YUBA CITY, Calif. (AP) - The oldest living crew member of the battleship USS Arizona to have survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has died in Northern California at the age of 100.
Retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Langdell died Feb. 4 at a nursing home in Yuba City, according to his son, Ted Langdell. A tally maintained by the USS Arizona Reunion Association, for which Langdell had served as president, identified him as not only the oldest Arizona survivor, but the last surviving officer from the naval ship that lost 1,177 men - nearly four-fifths of its crew - when it was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941.
Langdell was an ensign on an assignment that had him sleeping on a military base adjacent to the ship in Honolulu on the morning Pearl Harbor was attacked. He spent the following hours and days trying to rescue shipmates from the burning water, preparing for another possible air assault and leading the survivors tasked with removing the remains of the dead from the partially sunken ship, his son said.
"I felt absolutely helpless as I watched the attack," Langdell told The Associated Press on the 56th anniversary of the attack that drew the United States into World War II. "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."