Warren Upton, the oldest survivor of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the final survivor of the battleship Utah, died on Wednesday in Los Gatos, Calif. He was 105.
The death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors, who said Mr. Upton was being treated for pneumonia.
Mr. Upton was serving as a radioman aboard the U.S.S. Utah on Dec. 7, 1941. He was below deck, reaching for his shaving kit, when the Utah was struck in quick succession by two torpedoes at about 8 a.m.
“It was quite an inferno,” Mr. Upton, a resident of San Jose, Calif., told the San Francisco TV station KTVU in 2021. “I went over the side then,” he added, “and slid down the side of the ship as she rolled over.”
The ship began capsizing within minutes. Mr. Upton and others left the ship and swam to Ford Island, adjacent to the row of battleships in Pearl Harbor. Along the way, he helped another shipmate who couldn’t swim.
They took cover in a ditch that was being dug for sewer pipes, he recalled in a video interview in 2018. “We were covered with fuel oil. We had plenty of it on us and our clothes.”
Fifty-eight crew members died, and the ship was never salvaged. But 461 crew members survived.
Mr. Upton continued to transmit and receive radio signals in Morse Code throughout the war. Once it was over, he joined the Navy Reserve and served in the Korean War.
He settled in the Bay Area, married and had a family. He worked as a teller at Wells Fargo Bank, and as a radio technician for United Airlines and General Electric, Mr. Upton’s daughter, Barbara Upton, said.
He was a longtime active member of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, a nonprofit group for members of the military who had been on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, on the morning of the attack.
Warren Upton was born on Oct. 17, 1919, in El Dorado, Calif. His father, Charles Elmer Upton, was a teacher and a principal; he died when Warren was 7. His mother, Ora Adeline Ralston, died when he was 17. Mr. Upton enlisted in the Navy after graduating from high school and had been stationed in Hawaii for years before 1941, Barbara Upton said.
“He was just a very quiet and gracious man,” said Ms. Farley, whose father served on the U.S.S. California, which was also moored in Pearl Harbor that day. She worked with Mr. Upton to keep alive the memories of survivors and honor those who died in the attack.
“I’ve learned from my own father and from numerous Pearl Harbor survivors that nobody considered themselves a hero,” she said. “They will say, ‘I’m not a hero. I was there doing my job on Dec. 7, following orders. The heroes are the 2,403 that never came home’.”
The Utah was a training ship that was demilitarized in 1931, and it was not intended as a target. The Japanese pilot who struck the Utah said afterward, “I could see, in a flash going by, gun turrets without any barrels.” He called hitting the Utah “a mistake.”
Mr. Upton’s wife of 60 years, Valeria Gene Upton, a former Navy nurse, died in 2018. He is survived by his children Dennis, Charles, Mary Upton, Jill Parsons and Barbara Upton; five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
More than 2,400 U.S. military personnel and civilians were killed and nearly 1,800 were wounded in the Pearl Harbor attack, which led the United States to declare war on Japan the next day.
The number of survivors of the attack has been rapidly declining in recent years; the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association disbanded in 2011, citing low membership numbers.
With Mr. Upton’s death, about 15 service members are known to remain alive, according to the organization Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. The youngest is 100 years old.
Only two survivors were able to attend the annual memorial ceremony at Pearl Harbor this month. “It upset Warren greatly, knowing that his shipmates were going before him,” Ms. Farley said.
Mr. Upton’s final trip to Pearl Harbor was on Dec. 7, 2019, Ms. Farley said. While he was entitled to the honor of being interred on the sunken battleship with an urn placed by naval scuba divers, Mr. Upton ruled that option out years ago.
“I was very fortunate to make it off the ship and swim back over to Ford Island,” Ms. Farley recalled him saying. “I’m not going back to the ship.”
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