After the first explosions rocked the USS Arizona, Raymond Haerry sprinted to one of the ship’s antiaircraft guns, hoping to somehow repel the aerial bombardment.
But the weapon wouldn’t fire. The gun’s ammunition was in storage.
Haerry raced toward the ammunition depot. An explosion reached it first, igniting gunpowder and fuel, according to a U.S. Navy interview featuring Haerry and his son. The explosion cracked the ship in two and lifted the bow into the air.
Haerry went with it, falling into oily Pearl Harbor waters that had been lit on fire. He somehow made it to shore, sweeping his arms in front of him as he swam to push the flames away.
Haerry, one of the last remaining survivors of the Pearl Harbor attacks on the Arizona on Dec. 7, 1941, died on Sept. 27 in Rhode Island, his son told the Associated Press. Haerry was 94.
Haerry’s son called him one of the first heroes of World War II. After swimming to shore, he found a gun and opened fire on the attacking Japanese warplanes. He spent the next few days recovering the bodies of his shipmates.
Nearly four of every five men on the ship were lost, some 1,177 men. Almost half of the 2,400 U.S. servicemen who died on that day were on the Arizona. Another 429 sailors and marines were killed when the USS Oklahoma was torpedoed and capsized.
Some were never recovered and remain entombed in the wreckage. Afterward, Haerry served for 25 years in the Navy, retiring as a master chief. He lived with his wife of 70 years, Evelyn, at a nursing home in West Warwick, R.I.
Haerry’s passing means there are only five surviving members of the USS Arizona, according to the Arizona Republic.
In all those years, Haerry never returned to Pearl Harbor, his son said. But his plan was always to return.
“As he was getting closer to the end, I think he felt that if there’s any place that he’d like to be at rest, it would be with his crewmates, the people who suffered and died on that day,” he said.
