Richard C. Higgins was one of the last remaining survivors of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
- Died: March 19, 2024 (Who else died on March 19?)
- Details of death: Died at his granddaughter’s home in Bend, Oregon, of natural causes at the age of 102.
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Richard C. Higgins’s legacy
Higgins grew up in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl era; he dreamed of attending school to study radio and television, but with money short, he joined the U.S. Navy in 1939 instead. He was trained as an aviation mechanic and was stationed at Pearl Harbor in early 1941. In the days leading up to the attack, Higgins was away on a patrol mission, returning to base on December 5, 1941 – just two days before Japanese planes bombed it.
Higgins was asleep in his bunk when the attack began. He quickly made his way to the Navy’s planes, hoping to help save them. As bombs dropped and planes blew up, Higgins helped push unharmed planes out of the way to prevent them from being engulfed by the flames. After the attack, he slept in the hangar for days, working around the clock to get planes working again. He noted that after the attack, he looked for the plane he had flown back to base on December 5, only to find a large crater where it had stood.
After fighting in World War II, Higgins remained in the Navy until 1959. He later worked as an aeronautics engineer. In recent years, Higgins’ family posted videos and photos of him on Instagram, telling stories of Pearl Harbor as well as sharing little moments from his life, as “Quarantine Chats with Gramps.” With his death, only about 22 survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor still survive.
Notable quote
“I heard them firing at… the plane I was pushing on, and so I figured, well, there was one nearby, and I looked over to the side and here’s trackers going right down… just beyond the wing tip! And there was about 1500 gallons of Av gas right above my head that… we didn’t have self-sealing tanks then either, so I lucked out that time.” —from a 2008 interview for the National Museum of the Pacific War
Tributes to Richard C. Higgins
Full obituary: The New York Times
