago changed his mind, and likely saved his life."They started closing that hatch. And I decided to get out of there," Russell, now 101, said in a recent interview.Within 12 minutes his battleship would capsize under a barrage of torpedoes. Altogether 429 sailors and Marines from the Oklahoma would perish — the greatest death toll from any ship that day other than the USS Arizona, which lost 1,177.Russell plans to return to Pearl Harbor on Tuesday for a ceremony in remembrance of the more than 2,300 American troops killed in the Dec. 7, 1941, attack that launched the U.S. into World War II.About 30 survivors and 100 other veterans from the war are expected to observe a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m., the minute the attack began.Survivors, now in their late 90s or older, stayed home last year due to the coronavirus pandemic and watched a livestream of the event instead.Russell is traveling to Hawaii with the Best Defense Foundation, a nonprofit founded by former NFL Linebacker Donnie Edwards that helps World War II veterans revisit their old battlefields.He recalls heading topside when the attack started because he was trained to load anti-aircraft guns and figured he could help if any other loader got hurt.But Japanese torpedo planes dropped a series of underwater missiles that pummeled the Oklahoma before he could get there. Within 12 minutes, the hulking battleship capsized."Those darn torpedoes, they just kept hitting us and kept hitting us. I thought they'd never stop," Russell said. "That ship was dancing around."Russell clambered over and around toppled lockers while the battleship slowly rolled over."You had to walk sort of sideways," he said.Once he got to the main deck, he crawled over the ship's side and eyed the USS Maryland moored next door. He didn't want to swim because leaked oil was burning in the water below. Jumping, he caught a rope hanging from the Maryland and escaped to that battleship without injury.He then helped pass ammunition to the Maryland's anti-aircraft guns.After the battle, Russell and two others went to Ford Island, next to where the battleships were moored, in search of a bathroom. A dispensary and enlisted quarters there had turned into a triage center and place of refuge for hundreds of wounded, and they found horribly burned sailors lining the walls. Many would die in the hours and days ahead."Most of them wanted a cigarette, and I didn't smoke at that time but I, uh, I got a pack of cigarettes and some matches, and I lit their cigarettes for them," Russell said. "You feel for those guys, but I couldn't do anything. Just light a cigarette for 'em and let 'em puff the cigarettes."Russell still thinks about how lucky he was. He ponders why he decided to go topside on the Oklahoma, knowing most of the men who stayed behind likely were unable to get out after the hatch closed.In the first two days after the bombing, a civilian crew from the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard rescued 32 men trapped inside the Oklahoma by cutting holes in its hull. But many others perished. Most of those who died were buried in anonymous Honolulu graves marked as "unknowns" because their remains were too degraded to be identified by the time they were removed from the ship between 1942 and 1944.In 2015, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency exhumed 388 sets of these remains in hopes of identifying them with the help of DNA technology and dental records. They succeeded with 361.Russell's brother-in-law was among them. Fireman 1st Class Walter "Boone" Rogers was in the fireroom, which got hit by torpedoes, Russell said. The military identified his remains in 2017, and he's since been reburied at Arlington National Cemetery.Russell remained in the Navy until retiring in 1960. He worked at Air Force bases for the next two decades and retired for good in 1980.His wife, Violet, passed away 22 years ago, and he now lives alone in Albany, Oregon. He drives himself to the grocery store and the local American Legion post in a black Ford Explorer while listening to polka music at top volume. When he's not hanging out with other veterans at the legion, he reads military history and watches TV. He keeps a stack of 500-piece puzzles to keep his mind sharp.For decades, Russell didn't share much about his experiences in World War II because no one seemed to care. But the images from Pearl Harbor still haunt him, especially at night."When I was in the VA hospital there in San Francisco, they said, 'We want you to talk about World War II.' And I said, I told them, I said, 'When we talk about it, people don't believe us. They just walk away.' So now people want to know more about it so we're trying to talk about it. We're trying to talk about it, and we're just telling them what we saw," he said. "You can't forget it."