Pearl Harbor attack survivor Warren Upton, right, is greeted by Michael Ferreira, commander of Pearl Harbor American Veterans, following the USS Utah Memorial Sunset Ceremony in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 6, 2019. (Allen Amani/US. Navy)
Warren “Red” Upton, the last surviving veteran of the battleship USS Utah, which sank in Pearl Harbor during the 1941 Japanese surprise attack and remains there as a memorial, died Wednesday in San Jose, Calif. He was 105.
“Following a short hospital stay, Warren died on December 25th surrounded by his loving family,” Pacific Historic Parks said in a Facebook post Thursday announcing the death.
Upton was the oldest of a handful of still-living veterans who survived the attack that killed 2,335 service members and 68 civilians on Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941.
With his death, only 15 veterans of the attack are known to be alive, according to Kathleen Farley, president of the California chapter of Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors, who has maintained a tally for years.
Farley said in an email Thursday that it is “hard to believe” that out of the roughly 87,000 active-duty troops stationed on Oahu on the day of the attack, so few remain.
Upton had for years been the secretary of Pearl Harbor Survivors Chapter 7 in San Jose and routinely notified Farley of the deaths of survivors, she said.
On the morning of the Dec. 7 attack, the USS Utah, a Florida-class dreadnaught battleship, was moored off Ford Island in Pearl Harbor in an area normally used by the Pacific Fleet’s aircraft carriers.
Unbeknownst to the attackers, however, the carriers were at sea. Japanese torpedo bombers instead targeted the Utah, hitting the battleship with several torpedoes within the first few minutes of the attack.
The ship began to quickly take on water and capsize.
Upton, then a 22-year-old radioman on the Utah, and the crew were forced to abandon ship, Upton said in a Dec. 7, 2021, article published in The Mercury News.
As crew members plunged into the harbor and swam for land, Upton recalled hearing a voice beside him ask, “Can you swim, Red?”
“I happened to have red hair in those days,” he told the newspaper.
Beside him was a fellow sailor flailing in a life jacket and making little forward progress. He helped the man reach shore.
“You’re really frightened, but your body reacts,” said Upton. “We knew we had to do something — it’s self-preservation.”
While 58 Utah crew members died that day, 461 survived.
The hulk of the ship, partially above water, is part of the Pearl Harbor National Memorial.
Upton continued to serve as a radioman for the rest of the war. He served again during the Korean War.
He married Valeria Gene Parker several years after the end of World War II. She had served as a Navy nurse during the conflict. She died in 2018. They had five children.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
Upton, however, told The Mercury News that he had no plans to inter his cremated remains in the sunken hull of the Utah, an honor available to the crew members who survived the sinking.
“I got off there once,” he told the newspaper. “I’m not going back.”
