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The band had won a trophy in one of the competitions during their stay in Honolulu. "We had 10 or 12 sharks around us all the time," Conter says. Bruner laughs as he remembers the conversation. He tries to abbreviate it: "We went to California and got married.". Once a month or so, Clarendon Hetrick's phone rings with a call from Utah. Potts was working aboard an oil tanker, making short runs out of the harbor to refuel ships anchored off the coast. Everything was taken ashore and properly taken care of.". Except the cap. A few years later, a new station owner showed Anderson his plans to start a TV station. But he kept most of it to himself until he started meeting up with other survivors, years after he retired from the military. A few incidents were possible shark bites, but shark involvement was not [] He got to know Alan Ladd, who had starred in a series of war movies. Then they'd go by.". The Pearl Harbour . There's a little air bubble. He stopped in the small town of Payson, Utah. The countries of Japan and The United States had been at odds for several decades before the attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. He keeps it with him when he travels. Yes, a lot of brave men died. Cook is invited to such events occasionally and sometimes introduced as an Arizona survivor. He squinted and thought about where he was. Anderson smiled. "Cover the decks, anywhere you can find them up to the top of the masts.". On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Harold, 24, was on deck of the Oklahoma while William, 23, was working below, according to their family. On one mission, Haerry's tender was tied to a larger ship as the crew delivered supplies and completed maintenance tasks. UPDATE:John Anderson diedin November 2015, less than a year after this report. Hetrick thought about it. "I can understand that," Ray Jr. says. The story of the USS Indianapolis has become legendary with regards to shark attacks, and is known as the worst shark attack in recorded history. A sign over the arched door marks the room as "Captain's Quarters.". Chile. "There was a huge oil fire on the surface of the water fueled by the ships' tanks, so it created these giant fires all over the water," Nelson said. The worst shark attack in recorded history also happened to be a disaster for the US Navy. USS Indianapolis at Mare Island. It fit in that location. The tanker towed them to Adak, Alaska, and from there, another ship took the crippled destroyer to San Francisco for repairs. Oceanic whitetip sharks killed many of the surviving crew in the biggest attack on humans ever recorded Credit: Getty - Contributor. "What's up with this one? His mother suggested Hills Business College in Oklahoma City. He could see the planes were flying too low for his guns anyway, but before his crew could figure out their next move, an armor-piercing bomb detonated near the powder magazine beneath the No. An avocado tree grows in the backyard. "They were holed up behind sandbags, but they never got hit.". I don't think sharks go that far. They had voted. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. But there are moments when he knows what he did meant something. Two deer racks (his wife shot one, his son the other). He was able to visit the national cemetery at an area called the Punch Bowl. Hetrick earned a Purple Heart for wounds during one of the bombing raids. So reads the telegram sent to the Mattituck home of Anna and Clifford Penny on Dec. 10, 1941. USS Indianapolis was a Portland class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy. He finished his stint in the Navy in Shanghai, working shore patrol the way he did back in Honolulu. "I witnessed your attack from Ford Island. "I thought you'd be in flight school," he said. We got into a run-and-gun battle. He tried to save as many injured crewmen as he could, but when the sun set on Dec. 7, 1941, he was one of just 335 sailors who did not perish. Bruner toured Nagasaki in a Jeep with other Navy officers and chief mates. alain picard wife / ap calculus bc multiple choice / did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. With Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, William Lee Scott. One of the survivors would receive the Rhode Island Cross. He grew up in New Jersey and after high school, enrolled at MIT in Boston. Squid. As they talked, Ray mentioned that his dad had been aboard the Arizona. "To go through that to me is incomprehensible. For a long time, Haerry never talked about his experiences at Pearl Harbor. No one knew much about Bruner's years in the Navy, not the early years anyway. The river wound through dense vegetation, leaving 15 or 20 feet of clearance on each side of the plane. As he walked past a bar, still in his Navy uniform, a fellow