"They were holed up behind sandbags, but they never got hit.". As he waited, he had a feeling he knew what would happen, but he didn't say anything. Doctors and nurses wove among gurneys, administering morphine shots and looking for the victims most in need. "When we got up into the Aleutians, we started banging on the Japanese that had already landed," Bruner said. The license plate reads USS ARIZ. A mural on a white bed cover depicts the USS Arizona and the memorial that floats above it in Pearl Harbor. USS Indianapolis saw the worst shark attack in history Cook was the gun captain on the Pringle at the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. Bruner was one of them. He started on a small station, playing organ music. Nobody was expecting anything like that.". On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy bombed the Pearl Harbor Naval base in a surprise attack. Potts returned to Illinois in late 1945 to await his formal discharge, hanging out in Chicago. He watched the band perform and stood as a survivor of the Arizona, one of the sailors who lived. But there are moments when he knows what he did meant something. He would work in the port director's office, delivering sealed packets to the captains of Navy ships. "Lou, let's go to flight school," Conter's buddy said one day. The Attack on Pearl Harbor - Pacific Atrocities Education The primer went in last, before the end of the gun was sealed shut. Sometimes we never landed, but we kept the line, always watching out for kamikazes.". Haerry ran away from home to join the Navy. Cook was discharged in 1948 in San Diego and stuck around California, where he worked as a metal finisher at Van Nuys manufacturing plant. Inside, he found broken bottles scattered in a soggy soup of booze and cardboard. Dec 12 2014. He decided to head back to the water. These Photos Of The Pearl Harbor Attack Are Still Shocking Decades Later "A day that will live in infamy." By . But he kept most of it to himself until he started meeting up with other survivors, years after he retired from the military. Almost three decades later, he was the plant manager, second-in-command. He finished his training and was discharged in December 1945. A sailor on the repair ship Vestal, tied up nearby, spotted them and threw them a line. He catalogs the scars and their origin. I think that's what kept me living to this day.". He liked teaching and liked the chance to instill discipline. After that, he steamed north to Kodiak, Alaska, where other Navy ships were trying to turn back Japanese inroads throughout the strategically important Aleutian Islands. "It hadn't really sunk in what had happened.". The mangled bodies such as J.J. Astor was probably caused by the 1st smokestack falling into the water and. Three days since the war started. Once a shark finds its prey, it needs to decide on whether to eat or not based on smell and appearance. But Hetrick couldn't find work, so inside of six months, he signed up for the Navy Reserve. He keeps it with him when he travels. His mother suggested Hills Business College in Oklahoma City. His service on the Arizona also seemed to give him added credibility among the young sailors. And he keeps it loaded. On a fall day in 1945, John Anderson teetered on the base of a church steeple 110 feet above the ground. He left home at 5 every morning and took a ferry from Jamestown to the Navy base. Back on land, Cook followed welding jobs from Kentucky and Pennsylvania to New Jersey and Long Island, west to North Dakota and Wisconsin and finally to a ranch house in Salinas, Calif., where he raised a family and stayed put for almost 30 years. 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. Bruner was at his battle station in an anti-aircraft gun director, a metal box on the forward mast of the Arizona, when an armor-piercing bomb ignited the ship's powder magazine. Civilian Casualties. For Haerry, McBride had a the state's highest military honor, the Rhode Island Cross. Once a month or so, Clarendon Hetrick's phone rings with a call from Utah. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims - fittico.com He had five brothers, including Jake, and four sisters, all grouped so close in age that paying for college wasn't practical for their folks. The Macdonough stayed until September, then sailed back on patrol in the Pacific. Hotline & WhatsApp : +971556212280 | Landline : +97143873596 , +97167499398 james reynolds obituary. Peeling potatoes. He tried to keep his thoughts on the work in the office. It sits today in the carport outside his home. The new shoes he left on the deck of the sinking ship, the ones he intended to retrieve later. A bow. "In the Army you were crawling around in the mud and everything else and I didn't want to do that.". He was attending midshipman's school at Northwestern University. When Anderson said he was, his old friend was incredulous. The woman helped connect Bruner with other survivors from the Arizona and Pearl Harbor. Aviators most often arose from left-arm rates. His work turned toward survival training in a new military program called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. By the time they were back, the icicles were forming again and two more guys would go out.". The Macdonough had collided with another destroyer, the Sicard. It fit in that location. Cook and the other men stayed below deck until the smoke from a fire forced them to leave. Hetrick thought about it. It was carrying parts of the Little Boy atomic bomb as a top secret mission and the Navy learned about its sinking four days after ot was torpedoed. 