Fort Miles Museum is one of the few places in the United States that displays exhibits featuring the bookends of WWII – a USS Arizona relic from Pearl Harbor and the USS Missouri barrel under which the Empire of Japan signed surrender documents. Ken Potts’ recall of the events of December 7, 1941, makes for compelling reading. Thank you to the Associated Press.
Ken Potts, one of last 2 USS Arizona survivors, dies at 102
HONOLULU (AP) — 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.
Stratton 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.