The Macdonough stayed until September, then sailed back on patrol in the Pacific. Eighty years later, many of those killed are finally returning home and being laid to rest. He owns a chunk of the ship's burned deck, a reminder he keeps in a box with a few other items. Abe's Pearl Harbor speech has been well received in Japan, where most people expressed the opinion that it struck the right balance of regret that the Pacific war occurred, but offered . "I do as much as I can to keep his story alive," his son says. "The hat represents the Arizona. 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. That was the end of it.". "We're right-arm rates." His old co-pilot in the New Guinea days was asked once if he'd had survival training for the war. ", "I was," Anderson said. A pistol sits on top of his television at home. They said, 'You should have been dead a long time ago.'". "They gave me 30 minutes to get off the ship and catch a transport to San Diego for training," he said. He didn't have to pay for dinner. The only question was how Langdell would send Libby word about his arrival from Pearl Harbor. It was one of the biggest rescues in World War II, but no one knew about it because everything was top secret in those days.". By 1941, he worked the cranes on the ship, a job that entailed retrieving the Arizona's small seaplanes after they landed on the water. One day, a young fellow knocked on his door. Anderson smiled. The Coghlan approached the Aleutians in October, as winter was pushing fall aside. 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. Potts had not returned to Honolulu in the decades since he left for San Francisco in 1945. In March, the crew turned back Japanese forces in the Battle of Komandorski. He and Evelyn had their first son, Ray, Jr., in 1947. The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Anderson volunteered for duty on the Macdonough, a destroyer that downed at least one of the Japanese attack planes on Dec. 7. He doesn't like to talk about the attack. Discipline seems less important than it was in his day. "That lumber was so damn green then, we used to kid we had to shoot the squirrels out of it.". The ship accompanied General Douglas MacArthur to the Philippines and was anchored in the harbor off Nagasaki, Japan, when the second atomic bomb exploded. "We're were out and around. Aviators most often arose from left-arm rates. Seventy-three years later, he is one of just nine survivors of the attack on the Arizona. "What houses they built!" Explosions rocked the vessel and fires burned into the evening. "I never talked about it much then," he says. A woman from Illinois drew Bruner's name. I had one pair of dungarees and that was it, that and a towel and shaving gear.". By early 1941, Langdell was one of the "90-day wonders" and drew his first assignment: The USS Arizona. "To go through that to me is incomprehensible. Calhoun quizzed Conter about his posting, his job on the ship. Conter and others in his group boarded a boat to go out to the platform and see his old ship. "He should have the Navy Cross," Stratton says. He introduced him to other officers. He called back a few days later. Their ordeal . "He wanted the east coast, I wanted the west coast. 4 Comments. Once, I made a dive in a two-man submarine, down in over 1,200 feet of water off Santa Barbara coast. About halfway through the cruise, the Pringle was ordered to accompany the battleship Iowa to Africa, where President Roosevelt was to attend a conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Morocco. "I had to help my father out of his seat. On one mission, Haerry's tender was tied to a larger ship as the crew delivered supplies and completed maintenance tasks. 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. Doctors treated him and he recovered, but the his fingers never healed properly. As the boat heaved, the man with the ax missed and hit Haerry's hand, nearly severing it from his wrist. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. It took more courage on your part to present this wreath than it did for me to accept it.". 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. Joe saved six lives and he didn't get crap. He agreed to play it on his show. He keeps a folder of newspaper clippings, magazine stories and copies of a telegram. Las Vegas seems to like Hetrick. 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. They wouldn't send her over so I didn't re-enlist.". An electro-mechanical computer would aim the guns. He got to know Alan Ladd, who had starred in a series of war movies. One day, some smaller boats sailed past. They stayed composed as their stories were told, stories of bravery, of quick thinking. "They paid everybody in two dollar bills back then. elephant tail jewelry did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. All those sailors from all those places and here was a guy who was practically a neighbor. "You can't get a guy hungry in three or four days," Conter says. Guns. He was on Ford Island when the Japanese attacked, training for new assignment. The Langdells ended up honeymooning in Monterey and Carmel on the central California coast. And he keeps it loaded. "Once after we crossed the equator, one of the planes came back," he says. Soon, he became one of the earliest TV weathermen and an evening fixture in Roswell homes, or at least those with televisions. They had voted. "When somebody says get out of here and you're on a hundred tons of ammunition, well, you don't question it," he says. Late in the year, after an overhaul in San Francisco, the Coghlan returned to patrol duty off the