popped out the door and looked Anderson up and down, checking him out more closely someone would ordinarily. Once he was awakened by a loud noise and a flash and thought his ship was under attack. The shock of jumping into a harbor knowing he couldn't swim. Guns. He stepped off the deck into a motor launch as the ship was sinking. He has met many of his old friends and shipmates. "I had to start training the new recruits on every machine," Bruner said. For 30 years, Lauren Bruner punched a clock at a manufacturing plant south of Los Angeles, a World War II veteran in a landscape crawling with them. He needed a truck to carry equipment back and forth, so he scouted out a car lot and bought a 1965 Chevrolet pickup. Conter and his buddy waited for new instructions, but heard nothing. I had one pair of dungarees and that was it, that and a towel and shaving gear.". The crew unloaded anything they could do without, to keep the damaged hull above the water line. Haerry felt the entire ship life out of the water. The smile widens. He hired on with a farm labor contractor and within a year, he and a guy he worked with started their own business, contracting with the orchard owners to harvest crops. DES MOINES, Iowa - A World War II veteran thought to be the oldest survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack died last month at 103. There was a tradition at the end of training that the graduates would give the chief a silver dollar. "You either had a nice place aboard a ship and were high and dry or you didn't have anything," he reasoned. The ship accompanied General Douglas MacArthur to the Philippines and was anchored in the harbor off Nagasaki, Japan, when the second atomic bomb exploded. Until his partner ran off with all the money. He finally received his orders to return to the states. Hetrick turns a rusted chunk of metal over in his hands, running his fingers along the curves and edges. Then we got hit.". And it holds deep meaning for Potts, even though he did nothing to win it. The pieces the largest is about as long as a bus sit in a salvage yard on the Waipi'o Peninsula on Oahu. "I was back here on leave before the war started and he was here too," Cook says. Whale sharks can grow to 65 feet in length and weigh up to 75,000 pounds. There are over 470 species of sharks throughout the world. She was attending an art academy to learn dress designing. On the morning of May 8, the fighting intensified as American aircraft tried to turn back the enemy planes. Not war stories, usually, not unless one of them has had it out with a doctor or a pushy clerk. But one day and one place in Cook's 94 years seem to embody all the rest, the day in December 1941 when the young sailor from Oklahoma escaped the ship that sent America to war. He had turned 90 and was starting over again. And he still likes to talk about that other young fellow from Oklahoma, the one who didn't make it home. Stratton could not. Sailors jumped into fires to escape sinking vessels. "We wouldn't get much fire back and by the time they sounded general quarters, we were on our way," Conter said. They still had to climb onto the dock and then into a truck for a short ride to a Navy hospital. Langdell's ship, the USS Arizona, lay dead in the water where she sank 14 minutes into the attack. They moved to Modesto, Calif., where he got a job driving a produce truck in the fruit orchards. 1914-1941:The mightiest ship at sea | Dec. 7, 1941: The attack that changed the world| Documentary: 'Witness to Infamy' | 2014: The final toast. He was on Ford Island when the Japanese attacked, training for new assignment. A clerk tried to complete the process, normally a routine, if messy, step to secure the permit. Once a shark finds its prey, it needs to decide on whether to eat or not based on smell and appearance. "It was like a hard jolt.". Joe Langdell found a table in the wardroom of one of the ships moored in Pearl Harbor and sat down with his breakfast. "A brush painter.". "I'm going to be back out there one of these days," Conter said, his voice wistful as he watches a foursome trying to stay on the greens. striking a number of people in the water. Pearl Harbor, naval base and headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Honolulu county, southern Oahu Island, Hawaii, U.S. You don't fire guns in port, so I ran out real quick to see what was happening. In the waters off Honolulu, he confronted his memories. "We can't forget what happened there that day. Thickets of tangled shrubs and rows of trees are visible from his window. "In the Army you were crawling around in the mud and everything else and I didn't want to do that.". The Coghlan's crew battled just to keep the guns free of ice as they headed toward their next target. Inside the packets were the captains' new orders, military secrets, classified