On December 7, 1941, 22-year-old radioman Warren “Red” Upton was getting ready to shave when a Japanese torpedo struck his ship, USS Utah (AG-16). In 2020, Upton recounted to The Associated Press that no one knew what caused Utah to shake. The battleship-turned-target ship was then struck by a second torpedo, which caused her to roll over and sink quickly. Upton abandoned ship, scraping barnacles on Utah‘s hull on his way down. He swam to shore with many of his shipmates. The ship’s service officer was wearing a life jacket but could not swim, so Upton helped him through the water and to the shore. Still, 58 of Utah’s crew were killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Upton made it to nearby Ford Island. As Japanese planes strafed men on the ground, he ran for a nearby ditch and took cover. From there, Upton and other sailors witnessed the devastation of the attack. “When the USS Arizona was hit, it sounded like everything was going up,” Upton told Don Downey in a 2018 interview. “We thought maybe it was a fuel tank.” The sailors remained in the ditch for 30 minutes until a truck came along and took them to safety.
After Pearl Harbor, Upton continued to serve as a radioman. When the war ended, he returned home and married his wife Jeanne, a former Navy nurse, and started a family; Jeanne passed away in 2018. In the wake of Pearl Harbor and WWII, Upton remained a proud member of the USS Utah and Pearl Harbor survivor communities. While he did not mind sharing his experience of the attack, the loss of his shipmates over the years saddened him.
On December 25, 2024, Upton passed away at a hospital in Los Gatos, California; Hawaii News Now reports that he was surrounded by family when he passed. At the time of his death, Upton was the oldest living survivor of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Moreover, he was the last crew member of the USS Utah. Hawai’i Public Radio reports that only three surviving sailors from Utah were still alive in 2020, including Upton. HPR also notes that, following Upton’s death, just 15 service members of the estimated 87,000 on O’ahu during the attack are still alive.
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This article originally appeared on We Are the Mighty.
Featured image: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Allen Michael Amani/US Navy via CNN