Aleutians with a half dozen other U.S. vessels. How could he say no? A few years ago, the Cooks attended a fund-raising dinner at a local American Legion post. A clerk tried to complete the process, normally a routine, if messy, step to secure the permit. The war's over.". "They were holed up behind sandbags, but they never got hit.". They will celebrate 65 years of marriage in April. Japanese torpedo bombers hit the Lexington and crippled the big ship. Some even extend their consumption to seabirds. If the shark feels like a dead fish isn't worth its time, it will leave without wasting more energy. "She went to California and I followed her," Lonnie says. Stratton and other men climbed into a small boat that took them ashore. "Say your prayers, men, we're seven miles off shore and we're in 10, 15-foot swells," one of the officers said as the crew abandoned the plane. "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. The man in the boat was from Muskogee, a town about 40 miles east of Morris. We got as close as 5,000 yards, which was point-blank for those ships. What he heard wasn't quite country music, but he liked it and he told the kid. He was at a restaurant last summer and someone noticed his USS Arizona cap. The paneled room behind the door in the living room of the Provo house is filled with trophies of almost any imaginable sort. Chile. "They were very good days before the war. He doesn't want to answer questions about his war service, shrugging them off or insisting he can't remember the details anymore. That fateful day led the United States . As soon as he turned 18, he enlisted in the Navy. 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. The venture was working out well. Other crewmen would roll out the shell, use a mechanical device to ram it in, then load four bags of powder behind it. 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. He had escaped the USS Arizona, the battleship whose losses surpassed any other. Before the war started, a hospital stay that long would have earned a sailor a discharge, but not anymore. the young man asked. He squeezes past the pool table, past the photos and the maps and the medals. 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. In late 1943, Conter flew a mission to rescue more than 200 coast watchers in New Guinea. His work turned toward survival training in a new military program called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. Stratton grew up in the tiny prairie town of Red Cloud, Neb., about as far away from an ocean as any place in the country. Over the course of nearly two hours during the morning of December 7th, 1941, a fleet of Japanese fighters and bombers assaulted the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in hopes of crippling the US Navy for the duration of World War II. His own battle station was beneath the gun turret shattered by the last bomb to hit the Arizona. Redfish. After the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the United States opted to construct a naval base in 1899. Langdell says only this: "It took two days to take all the bodies. Conter got his wings in November 1942. "Sometimes, we'd come back, eat, then sleep on the beach.". When was the shark attack on the Jersey Shore? A stunt coordinator helped pull Anderson from the pile of cigarette crates that had broken his fall. For years, Stratton wore the scars from the Arizona without talking about them much. His service on the Arizona also seemed to give him added credibility among the young sailors. And that's what he told every soldier and airman who took his courses.*. "No one knew where the hell I was," Bruner says. Nope. He needed a truck to carry equipment back and forth, so he scouted out a car lot and bought a 1965 Chevrolet pickup. Haerry felt the entire ship life out of the water. On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy bombed the Pearl Harbor Naval base in a surprise attack. The ones after that were, too. "There's the battleships there's the Nevada, the Arizona, the Tennessee, the West Virginia, Maryland, the Oklahoma. 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 asked for volunteers. And as the victims' blood spread through the water, sharks - which can smell blood up to three miles away - were attracted to the defenceless sailors, creating a feeding frenzy. The gun took away some of the terror he had felt from the moment he saw the first bomber, the panic he felt when he found the armories on board the ship locked. The Coghlan left San Francisco in September 1942 and sailed toward Pearl Harbor for an assignment. "What are you looking at?" He felt a tap on his shoulder. Potts picked up the Colt 45 he'd found on Ford Island on Dec. 7, 1941. "I told the men, 'If a shark comes close, hit it in the nose with your fist as hard as you can.'". Before the attack, many Americans were reluctant to become involved in the war in Europe. "Here we are, we can't see the enemy. ", "You will go to the Arizona and you will take off all the bodies and body parts above the water line," the man said. He said, 'whatever I can get out of you.' Large species also consume marine mammals such as dolphins, seals, sea lions, and porpoises, as well as large fish species such as tuna, mackerel, and even smaller shark species. Haerry held the rope that connected the ships as another crewman swung an ax to cut it. amc gremlin for sale washington state did sharks attack titanic survivors. In time, he felt no anger toward the Japanese, but he couldn't forget what they did. Many places around the world are named for a stand-out feature, and Pearl Harbor is no different. "On the day I swore into the Air Force, I was still in my Navy uniform," he said. He describes the store of booze they pulled out of safe and the money. 