information that required clearance to handle. Doctors treated him and he recovered, but the his fingers never healed properly. The Macdonough pulled picket patrol often, protecting other troops and guarding against kamikaze attacks by Japanese planes. Posted on . Hetrick saw a new opportunity and joined. December 5, 2021 at 11:21 a.m. EST. "I put on two life jackets," Hetrick said. But he didn't want to start his civilian life in the brig, so he left it in Honolulu. They said, 'You should have been dead a long time ago.'". on the Arizonawhen the battleship sankon Dec. 7. the final survivor to be interred in the ship. He put the disc on a turntable and dropped the needle. It hastened the United States' entry . You have a great voice, he was told. The ship provided fire support for the Marines going ashore. Without them, Riel said, who knows where we'd be today. His wife, Libby, who died two years ago. Today, Lou and Valerie Conter live in a two-level house at the end of a winding road on a golf course in Grass Valley, a mountain town about 60 miles outside Sacramento. person grazed by a shark), nor incidents classified by the International Shark Attack File as boat attacks, scavenge, or doubtful. "This went on for four straight hours. He knew his brother hadn't made it off the Arizona alive, but he didn't know much else. But he could not be prepared for what he found on the charred hulk of the battleship. "These guys were the first heroes of the war, even though the war hasn't been declared," Ray Jr. says. sinastria di coppia karmica calcolo; quincy homeless shelter; plastic bags for cleaning oven racks; claudia procula death; farm jobs in vermont with housing It scared him a little. Schenkelberg was no stranger to hardships . The Frazier patrolled the South Pacific at first, but in early 1943, steamed northward toward Alaska, where Japan was trying to secure positions in the Aleutian Islands. "To see the people I knew back in those days," he says. In early January, Conter visited his young lady friend again and again, Admiral Calhoun was there. He was assigned a battle station in the No. When she says anything, I tell her I'm catching up from the war.". By 1991, the 50th . And that's what he told every soldier and airman who took his courses.*. Salvage work would begin soon on others. He can't relive those images anymore. Some even like to dine on smaller shark species! He describes the store of booze they pulled out of safe and the money. He eases the truck out of the carport, far enough to show it off. He remembers all the details and most of what happened later. For years, Stratton wore the scars from the Arizona without talking about them much. But he doesn't tell his story anymore, not on his own. He helped rescue some of his shipmates. Cook never got a chance to catch up with his buddy, but marveled at the connections he seemed to make from his short stint aboard the Arizona. He was thrown into the ocean and waited 57 hours to be rescued while shipmates around him were eaten by sharks. They bought a small ranch and, while Lonnie continued to work welding jobs, they grew walnuts, almonds, peaches, apples, nectarines, cherries and grapes. Octopus. The Japanese-American mother, father and their three children. ("Two of us with the same rank were up for the same kind of job," he said. They found a way to take prints from the edges of his fingers, enough to satisfy the law. His dad will return finally at his death. They catch up. They were dead in the water.". He keeps the mementos from his experience the maps, the photos, the clippings, the medals, the painting in a room behind a door on the side wall of the living room in the house where he has lived for 54 years. The tender didn't want to be tied to the larger ship when the worst of the storm blew through. "They paid everybody in two dollar bills back then. Why Did Pearl Harbor Happen? They were trying to replenish submarines or send smaller ships in. "I got the lay a wreath in front of the names of the fallen," he says quietly. Conter was at the young lady's house one day when her father received an important visitor: Admiral William Calhoun, the commander of base force for the Pacific Fleet. It took more courage on your part to present this wreath than it did for me to accept it.". "I said goodbye and left.". He remembers the crewman trying to climb a ladder to escape through a hatchway on the deck. Langdell was an ensign, an entry-level officer, not yet a year in the Navy. He was attending midshipman's school at Northwestern University. "It was a big ship with a lot of metal, I'll tell you." ages 2, 3 and 8, together with a 14-year-old cousin . Yes, some of them were his friends. When he reaches that part of his story, he stops. Stratton's eyes brighten. He had turned down a promotion to ensign, preferring the