Lake County’s last Pearl Harbor survivor dies
- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
LAKEPORT, Calif. – Lake County’s last survivor of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has died.
Wilbur Kenneth “Bill” Slater, 93, died on New Year’s Eve at his home in Lakeport.
Slater’s declining health had prevented him from attending the last Pearl Harbor commemoration event in Lakeport on Dec. 7.
He had been a fixture at the event over the years. With his quick wit and gift for storytelling, the “kid” of the local survivors group – as he had been dubbed – often had a bloody Mary in hand for the chilly morning commemorations, provided by his friends Ronnie and Janeane Bogner, who organized the gatherings.
Supervisor Rob Brown called Slater one of the most interesting men he’d ever met, and asked for a moment of silence for him at the first Board of Supervisors’ first meeting of the year on Tuesday morning.
“We were so fortunate to have him in Lake County along with the other Pearl Harbor survivors,” said Brown.
Born in Southern California, hard times during the Great Depression led to Slater’s family sending him and his siblings to an orphanage.
Slater would enlist in the Navy as a 17 year old. In October 1941 he joined the crew of the battleship USS Pennsylvania. He recalled thinking, “Man, I'm home free now,” when he was assigned to the big battleship, believing he would be safe.
The Pennsylvania was in dry dock at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on the morning of Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941.
In interviews with Lake County News over the years, Slater recalled that he was below decks when the bombs started to drop shortly before 8 a.m.
He said that at first he thought it was battle exercises. Then he heard the alarms go off, and the words, “Now hear this, all hands man battle stations,” coming over the ship’s address system.
At the battle station where he was assigned, Slater was an ammunition handler for a 3-inch anti-aircraft gun.
He was supposed to take shells from a locker and bring them out to the men loading the guns. However, that day, the hoist used to bring the shells to the deck had broken down, which led to Slater and other ammunition handlers having to bring the shells up manually from below deck.
Their efforts also were hampered because the ammunition was locked up and the sailor who set the fuses wasn't there.
However, they still managed to start quickly returning fire. Naval records show that the Pennsylvania was among the first of the ships to return fire on the Japanese.
“When we were down getting those shells manually the one bomb that hit the ship went right through where my battle station was,” he said.
He said the bomb killed 24 men; he was certain that he would have died as well had he still been on the deck.
“That's the most harrowing thing that happened to me that day,” he said.
Explaining how he felt afterward, Slater said, “Frightened isn't the word.”
Slater didn’t see the USS Arizona blow up but heard it. “You couldn't miss it otherwise,” because it blew up for quite a while. As he emerged from below deck he also saw that the USS Oklahoma had rolled over.
That night, he was given a rifle and two bandoliers of shells by a big Marine and told to patrol the area around the hospital.
Slater said wires had been put up to keep people off the lawns, and as he was patrolling that night he tripped over a wire and his rifle went up in the air and came down, hitting him on the head.
“The Japanese didn't get me that day but I did a pretty good job on myself,” he recalled with a laugh.
While the Pearl Harbor attack was frightening, it wasn’t the experience that scared Slater the most during his time at sea.
That event came years later, as he was preparing to leave the Navy in October 1945 and heading back to the states from Japan aboard the heavy cruiser USS Salt Lake City.
As the ship neared Astoria, Ore., it was hit by huge waves at the mouth of the Columbia River. The ship rolled to 47 degrees, short of the 55 degrees that would have capsized it, according to the Oct. 23, 1945, edition of The Oregonian newspaper, which recounted the incident in a front-page story.
“The worst day I ever had at sea – and I never had a bad day – was when we crossed the Columbia River bar, and I was for sure that g**damned ship, that old tub, was gonna capsize,” he said.
Slater was among nearly 450 enlisted men aboard the ship who were set for discharge, according to The Oregonian article.
He said he was afraid he was going to die on his last day in the service.
“It's funny now, but it sure wasn't funny then,” Slater said at the December 2013 Pearl Harbor commemoration.
Not long after Pearl Harbor Slater was on leave in San Francisco. There he met his future wife, Helen, working in a restaurant run by her sister on Market Street.
In a final interview with Lake County News on Dec. 3, Slater recalled that marrying Helen was one of the best things he ever did.
For many years he worked as a truck driver. He purchased land in Lakeport not far from the lake where he and Helen eventually would build a home and retire.
The couple were married for 60 years, until Helen’s death on July 25, 2007, the day before his 83rd birthday.
Slater lived the final years of his life in the home he and Helen built, with daughter Leslie and her husband living nearby.
His charm never dimmed. Friends called him “the chick magnet” for his ability to attract female admirers of all ages.
Up until a few years ago, he was a regular at Renee’s Cafe in Lakeport, where he liked to stop in for breakfast, wearing a Pearl Harbor ball cap.
What future generations think about Pearl Harbor was important to him.
He and another Pearl Harbor survivor, Henry Anderson, were on hand in June 2012 as remaining members of the Lake County Pearl Harbor Survivors Association in order to present a $10,000 check to the Lakeport Rotary to fund maintenance on the association’s memorial mast in Library Park. The event is commemorated in the video below.
Slater said at that time that they wanted people to remember what Dec. 7, 1941, was all about.
He was a firm believer in luck, which he felt had a lot to do with the course of his life – including surviving Pearl Harbor, marrying a good woman and leading what was, from all appearances, a contented existence.
Even as his health declined, Slater remained optimistic, unworried and grateful.
“I have everything I need and sometimes too damn much,” he said.
In recalling those lost in the war so many years ago, Slater wisely said, “I know one thing for sure – we owe a hell of a debt to all of the guys who are no longer with us. They're the real heroes.”
And, in truth, so was he.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.