News that Lou Contor, the last survivor of Japan’s attack on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, died at age 102 reminds us that the generation that fought in the most destructive war in history is fading away. Contor was 20 years old at the time of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack. He was one of only 335 officers and crewmen on the Arizona who survived the day of “infamy.” Some survivors of war are lucky. And some, like Lou Contor, were heroes.
Men like Lou Contor were motivated by duty and love of country.
During the attack on the Arizona, Contor helped rescue other crewmen. “Guys were coming out of the fire,” Contor remembered, “and we were just grabbing them and laying them down. They were real bad. You would pick them up by the bodies, and the skin would come off in your hands.” Later in the war, he flew combat missions in a Black Cat Squadron in the Pacific theater. According to the presidential unit citation for Contor’s squadron, he and other naval pilots conducted “search missions and anti-shipping attacks in the enemy Japanese controlled area … locating enemy task force units and striking dangerously by night in devastating masthead, glide-bombing attacks to ensure vital hits on the target.” Contor received a battlefield commission while stationed in New Guinea in 1943. He survived being shot down twice — once by the enemy and another time by friendly fire. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for helping to rescue and evacuate Australian coastwatchers in New Guinea under threat from Japanese forces. He later flew 29 combat missions during the Korean War. Contor’s war record, subsequent naval career, and life story can be found in The Lou Contor Story: From USS Arizona Survivor to Unsung American Hero.
In the closing scene of The Bridges at Toko-Ri, the commander of a U.S. aircraft carrier off the coast of Korea, having just lost a naval flier who was shot down after a bombing mission, wonders alou,: “Where do we get such men?”
In Lou Contor’s case, it was from Ojibwa, Wisconsin, where he was born on Sept. 13, 1921. The family moved to New Mexico the next year, when Lou’s father and uncle obtained jobs working on the construction of Route 66. The family later moved to Denver, where Lou worked on his family’s farm. During the Depression, while attending high school, Lou worked cleaning floors and “shaking” cowhides at Swift & Company, where his father also worked. He joined the Navy in October 1939.
Contor’s story and others like it should be read by every schoolkid in our country. That was one of the reasons I wrote a book about my father’s experience in World War II, Somewhere in France, Somewhere in Germany: A Combat Soldier’s Journey Through the Second World War, which tells the story of my father’s transformation from a small-town (Avoca, Pennsylvania) news correspondent to a hardened combat veteran. With the Army’s 29th Division, he fought his way through the hedgerows of Normandy, the rugged terrain leading to the port of Brest, to the nightmarish defenses of the Siegfried Line, to the west bank of the Elbe River, between June 7, 1944, and May 8, 1945.
“Where do we get such men?” Men like Lou Contor and my father were rooted in their Catholic faith, hardened and schooled by the Depression, motivated by duty and love of country. Lou Contor said many times that he wasn’t a hero — the men who die in battle are the real heroes. That greatest generation is dying out. Their memories — and, more importantly, their deeds — must be kept alive to educate future generations of Americans.
READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa:
The Case for the Eisenhower Doctrine for East Asia