Jake Larson, who was part of a unit that stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 and who gained a wide following on social media after sharing his memories of World War II, died on Thursday at his home in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was 102.
His death was confirmed by his granddaughter McKaela Larson, on his social media accounts.
Mr. Larson had 1.2 million followers on TikTok on his channel, “Story Time with Papa Jake.” He amassed more than 11 million likes on the page.
“He went peacefully and was even cracking jokes til the very end,” Ms. Larson posted. “As Papa would say, ‘Love you all the mostest.’” Information about his other survivors was not immediately available.
Staff Sgt. Larson was among the 160,000 Allied troops who swarmed onto the beaches of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, in an invasion that would ultimately lead to the liberation of Europe from the Nazis.
He shared many of his stories on TikTok after Ms. Larson started an account for him during the pandemic.
The first video was posted in June 2020, and about 225 more followed as he quickly gained hundreds of thousands of followers.
Initially, he recounted in detail the preparations for D-Day, the operation itself, and the aftermath. But soon he added a recurring feature in which he opened letters and packages from his followers, and shared their contents in videos.
While sitting in an easy chair at home, he would read aloud from the letters.
One was from a 10-year-old boy who wrote on a lined sheet of notebook paper, “You are a true hero and someone I look up to.”
In addition to his own broadcasts, Mr. Larson sat for many other interviews to honor his comrades who did not return home.
Jake Larson was born on Dec. 20, 1922, in Hope, Minn., about 75 miles south of Minneapolis. Though he was only 15 years old at the time, Mr. Larson concealed his true age to enlist in the National Guard, he told the website Memoirs of WWII in 2023.
In January 1942, he was stationed in Northern Ireland as part of the Army V Corps, also known as the Victory Corps. It played critical roles in the D-Day invasion, the liberation of Paris and the Battle of the Bulge.
As an operations sergeant, Mr. Larson assembled the planning books for Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy. He ran onto Omaha Beach while German machine gunners sprayed the beach with gunfire.
He told The New York Times in 2019 that he remembered jumping off his landing craft into frigid water up to his neck amid explosions. He hid behind a pile of sand and asked a soldier if he had any dry matches to light a cigarette, as his were all wet.
“I looked again and there was no head under the helmet,” Mr. Larson said. “I thank that guy today. In that instant I had the ability to get up and run.”
He said that he weighed 120 pounds at the time.
“I don’t think the Germans were capable of shooting a toothpick, so I made it to shore,” he said. His unit, though, suffered significant losses.
He said that he often asked himself: How did he survive when so many thousands did not?
“I never thought I’d be alive 75 years later,” he said in 2019. “I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”
In 2021, he independently published a memoir, “The Luckiest Man in the World: Stories from the Life of Papa Jake.”
Mr. Larson was the last surviving member of his company.
“I am the last man,” he told The Times, while wearing a pin on his hat with the shield and motto of his military regiment, “To the last man.”
“I’m so thankful,” he said in 2023. “There’s got to be somebody watching out for me. This is the way my life has been. I went through six battles without a scratch.”
Thomas Fuller contributed reporting.
Adeel Hassan, a New York-based reporter for The Times, covers breaking news and other topics.
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