1914-1941:The mightiest ship at sea | Dec. 7, 1941: The attack that changed the world| Documentary: 'Witness to Infamy' | 2014: The final toast. Pearl Harbor attack | Date, History, Map, Casualties - Britannica "He wanted the east coast, I wanted the west coast. The Coghlan supported Army landings and Navy bombing runs. She was attending an art academy to learn dress designing. Finally, after a few weeks on the tanker, Potts was handed a new assignment. "The station wagon was for the captains of some of the ships that would come in," he said. Sharks hunt fish by using sensory receptors located on their sides. Pearl Harbor became one of the major reason for the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy (in 1893) and the kingdoms annexation (in 1898) by the US government.The Spanish American war began that same year in the Philippines and Cuba which ended with the US winning both territories from the Spanish. "In the service, if you didn't use nasty words, you weren't a good sailor.". No one among the groups knew where he was or what he was doing, but the woman persisted. Pentagon ends program to identify Pearl Harbor victims - The Washington Conter's doctor has sidelined him for now for health reasons, but he is certain he will return soon. He had a record, a new song he was trying out. "Listen, all those men down there on that ship, a thousand of them, they wouldn't do it and I don't think they'd want me to do it," he says. "I decided I'd do whatever they told me to. "It's one of the best actual memorials I've seen," he says. When she says anything, I tell her I'm catching up from the war.". He displayed no pictures, kept no mementos that his family knew about. The Hirasaki family suffered some of the worst losses that terrible morning. Nobody could debate what that was, no question about it.". As he prepared to jump off the burning ship, he took the shoes off and set them on the quarterdeck. Almost imperceptibly, he sways. Haerry straightened in his seat as his story was told. "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.". That same year, he met his wife, Valerie, in Palm Springs. They stayed composed as their stories were told, stories of bravery, of quick thinking. Toward the end the war, Langdell was stationed in the Philippines, at a base in Manila. What Do Sharks Eat? - American Oceans The paneled room behind the door in the living room of the Provo house is filled with trophies of almost any imaginable sort. In the waters off Honolulu, he confronted his memories. The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor began just before 8 a.m. local time Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. He was soon aboard the USS Frazier, which left the shipyard at San Francisco in July 1942. Friends told them when the left the church, keep the water on their left. "We were told to watch out for them, these guys were assassins," Anderson said. He had held on to it through the war. An aerial view of "Battleship Row" at Pearl Harbor, photographed from a Japanese aircraft during the the bombing. He cleaned and painted day after day, but he also operated the motor boats used to ferry crew members to shore, a job that let him leave the ship periodically. "We said we'd volunteer if they'd put two or three of us together on the same ship," he said. His son reaches in the cab and queues up one of the hundreds of songs he and his daughter downloaded onto the new MP3 player. The six-year Pentagon project identified nearly 400 who died on the USS Oklahoma in 1941. The shock of jumping into a harbor knowing he couldn't swim. In 1966, 25 years after the attack, Stratton returned to Pearl Harbor with his family. So you see how that works."). "The only people he would talk to were either very close friends or relatives," his son says. In 2006, one of his sons offered to take Potts to Hawaii for the 65thanniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. He went out to the floating memorial. He was 20 when he escaped the burning wreckage ofthe USS Arizonain Pearl Harbor. 4. Sailors jumped into fires to escape sinking vessels. He once helped design programs that sent soldiers into the wilds for days or weeks at a time. He spent the rest of the day retrieving bodies from the harbor. Golfers play through 50 yards from Conter's driveway. "We made so many landings," Anderson said. During WW2, did sailors get eaten by sharks? - Quora It is about three feet tall, with a carved island figure on top and the silhouette of a Hawaiian warrior on a plaque. In early January, Conter visited his young lady friend again and again, Admiral Calhoun was there. They called the Marines out with rifles to protect the plane and the guys while we hauled it in.". He started chatting up a regular customer, a contractor, and got a job building houses. He's not sure he'd have learned that lesson if he hadn't enlisted in the Navy. he met his contact and not long after, he was standing in for Orson Welles in a scene from the movie "The Stranger.". The things I don't want to remember was the blood.". 