Joseph Langdell, a retired Navy Lieutenant Commander who was oldest survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack on the USS Arizona, has passed away at the age of 100.
According to the Associated Press, his son Ted stated that Langdell was living in a nursing home in Yuba City, Ca. at the time of his death. He is also the last survivor of the attack on his ship, which lost over 1,000 men during the Dec. 7, 1941 bombing.
During the attack, Langdell had been inside a military base near the ship and when the attack occurred, he worked hard to attempt rescuing his shipmates and also help to remove the remains of those who died in the ship.
When the 56th anniversary of the attack came, Langdell spoke to AP, saying “I felt absolutely helpless as I watched the attack. If I had been aboard, I would have been killed in that No. 2 (gun) turret. That was the one that blew up. It was my luck to be assigned off the ship that day.”
Ted Langdell spoke of how his father did not discuss the attack and he went back to the site in 1976 for the first time. Joseph Langdell would later talk about his story, his son said, because “It drew attention not just to him, but gave him the chance to tell stories.”
His ashes will be laid to rest at Hawaii’s Memorial for the USS Arizona.
The Arizona Republic reported that Langdell would always wear his USS Arizona caps and when asked by his son, Langdell said, “It acknowledges to people that I’m a survivor. The hat represents Arizona.”