USS Arizona survivor Ken Potts will be remembered Thursday morning, when the University of Arizona Navy ROTC marks the 82nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor with a ceremony at 7 a.m. on the UA Mall in front of the Student Union.
Potts died in April at his home in Provo, Utah, at the age of 102. That leaves Lou Conter, who is 101 and living in California, as the sole remaining survivor from the Japanese attack on the battleship on Dec. 7, 1941.
Former U.S. Navy coxswain Howard "Ken" Potts attends the Freedom Bell opening ceremony and bell ringing Dec. 6, 2016, at the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Marine Master Sgt. Stephen Powers with the U of Aâs Navy ROTC said Tucson teacher and USS Arizona historian Andrew Desautels will read a poem and say a few words about Potts during Thursdayâs ceremony.
Marine Col. Shannon Shea, commanding officer of the universityâs Navy ROTC unit, also is scheduled to speak.
A bell will be rung as the names are read of each of the eight service members from Arizona who were killed on the stateâs namesake battleship.
Seaman Second Class James Van Horn, 17, was the only USS Arizona casualty from Tucson.
His namesake nephew, Jim Van Horn of Corona, California, has since contributed a sample of his DNA to the Defense Department as part of Operation 85, an all-volunteer, civilian-led effort to identify at least 85 USS Arizona crew members still buried as unknowns at Hawaiiâs National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl.
The annual Pearl Harbor Remembrance ceremony at the UA will be held at the USS Arizona Mall Memorial, which features a life-sized outline of the battleship and medallions for each of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed on the vessel during the sneak attack that drew the United States into World War II.
Powers said this yearâs ceremony is slated to last 20-25 minutes.
Also Thursday, honor Guard cadets from the university's Air Force ROTC will hold a 12-hour silent vigil from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. along the memorial walkway between the Student Union and the Chemistry building.
The cadets will be in full uniform and carrying unloaded, replica rifles during the vigil.
The USS Arizona was a Pennsylvania-class battleship commissioned in the United State Navy in 1916. She went through an extensive modernization in 1929, with new deck armor, boilers, turbines, guns and fire-control. During the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941, a bomb detonated a powder magazine in the Arizona and the battleship exploded violently and sank, with the loss of 1,177 officers and crewmen. The U.S. made a formal declaration of war against Japan and subsequently all Axis powers. The wreck still rests at the bottom of the harbor and is now part of the USS Arizona Memorial.
