It has been 83 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor, and we are rapidly saying final farewells to those who were there on that horrific day.

In the year since I last wrote to mark this occasion, the last survivor of the USS Arizona has passed away. Lou Conter died at age 102 on April 1 this year. He had already opted to not be interred aboard the Arizona, and was laid to rest beside his late wife in California. After surviving Pearl Harbor and the devastation of the Arizona, Conter went on to have a long and storied career as a naval aviator.

Make no mistake, Conter’s survival story as a quartermaster aboard the Arizona during the Pearl Harbor attacks is harrowing. But he was also shot down twice during the course of his career as a naval aviator –- and his stories of surviving those shootdowns are as thrilling as the story of his survival of the massive explosion aboard the Arizona.

In September 1943, Conter was shot down off the coast of New Guinea and landed the aircraft in shark-infested waters. His 10-man crew thought they were all going to die. But death would have to wait: Conter instructed his men to “stay together, hold hands and kick slowly, ‘cause there’ll be sharks around … if a shark comes too close, just hit [it] in the nose with your fist as hard as you can,” according to the Maritime Patrol Association...