Pearl Harbor Just Held Its Loneliest Anniversary in 84 Years

All 12 Remaining Are Over 100

On December 7, 2025, the annual remembrance ceremony at Pearl Harbor unfolded without a single survivor of the 1941 attack. For 84 years, the men who lived through that morning had gathered to honor the 2,403 who didn’t.

They saluted passing ships. They laid wreaths.

They told their stories to anyone who would listen. This year, the front row held only empty chairs.

Twelve survivors are still alive, all centenarians, but none could make the trip. One of them, a 105-year-old Navy musician from Oregon, had been planning to go right up until he fell ill.

His daughter said the absence “hurt my heart in a way I can’t describe. ” The ceremony went on without them, and that silence said more than any speech could.

Ike Schab Was Supposed to Be There

Ira “Ike” Schab, 105, had attended six Pearl Harbor ceremonies since 2016.

The former tuba player from the USS Dobbin would fly from his home in Beaverton, Oregon, to stand on the grass overlooking the harbor and salute the ships passing by.

In 2024, he spent six weeks in physical therapy just so he could rise from his wheelchair for that salute. This year, illness stopped him days before departure.

His daughter Kimberlee Heinrichs had to cancel the trip.

Schab goes not just for himself but for his late bandmates, his three brothers who served in the war, and the survivors he met over the years who have since died.

2,000 Survivors Came in 1991

The 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor drew around 2,000 survivors to Hawaii. President George H. W. Bush attended.

Veterans filled the ceremony grounds, shook hands, posed for photos, and caught up with old shipmates. Many were in their late sixties and early seventies then, still healthy enough to travel.

The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association had chapters across the country and tens of thousands of members. Annual reunions felt like homecomings.

The men told their stories freely, knowing they had decades left to keep telling them.

From Five to Two to Zero

The decline came slowly, then all at once. In 2023, five survivors made it to the ceremony.

In 2024, only two showed up: Schab and Ken Stevens, both from Oregon. A third, Bob Fernandez from California, had to cancel due to health problems.

By December 2025, none of the remaining twelve could travel.

The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association had already disbanded in 2011, when membership dropped to 2,700 and the men were too old to keep it running.

The annual pilgrimage that once drew thousands now draws descendants, historians, and military officials who carry on in their place.

87,000 Troops Were There That Day

Military historian J. Michael Wenger estimated that 87,000 American service members were stationed on Oahu on December 7, 1941. The Japanese attack killed 2,403 of them and wounded nearly 1,200 more.

The survivors scattered across the country after the war, raised families, built careers, and grew old.

Kathleen Farley, president of the California chapter of Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors, has tracked the living survivors for years. Her tally now stands at 12.

Every one of them is over 100 years old. The youngest verified survivor is believed to be around 100 or 101.

Lou Conter Was the Arizona’s Last Witness

Lou Conter died on April 1, 2024, at his home in Grass Valley, California. He was 102.

Conter had been the last living survivor of the USS Arizona, the battleship that exploded and sank with 1,177 men aboard. He was a 20-year-old quartermaster standing on deck when a bomb hit the ship’s magazine.

The explosion lifted the Arizona out of the water. Conter helped pull wounded sailors from the burning oil and spent weeks recovering bodies.

He later became a Navy pilot, flew 200 combat missions, survived two shootdowns, and helped create the Navy’s SERE program. He always said the real heroes were the men who never came home.

Four More Died in Late 2024

The losses came fast at the end of 2024. Warren “Red” Upton, the oldest survivor at 105, died on Christmas Day in California.

He had been a radioman on the USS Utah when torpedoes struck and capsized the ship. Harry Chandler, 103, died December 30 in Florida.

He was a hospital corpsman who watched the Arizona explode from a hillside, then rushed down to pull oil-covered sailors from the water. Bob Fernandez, 100, died in December.

Ken Stevens, 102, who had attended the 2024 ceremony with Schab, died in March 2025 in Oregon. Each death shrank the circle further.

A 140-Pound Sailor Carried Twice His Weight

On that Sunday morning in 1941, Schab had just showered and put on a clean uniform aboard the USS Dobbin. He was waiting for his brother Allen to visit so they could explore Honolulu together.

Then he heard the call for a fire rescue party. He ran topside and saw Japanese planes overhead and the USS Utah capsizing.

He rushed below deck, grabbed boxes of ammunition, and joined a daisy chain of sailors feeding shells to the anti-aircraft guns. He weighed 140 pounds.

The ammunition boxes weighed almost twice that. “We were pretty startled,” Schab later said.” Startled and scared to death.

Sixty Years of Silence, Then a Mission

Schab didn’t talk about Pearl Harbor for decades after the war. The memories were painful, and he figured nobody would understand.

But about ten years ago, as the number of survivors dwindled, he changed his mind. He started sharing his story with family, students, and history buffs.

He returned to Pearl Harbor whenever he could, sometimes relying on crowdfunding to pay for the trip. His son Karl told reporters that Schab felt a duty to keep going.

“As long as I’m able to make the trip,” Schab said, “I want to make the trip for the people that can’t make the trip.

800 Voices Recorded Before They Faded

Retired National Park Service historian Daniel Martinez saw this moment coming.

In 1998, he attended a Pearl Harbor survivors’ convention and recorded oral histories for 12 hours a day, three days straight. The Park Service now holds nearly 800 interviews, most on video.

The Library of Congress has 535 collections from survivors, including interviews, letters, photos, and diaries.

Martinez compared the effort to what happened in the early 1900s, when historians raced to document Civil War veterans before they died.

“They remain as a part of the national memory,” Martinez said, “of a day that changed America and changed the world.

The Sons and Daughters Take the Torch

The Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors has over 4,000 members in all 50 states. Kathleen Farley, whose father survived the attack aboard the USS California, helps lead the organization.

Their motto is simple: “Lest We Forget. ” When the survivors themselves can no longer travel, the descendants show up in their place.

They attend ceremonies, share their fathers’ stories, and keep the history alive for the next generation. “When they’re all gone, we’re still going to be here,” said Deidre Kelley, the group’s president.

“And it’s our intent to keep the memory alive as long as we’re alive.”

Twelve Men, All Over 100, Still Here

The 84th anniversary ceremony went forward on December 7, 2025, at 7:55 a. m.

Hawaii time, the exact minute the attack began. Fighter jets flew overhead in missing man formation.

Active-duty sailors laid wreaths. A moment of silence fell over the harbor.

Somewhere in Oregon, Ike Schab was too sick to watch. Somewhere across the country, eleven other centenarians carried the same memories.

The ceremony’s theme was “Building Pathways to Peace. ” Tom Leatherman, superintendent of the Pearl Harbor National Memorial, addressed the crowd.

“For the first time in the history of this ceremony,” he said, “no Pearl Harbor survivors were able to join us in person. Their absence is felt profoundly.

Visiting Pearl Harbor National Memorial, Hawaii

The Pearl Harbor National Memorial sits on the shore of the harbor where 2,403 Americans died on December 7, 1941.

The USS Arizona Memorial, a white structure above the sunken battleship, holds the remains of more than 900 sailors and Marines still entombed inside.

Admission to the visitor center and memorial is free, but timed tickets are required and often run out early. The park is open daily from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. A museum displays artifacts, photographs, and oral history recordings from survivors.

The address is 1 Arizona Memorial Place, Honolulu, HI 96818.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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