Lauren Bruner, one of the last men to escape the sinking USS Arizona, dies at 98

Time was almost up for the last six men aboard the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor. The mighty battleship had been mortally wounded in a surprise attack by enemy bombers and was sinking in the shallow waters off of Honolulu.

Lauren Bruner, a fire controlman, had watched other men jump from the ship. He and the others were trapped on on a control tower, badly burned. Through the smoke they could see a maintenance ship, the USS Vestal, that had been tied to the USS Arizona. Someone was about to cut the line.

One of the six men on the USS Arizona waved and yelled. A sailor on the USS Vestal, a coxswain named Joe George, spotted the men. A moment later, he threw a weighted line from his ship to the USS Arizona.

Bruner and the others caught it and secured it. A captain on the USS Vestal ordered George to cut the line, but he refused and motioned toward the crewmen on the tower. This was the only way off, to shimmy down the rope 70 feet over a burning oil slick.

A young Seaman 1st Class, Harold Kuhn, went first. Then Donald Stratton, another Seaman 1st Class. Two others followed, leaving Bruner and one other crewman. Blinded by pain and smoke, they made it to the USS Vestal. The last of the survivors that day.

SPECIAL REPORT: USS Arizona and the men who survived

Bruner rarely spoke about the escape over the years. It gave him nightmares, left him unable to talk. But as he grew older, he began to share the stories of the 335 men who escaped the attack. He worked to make sure the man who saved him, Joe George, was recognized by the military. He made sure young people knew what happened.

"They don’t teach it much anymore," he said in a 2014 interview with The Arizona Republic. "Kids coming up now have never heard of it, never heard of it."

Bruner died in California. He was 98.

With his passing, only three crewmen from the USS Arizona are still alive: Stratton, 97, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, who escaped with Bruner in those final moments; Lou Conter, 98, of Grass Valley, California; and Ken Potts, 98, of Provo, Utah.

Bruner, who had lived on a quiet street in La Mirada, California, for years, will return to the USS Arizona one last time. He already arranged to be interred in the sunken battleship, an honor accorded to any sailor or Marine who was assigned to the USS Arizona when it was attacked.

He will likely be the last of the USS Arizona survivors to have his remains placed in the ship. The other three have said they would not seek interment there.

A Navy history

Lauren Bruner was 17 years old when he decided to follow his dad into the Navy. He waited for his 18th birthday, Nov. 4, 1938, to sign the papers, and reported to Bremerton, Washington, where the USS Arizona was docked and undergoing maintenance work.

"It was a huge thing to me," he said. "I'd never seen anything that big. I'd never even seen the ocean."

He drew deck duty at the start. The ship grew to a full complement and many of the crewmen were left to sleep in hammocks.

The USS Arizona finally set off down the West Coast before heading to Pearl Harbor. Bruner was given shore patrol.

"I had to go over and straighten out the drunks, break up the fights," he said. "We had our fun."

Most of the fun was harmless, and the men worked hard when they were on duty. Bruner was getting ready for church services on the deck the morning of Dec. 7 when the alarm sounded for general quarters.

The gun control crew struggled to respond to the attack, frustrated that they were unable to hit their targets. Bruner remembered how low the enemy planes flew.

"They were close enough," he told The Republic, "that you could actually see the pilot."

Bruner was taken to the hospital ship after his escape, burned over more than two-thirds of his body. He stayed aboard the Solace about a month, then found himself on another ship to the Navy hospital in San Francisco.

He was treated there for four months. He said he knew he was near release the day an officer came by and launched into a pep talk about the war and the Navy's role in it. He told Bruner he would soon report to a new destroyer, the USS Coghlan.

But the ship took an unexpected turn for its first outing, sailing north toward the Aleutian Islands, where the Japanese had established an outpost.

"We'd patrol at night," Bruner said. "They were trying to replenish submarines or send smaller ships in. We'd go out and blow them up."

After the war, Bruner settled in California, working nearly 30 years as a painter, carpenter and sheet metal worker. He rarely talked about his experiences in the war, almost never about the attack on the USS Arizona.

In 1991, a woman searching for survivors finally tracked him down.

"No one knew where the hell I was," Bruner said. "I was here all the time. When they sent me my discharge, I just stayed here."

Bruner began to share his story. He returned to Pearl Harbor several times. He rang bells from the USS Arizona in Hawaii and at the University of Arizona. He wrote a book about the attack, "Second to the Last to Leave USS Arizona."

He still struggled to talk about the worst of the ordeal, but he wanted people to know how he escaped. He and Stratton helped ensure Joe George received his commendation, taking their case to the White House in 2017, where they met President Donald Trump.

Bruner had hoped for one final reunion with some of his former crewmates this December in Colorado. Instead, Stratton remembered Bruner in a Facebook post:

"Lauren was always quick with a laugh and had a smile that would brighten an entire room. Lauren will truly be missed not just by us, but by the world.

"Rest in peace dear sailor. Your story will always be remembered."