On Pearl Harbor anniversary, 2 who lived join fallen USS Arizona comrades beneath the waves
HONOLULU — With thoughts still smoldering of the Japanese air raid that killed 1,177 of their shipmates on the USS Arizona 75 years ago Wednesday, four of the last remaining survivors of that Pearl Harbor battleship said it will be tough to bury two more.
Divers will place urns holding the ashes of Clarendon R. Hetrick, of Las Vegas, and John D. Anderson, of Roswell, New Mexico, inside the sunken ship where Anderson’s twin brother, Delbert “Jake” Anderson, and the other crew members who died that day still rest.
Hetrick, 92, died in April in a Las Vegas hospital. John Anderson, 98, also died last year.
Both managed to escape the burning ship before it sank and had been regulars at USS Arizona survivors’ reunions.
“It’s always real hard,” said USS Arizona survivor Louis Conter, 95, of Grass Valley, California, who has “officiated a lot of the burials on the Arizona.”
“It’s always a tough proposition, but they’re joining their shipmates for permanent duty, permanent watch,” he said Tuesday outside the Pearl Harbor visitors center, flanked three other USS Arizona survivors — Lauren Bruner, 96, of La Mirada, California; Donald Stratton, 94, of Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Ken Potts, 95, of Provo, Utah.
The fifth survivor, Lonnie Cook, 95, of Morris, Oklahoma, isn’t attending the 75th anniversary commemoration events.
“We have to take a deep breath, and live through it and pay your respects to them,” Conter said of the somber burials at sea. “We’re all going to be there some day.”
In interviews over the years with the Review-Journal, Hetrick recounted how he took off his new shoes before he stepped off the sinking ship, then dog-paddled to Ford Island because he didn’t know freestyle or breast strokes. In fact, he had flunked the Navy’s swim test.
He had just finished busing dishes after breakfast on the ship and had taken a shower when he heard bombs explode.
He ran to his battle station, the third-deck ammunition magazine, where he started handing up shells for topside guns.
“We took a hit. It knocked us all off our feet. We started smelling smoke, and somebody said, ‘Get the hell out of here,’” he said in one of his last interviews.
After scrambling to escape through a hatch, he climbed to the quarter-deck, which was normally 15 feet above the water line but by this time was only a foot above it because the ship was sinking so fast.
Then he plunged into the briny harbor and headed for Ford Island about 75 yards away.
“The only thing I could think of was ‘move!’” he recalled. “I don’t know whether I swam or ran across the water, but I happened to make it across.”
At Tuesday’s news conference, Conter said people often view the survivors as heroes.
“We’re not the heroes,” he said. “The ones who are the heroes are the 1,177 who were killed that day.
“You’ve got to remember that we lived through it and came home and got married and had children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and live a (good) life. They lost theirs immediately, and they’re the ones who should be called the heroes.”
Contact Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Find him on Twitter: @KeithRogers2