camaraderie of the enlisted ranks. Japan wanted the northern Pacific to control its shipping routes and block U.S. attacks from that direction. niagara this week flyer delivery. Stories of survival. Potts says, shaking his head. At nights, Anderson was taking classes in meteorology and electronics, trying to learn skills that could help him stand out among all the returning servicemen and women. In May 1942, the Aylwin joined a task force in the Coral Sea with the USS Lexington, one of the Navy's early aircraft carriers. is clu gulager still alive did sharks attack titanic survivors. According to the History Channel, the Arizona "continues to spill up to 9 quarts of oil into the harbor each day " and visitors often say it is as if the ship were still bleeding. Conter told the admiral he was interested in flight school, but doubted he would earn admission. Ken Potts eases around the side of the pool table, waving toward items like a museum tour guide in a back room. He headed east and landed in Paducah, Ky. From there, he worked jobs in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and back to New York, where he welded 20-inch gas lines going through Brooklyn. In March, the crew turned back Japanese forces in the Battle of Komandorski. In 1940, Anderson reported to the Arizona once more, joining his brother for the first time since they had enlisted. "He was out to sea nine months out of the year, only home for three months," Ray Jr. says. "These captains of the ships, when they left the states, they had no idea where they were going, just that they're going via Pearl Harbor," Potts said. Only 335 men survived the bombing of the USS Arizona, the mighty battleship whose loss at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, inspired a nation to go to war. The report said most of the guys in the anti-aircraft batteries, where Jake fought, were shot down early in the assault. "He wanted the east coast, I wanted the west coast. Redfish. "So they knew.". Pearl Harbor was a United States Naval base on the island of Oahu, located west of Honolulu. The guns hit the periscope. Crustaceans. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, just before 8:00 a.m. (local time) on Sunday, December 7, 1941. It never returned, crippled in the Battle of the Coral Sea and scuttled by the Navy to keep the enemy from salvaging her. He asked for volunteers. One day, a young fellow knocked on his door. Hetrick shrugs, trying to get comfortable in the recliner. did sharks eat pearl harbor victimshavelock wool australia. Stratton hesitated, then confirmed her suspicion. So you see how that works."). Before the war started, a hospital stay that long would have earned a sailor a discharge, but not anymore. They could ride to the mainland then and leave for Florida. Pearl Harbor attack, (December 7, 1941), surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, by the Japanese that precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. Haerry nods and like a good sailor taking orders from the chief, he pulls himself up with a walker and shuffles off to lunch. As he recounts the experience, he rubs his hands together, then holds them out, turning them over. / Reuters. "Lots of big band songs," Randy says, as the first bars of a brass line pour from the speakers. We'd go out and blow them up.". He . As he prepared to jump off the burning ship, he took the shoes off and set them on the quarterdeck. He kept the truck, held on to it through repairs, engine overhauls, new paint jobs. Now, some courses require less than a week of field time. We were going to have a date the next day. Stratton and other men climbed into a small boat that took them ashore. Cook enlisted in the Navy in 1940 and was assigned to the USS Arizona, one of the largest battleships in the fleet with a crew that, at full complement, numbered more than 1,500. The story follows two lifelong friends and a beautiful nurse who are caught up in the horror of an infamous Sunday morning in 1941. In 1887 the harbor's military history began when the US Navy set up coaling stations in the harbor. Yes, he'll say, he was on the Arizona and he survived. "I had to help my father out of his seat. It wasn't, but the flash was a reminder, as if he needed anything more. Joe saved six lives and he didn't get crap. He hasn't hunted in a while, though he still reloads his own ammunition on a garage workbench. The cities were in ruins. "I cleaned up my language," he says, admitting he deployed a salty vocabulary, even after leaving active duty. "It's always been my fear that people are going to forget that day, that people are going to forget the sacrifice that was made that day.". The sea turned rough, tossing the ship with 40-foot swells, bouncing the vessel like a rubber ball in a washing machine. I quit. A sailor on the deck of the repair