Richard C. Higgins, One of Last Pearl Harbor Survivors, Dies

One of the last remaining survivors of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Richard C. Higgins, died on Tuesday at the age of 102.

He died of natural causes, according to his granddaughter, Angela Norton. She said he died at her home, where he had been residing.

Mr. Higgins was stationed at the Pearl Harbor naval base as a radioman on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japan launched a surprise bombing attack on the base. The airstrike killed more than 2,400 Americans and prompted the United States to declare war on Japan.

Mr. Higgins, who later in his life often spoke about his experience to schoolchildren and on social media, described in a 2020 Instagram video pushing planes away from each other as bombs fell around him.

“I was moving planes away from ones that were on fire, because when the tanks exploded, they threw burning gas on the others,” he said.

In an oral history interview in 2008, he recalled being awakened by explosions and dashing to the lanai, or porch, of his quarters. “I jumped out of my bunk and I ran over to the edge of the lanai and just as I got there, a plane went right over the barracks,” he said.

The plane had “big red meatballs on it,” he said, referring to Japan’s rising sun insignia, “so there was no doubt what was happening in my mind.”

Richard Clyde Higgins was born July 24, 1921, on a farm near Mangum, Okla., and lived through the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. On Instagram, he described how streetlights would switch on at midday as dust and sand rolled in, blanketing the town in darkness, and his father borrowed money to keep the farm animals fed. “It was what you might call slim pickings,” he said.

Mr. Higgins joined the Navy in 1939, where he trained to become an aviation mechanic. Stationed at Pearl Harbor, he was sent out on a patrol mission in mid-October 1941, returning only two days before the Japanese attack, he said in the 2008 interview. On the morning of the attack, he said, he saw that the seaplane that had returned him to the base was gone, replaced by a crater seven feet deep and 20 feet across.

After the attack, he said on Instagram, he did not return to his barracks for three days. Instead, he slept on a cot at the plane hangar and worked on “trying to get planes back into commission.”

After retiring in 1959, he worked as an aeronautics engineer. He married Winnie Ruth in 1944 while he was stationed in Florida. She died in 2004 at the age of 82.

Mr. Higgins is survived by a son and a daughter, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, Ms. Norton said.

The number of survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor has been steadily dwindling — so much so that in 2011, the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association disbanded, citing low membership numbers. Following Mr. Higgins’s death, an estimated 22 survivors remained, according to Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors organization.

Ms. Norton said that in his later years, her grandfather’s focus was on sharing his story, especially with young people.

“He never thought that he was a hero; the heroes were those who didn’t come home,” she said. “But he wanted to make sure their stories continue to be told, and we remember what an incredible country we live in and what sacrifices they made for us to have our freedoms.”