3 gun turret. "No one knew where the hell I was," Bruner says. "Can you tell me what ship did he go on after the Arizona?" It scared him a little. "It is only by the grace of God that I stand here today," he said. But he doesn't tell his story anymore, not on his own. The band members had decided they wanted to honor survivors from that day. And he still likes to talk about that other young fellow from Oklahoma, the one who didn't make it home. "I was back here on leave before the war started and he was here too," Cook says. The war's over.". "I put on two life jackets," Hetrick said. "It gets your breath when you first see it," he says. A woman from Illinois drew Bruner's name. ", "It's a brand new destroyer, the Coghlan, DD-606," he said, "built right here in 'Frisco.". It was constructed to comply with the 1922 Washington Naval . Song's got some zip to it, he said. Tall pines tower over the house. The unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor killed more than 2,400 Americans and struck a blow to the Navy's Pacific fleet, which had been based at Pearl Harbor. I couldn't.". Williams was in the Arizona's band. The Stratton men have taken up a more personal cause. It took Ray Jr. years, decades to piece together his father's story. Anderson would serve another 23 years before finally retiring once more. "It didn't take me that long. That summer, the ship joined others for the invasion at Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, one of the first major assaults against Japan by the Americans. "I just didn't want to. The USS Arizona ballcap that almost every survivor owns and wears. He handed the microphone to his son, Raymond Haerry, Jr., who spoke of his father's courage and resilience. He called back a few days later. A sign over the arched door marks the room as "Captain's Quarters.". Island Stories: The Guardian Sharks of Puuloa on Oahu Framed medals. The Langdells ended up honeymooning in Monterey and Carmel on the central California coast. In 1887 the harbor's military history began when the US Navy set up coaling stations in the harbor. "It's just not going to happen. The ones that gave him nightmares, the stories from the day he nearly burned to death, he kept to himself. But he could not be prepared for what he found on the charred hulk of the battleship. In Alaska, he helped set up platforms that could keep up with tides that rose and fell as much as 32 feet. Doctors treated him and he recovered, but the his fingers never healed properly. 11 Oldest Pearl Harbor Survivors (Updated 2021) - Oldest.org Their ordeal . Sharks in turn were revered because they . Three years later, Ray Haerry Jr. holds the cross in his hand, fighting back tears. The crew unloaded anything they could do without, to keep the damaged hull above the water line. Hetrick earned a Purple Heart for wounds during one of the bombing raids. striking a number of people in the water. He finished his stint in the Navy in Shanghai, working shore patrol the way he did back in Honolulu. 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. "Knock it off. He ran to the anti-aircraft battery, his battle station, but there was no ammunition ready. Three days earlier, their 20-year-old son became the first Suffolk County casualty in World War II. 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. "We'd send two guys out to knock the icicles off the guns, then they'd high-tail it back in. As his stint was about to end, the Navy decided to transfer him back to Pearl Harbor. Langdell will return to the Arizona once more. His younger son believes the experience changed his dad forever. Still traveling at 17 knots, the Indianapolis began taking on massive amounts of water; the ship sank in just 12 minutes. Rays. "I think my dad was one of the first American heroes of World War II.". The attack was devastating for the Americans, though the Japanese . The easy stories he'd tell. He wasn't ready to see it all again, to sharpen the memories he'd tried to dull. "We saved people on commercial ships on the seas, we rescued missionaries in the interior of China, we shot up a bunch of pirates," Anderson said. He fiddles with the radio. "It ain't worth a damn if it ain't loaded," he says. No one seemed to be in charge on Ford Island, where Cook had spent the night. Over the next year, Anderson would sail across the South Pacific, joining other ships in the American assault on the Marshall Islands, Parry Island and the Palau Islands. They knew the oil tanker Tippecanoe was out there, but couldn't see her. Anderson picked up and moved to New Mexico. They trade stories. @webtv.net wrote in message. And he was aboard on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, a pivotal moment in history, but one that struck Anderson to his core. The ships encountered a Japanese