ship Vestal spotted the men and threw a line across. They would serve together for a little over a year. Pearl Harbor was the site of the unprovoked aerial attack on the United States by Japan on December 7, 1941. But he is proud of his service, of the other sailors on the Arizona. He refused to cut the line no matter what. A storm was approaching, a big one by the looks of it. The ship was to turn around and steam toward Alaska. "We picked up a couple of girls and made the rounds. "It's always a great thing for me to see them," he says. The day when they assigned him and a crew of divers to a motor launch and sent them to the Arizona to remove bodies of dead sailors. If they found anything that belonged to the Navy or hadn't been approved, they'd take it. I even had a couple of dates with girls.". Discipline seems less important than it was in his day. If the shark feels like a dead fish isn't worth its time, it will leave without wasting more energy. Minutes later, the Japanese attacked and the Arizona was on fire, sinking beneath the surface. By April 1940, the Navy seemed like a good idea and by summer, he was on board the Arizona, stationed at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. . Haerry ran away from home to join the Navy. "Are you out of the Navy, Andy?" Haerry would come home on those days with cigar boxes full of the coins. With his experience running cranes on the Arizona, Potts figures he could have landed a decent job at the Geneva Steel operation, but he didn't want to work shifts, so he worked as a carpenter again and eventually went into the used car business with a friend. His younger son believes the experience changed his dad forever. Three days since the war started. Bruner's neighbor, who has become a close friend and a source of transportation, picks the fruit to keep it from rotting on the ground. "Here we are, we can't see the enemy. The steeple clock chimed and a statue of an angel wielding a sword emerged from an alcove and knocked Anderson off the steeple. Potts picked up the Colt 45 he'd found on Ford Island on Dec. 7, 1941. "Why do you like the hat, dad?" From Virginia, he went to Utah, to France and then to Albuquerque, where he retired in November 1961. "Hi," he said, introducing himself. A few weeks later, Conter and his buddy passed a flight test at sea and on Nov. 1, they got their orders: Report to Navy flight school in Pensacola, Fla. Two weeks later, the Arizona's captain called the two sailors in and told them the ship was headed back to Long Beach in early December. Anderson always talks about his brother, Delbert "Jake" Anderson, when he tells the story of his own escape from the burning ship. When, on July 30, 1945, USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine, the Navy didn't realize the ship had been lost until four days later - after which hundreds of men floating in the ocean for days had been eaten by sharks.. Toward the end of July 1945, the Portland-class heavy cruiser USS . Civilian Casualties. "We got into San Francisco," he says, "and they never even opened my bags. "OK," Bruner said. The Coghlan approached the Aleutians in October, as winter was pushing fall aside. An aerial view of "Battleship Row" at Pearl Harbor, photographed from a Japanese aircraft during the the bombing. He spent long months on a tender, a vessel that carries equipment, parts and other supplies for ships at sea. In the documentary, "The Life and Death of a Lady," Langdell and Abe speak, side by side on the memorial. "It acknowledges to people that I'm a survivor," Joe replies, his voice soft. In Korea, Conter flew 29 missions, but his work in Naval intelligence left him vulnerable if the North Koreans captured him, so he was shipped to Washington, D.C. After the war, Langdell returned to the family auction business in Massachusetts, but after all those years in Hawaii, the Philippines and in the tropical South Seas, he couldn't readjust to the cold. It sits a little higher than most items, but not necessarily on a platform. They continued to see each other and, when Langdell left for Hawaii, they corresponded, often. A platform marked the wreckage of the USS Arizona. 