One of the last survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack that thrust the United States into World War II has died. Vaughn Drake passed away recently at the age of 106. He is believed to be the oldest known survivor of the battle. He was born on November 6, 1918, in Winchester, Kentucky. He studied at the University of Kentucky College of Engineering before serving in the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, where he saw combat at the battles of Pearl Harbor and Saipan in the Pacific Theater. He was tasked with building barracks on Oahu’s eastern edge. The morning of the attack on Pearl Harbor he said he was going to breakfast when the Japanese planes began flying over.
Only about a dozen survivors of the…
… attack are alive today. Last spring, Lou Conter, the last living survivor of the USS Arizona Battleship, that exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, died. He was 102. Weeks earlier, Richard C. “Dick” Higgins, a radioman assigned to a patrol squadron of seaplanes based at the Hawaii Naval Base, died at 102.
