They are known collectively as The Greatest Generation, and nearly all have now moved into the history books.

For Hawaii, there is no more perpetual symbol of that generation, and the war they fought, than the USS Arizona, the focal point of the memorial to the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack that propelled the United States into World War II.

Lou Conter, the last survivor of the Arizona that now lies beneath the sea, died Monday at his home in Grass Valley, Calif. He was 102, but on that morning of attack more than 82 years ago, he was one of the younger men to witness the bombing run by the Japanese warplanes.

Conter was a familiar face at Dec. 7 anniversary observances, making his last visit here in 2019 to attend the burial of shipmate Lauren Bruner. So his passing serves as a signal that an era is coming to an end.

That doesn’t mean it should be lost to memory. In fact, while the conflicts roiling the planet in this 21st century seem much more nuanced and complex than those underlying WWII, they echo many of the same issues. Authoritarianism versus democracy. Invasions. Racial and ethnic tensions.

From these decades-old battles there are lessons that should inform contemporary decisions. The crucial importance of strong alliances is one. The presence of NATO, with its commitment to defend a member nation from direct attack, is one factor that has curbed the expansionist aims of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who so far has limited his assault to nonmember nation Ukraine.

The fumbling of Congress over sustaining U.S. support for Ukraine in countering the 2022 invasion indicates that this lesson may not have stuck with some on Capitol Hill.

Further, the ripple effects of “The Good War,” the rosy-colored moniker for that period, are still visible. For one, women who worked in factories during WWII had a new awareness of their potential, underlying the coming feminist movement.

In geopolitical terms, Middle East rifts that have never healed date at least to the founding of Israel, an internationally backed move to address the horrors of the Holocaust.

Postwar political upheaval in Asia led the U.S. back to the battlefields of Korea and Vietnam. To a large extent, and especially in the case of Vietnam, veterans did not return home to the same national embrace that greeted the heroes of World War II. However one feels about this or any war, the people sent to fight in service of their country deserved better.

It was in many ways a simpler America that Lou Conter encountered, coming home. The nation was united, a new push for higher education and economic advancement was launched.

For Hawaii, many of the returning veterans became political and business leaders in the islands in the years leading up to statehood and economic growth.

In other ways, there were social changes in the more distantly postwar decades since that have brought more equality across increasingly diverse populations. Expansion of civil rights is a clear victory; nobody should feel nostalgic for the days before those rights were in hand.

With American ingenuity, steady rebuilding and unity of purpose enabled much: The technologies of the computer age, and the drive to temper the environmental damage of human activity, are other hard-won societal gains.

But even after the last of the World War II veterans has died, what they accomplished will be no less historic.

“After years of war our nations and the world needed healing,” said Conter’s grandnephew, Capt. Ray Hower. “Those that fought for freedom returned home and threw themselves into that task with the same determination.”

In their honor, Hawaii, with its enduring memorial at Pearl Harbor, has a duty to see that they are never forgotten.