fleet, two big cruisers, six destroyers, some troop ships, and engaged. "What's up with this one? The best time for a bombing raid was after 1 a.m., when the ship was quiet. They still had to climb onto the dock and then into a truck for a short ride to a Navy hospital. Someone from the bureau had been asking questions. He refused to cut the line no matter what. "You," the fellow said. I guess he'd do anything he could for me. He was cut loose in San Francisco and returned to Los Angeles, where he had married a girl back in late 1942. The ship provided fire support for the Marines going ashore. The next night, an American PT boat retrieved all 10 men. He remembers all the details and most of what happened later. Sight-setters and pointers would locate targets visually and determine their distance and range. On the other end of the line is an old shipmate from the USS Saratoga, the aircraft carrier where Hetrick worked as a mechanic through most of World War II. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims - playtcubed.com I don't think sharks go that far. Then they'd go by.". His name never appeared and he would leave for the day. Haerry accepts the chocolate bars his son has brought him. She likes the story of how they tied the knot. He and a buddy had been talking about their future in the Navy. 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. With a gun, he could defend himself. "You can't get a guy hungry in three or four days," Conter says. He made bargemaster on a huge drilling rig, but yearned for something more interesting, so he got a job as a tender with a commercial deep sea diving business. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims - soapidea.com A few years later, a new station owner showed Anderson his plans to start a TV station. Stratton and other men climbed into a small boat that took them ashore. I had one pair of dungarees and that was it, that and a towel and shaving gear.". Cook worked in California, mostly welding jobs, until the union he belonged to called a strike. "I'd do it a hundred times more," he says. Not long after, a second plane dropped a life raft and all 10 of the crew made to shore and, the next night, back to the base. By Christmas, he was in a hospital at Mare Island near San Francisco. "The Arizona was a fighting battleship," Joe says. Oceanic whitetip sharks killed many of the surviving crew in the biggest attack on humans ever recorded Credit: Getty - Contributor. They will celebrate 65 years of marriage in April. Conter fought on through World War II, scraped past a lot of close calls, then went to Korea. Ke awa lau o Puuloa, the bay and lochs that make up the complex most people know simply as Pearl Harbor, was once the home of the guardian sharks, Kaahuphau and her brother Kahiuk. He would become the final survivor to be interred in the ship. Why Did Pearl Harbor Happen? 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. sinastria di coppia karmica calcolo; quincy homeless shelter; plastic bags for cleaning oven racks; claudia procula death; farm jobs in vermont with housing "Mr. Langdell," he said, "when you're done with your breakfast, you'll report to the pier and you'll be met by a motor whale boat and a party of 20 enlisted men with sheets and pillow cases. "The new ones, they didn't know beans.". Not war stories, usually, not unless one of them has had it out with a doctor or a pushy clerk. Anderson smiled. In 2006, Langdell walked along the steep shoreline of Ford Island, the Arizona memorial in the background. "One of the last ones" He talks about going aboard the Frazier. Conter served on the San Pablo and Half Moon. evolution golf cart forum "So that's what we did," he says, staring out at the harbor nearly seven decades later. All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. Stratton hesitated, then confirmed her suspicion. "I was here all the time. When he first arrived at Pearl Harbor, Hetrick wasn't even old enough to buy a beer until he found a place where they didn't ask questions if a guy was in a service uniform. Occasionally, they head into Okmulgee for an evening out at the One Fire, a casino operated by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. They wouldn't send her over so I didn't re-enlist.". ", "Baloney," Conter replied. Sometimes, Japanese pilots attended memorial ceremonies and some of the other survivors would shake their hands. Salmon. Handout . 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. One day, a young fellow knocked on his door. Pearl Harbor centres on a cloverleaf-shaped, artificially . Never would've found it.". "Randy, come and turn on the music box." Did he know anything about meteorology? The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. As soon as he turned 18, he enlisted in the Navy. Five years ago, Haerry moved into a nursing home, He stays in a room on the second floor. queensland figure skating. "To see the people I knew back in those days," he says. Ted asks. He can tell stories about his years with the diving crews, but the truck has evolved into a reminder of another time. 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.