2 gun turret. We can't see our own ships. "So that's what we did," he says, staring out at the harbor nearly seven decades later. Finally, the four U.S. destroyers were ordered to mount a torpedo run. Lonnie Cook was born in this rural town south of Tulsa, not long after it was founded as a stop on the Ozark and Cherokee Central Railway. The next night, an American PT boat retrieved all 10 men. Potts stayed in Honolulu until the end of the war. "I said, 'sure, I'll take it.' He clashed with the station manager of the radio station and finally quit. At dawn on December 7, 1941, more than half of the United States Pacific Fleet, approximately 150 vessels and service craft, lay at anchor or alongside piers in Pearl Harbor. He motions toward his gnarled ear. "We were told to watch out for them, these guys were assassins," Anderson said. Did he know anything about meteorology? Conter told him about the lost orders. Occasionally, they head into Okmulgee for an evening out at the One Fire, a casino operated by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. They knew the oil tanker Tippecanoe was out there, but couldn't see her. "I really miss it.". He will answer questions about that December day when he escaped the burning wreckage of the Arizona, reciting as many of the details as he can remember. It turned out most of the regular stuntmen were still in the military. He bought another gun in the states and he is never far from it. "We made friends. Three days had passed since Japanese bombers had punched a fiery hole in the Navy's Pacific fleet. Born in 1914, seven months after the first bolts were tightened on a new battleship in Brooklyn, Langdell grew up wooded agricultural area along the Souhegan River in southern New Hampshire. His oldest son had joined the Navy and his first posting was aboard the USS Ouellet, a frigate. They respected a guy who survived such a horrific attack. He tried not to remember the days after the attack. If a shark comes too close, hit it in the nose with your fist as hard as you can.". Afterward, Langdell sought out other survivors who had formed reunion organizations. One day, a Navy officer came on board and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer for an assignment in the aviation section. The men followed orders in a fog of wonderment and confusion. That's why the FBI was nosing around me, Potts thought. His work turned toward survival training in a new military program called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. Years later, at a reunion in Tucson, Cook learned that one of his buddies from the Arizona had been sent to the Lexington and was in the Coral Sea when the carrier was attacked. During his voyage to Alaska, Cook remembers the flying fish, which stirred up the water like a torpedo wake. On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Cook was changing clothes at his locker, savoring the thought of a day in Honolulu with the $60 he'd won in a craps game the night before. He owns a chunk of the ship's burned deck, a reminder he keeps in a box with a few other items. He keeps a photo from that tournament on a bookshelf in an alcove off the kitchen. The mangled bodies such as J.J. Astor was probably caused by the 1st smokestack falling into the water and. The ships sent up their own planes and turned back the assault. They ran Joe and Libby Langdell's Village Mart for more than 20 years until they retired. One day, he stopped for coffee at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood. There were: Cook and another crewman. His mother had moved to Decatur, Ill., by then, so he followed and took a job at a hardware store. Sight-setters and pointers would locate targets visually and determine their distance and range. Whale sharks are found in warm waters in the Pacific . Dec 12 2014. Bruner was the second-to-last man to leave the sinking ship. After the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the United States opted to construct a naval base in 1899. "He should have the Navy Cross," Stratton says. "You can't get a guy hungry in three or four days," Conter says. All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. The Solace dispatched motor boats to the Arizona to rescue wounded sailors and her crew pulled others from the water. She tracked him to the Los Angeles area, then started a phone search. He acknowledged the wreath. The family visited the Arizona memorial and toured other sites near the harbor. world war ii. The ones after that were, too. Whale Shark (Rhincodon typus) The whale shark is the largest shark species, and also the biggest fish species in the world. five letter words with l; jaiswal surname caste; pros and cons of herzberg theory; sechrest funeral home obituaries; curious george stuffed animal 1975; cornerstone staffing application 0 The Navy occasionally cuts away small bits of the wreckage for memorials. "I was here all the time. OAHU, Hawaii (NEXSTAR) On the day that will live in infamy December 7, 1941 2,403 U.S. personnel were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor. He still will not talk about it. "I've gotten letters from some of the officer candidates who had my father as an instructor," Ray Jr. says. He then spent 14 months recovering in Great . Ray Jr. seems surprised. The Navy censors would never allow such information in a letter. "She went to California and I followed her," Lonnie says. "I ran the decompression chamber on jobs.

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