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. "He told you the story?" "Why do you like the hat, dad?" Posted on December 7, 2021, 5:08 pm. The next night, an American PT boat retrieved all 10 men. 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. Her father was an engineer and a top executive for a dredging company with a big Navy contract. When she says anything, I tell her I'm catching up from the war.". Haerry straightened in his seat as his story was told. "I thought you'd be in flight school," he said. Many veterans who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor have met over the years and become friends, particularly at the annual Dec. 7 gatherings at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. He missed enough of his classes that he was finally asked to leave. The ship was to turn around and steam toward Alaska. He had turned down a promotion to ensign, preferring the camaraderie of the enlisted ranks. At his request, he was assigned to the officer candidate school in Newport, R.I. But the war was over. Kitchen patrol. No sharks did not eat Titanic passengers. For some reason I had always thought that the titanic had gone down way farther North. He would work in the port director's office, delivering sealed packets to the captains of Navy ships. "We lit into them, started firing on them," Bruner said. "Never heard of it.". Conter told the admiral he was interested in flight school, but doubted he would earn admission. I said, 'You send her over, I'll re-enlist.' . Each of the six men were at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes swarmed the Navy fleet in an ambush that would provoke war. When the regular stuntmen returned and the studio cut loose the subs, Ladd hired some of them to work on his house in the Holmby Hills above Los Angeles. 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. The burn ward filled with the injured. He liked teaching and liked the chance to instill discipline. Three days since the war started. When he left Morris the first time in 1939 after high school, Cook wasn't sure where he'd end up. He would sail to San Francisco on one of the cruise ships refitted to move troops, the Lurline, or maybe the Matsonia. He . Cook has returned to Pearl Harbor three times and he likes the Arizona memorial. "It hadn't really sunk in what had happened.". "I'd already sent word, even before the first one got there," he says. For Haerry, McBride had a the state's highest military honor, the Rhode Island Cross. But there are moments when he knows what he did meant something. From the shore, he helped wounded men from the water, men whose bodies had been torn apart by bombs and bullets and fire. Joe Langdell found a table in the wardroom of one of the ships moored in Pearl Harbor and sat down with his breakfast. By 1991, the 50th . The exhausted crew dragged ashore an hour later and hid in the jungle, fearful they would be captured by Japanese soldiers. "He said, 'I had survival training in the ocean. "They said he was a tough bastard, but that's exactly what they needed.". Only a few hundred people lived there then. He refused to cut the line no matter what. "It's just not going to happen. With a total of 1,195 men aboard, about 300 went down with the ship. You don't fire guns in port, so I ran out real quick to see what was happening. I had to take them to the parties and sit there until it was over.". Peeling potatoes. It was as if he had none. From the Vestal, Bruner was taken to the USS Solace, a hospital ship in the harbor. Lonnie finally retired from welding in 1982 and in 1994, the Cooks moved back to Morris. Cook made it off alive. Would Ken be willing to go as a guest of honor? He likes chocolate and is disappointed if Ray Jr. forgets it. did sharks attack titanic survivors. Keeping the memories alive. Now, Bruner prepares for his next trip in the Captain's Quarters. The things I don't want to remember was the blood.". In January, another ship took him to San Francisco to the Navy hospital on Treasure Island. Today, he is one of nine remaining survivors from the mighty battleship. It hastened the United States' entry . "It's hard to explain." "The Japanese were only a mile away. The fellow told him to report to the front gate of Sam Goldwyn's studio in Hollywood on Monday morning. Her sister knew Jack Warner, the film studio mogul, and invited Valerie to a movie premiere party Warner was hosting in Palm Springs for his latest project, "Camelot". The men, their charred skin peeling away, climbed hand-over-hand across the line to safety. I heard the general say, 'You're a remarkable guy.' To prepare for the trip, they were studying World War II history, attending lectures, writing research papers. "The only people he would talk to were either very close friends or relatives," his son says. "Sometimes they'd get shooting at you and you'd look at the shells and they looked like they were going to hit you. He stopped in the small town of Payson, Utah. On the 70thanniversary of the attack, the men had been brought to the state capitol to receive new honors. "The Arizona was a fighting battleship," Joe says. Many have since died. No one seemed to be in charge on Ford Island, where Cook had spent the night. "So that's what we did," he says, staring out at the harbor nearly seven decades later. Five years ago, Haerry moved into a nursing home, He stays in a room on the second floor. He returned after the war to his home along the railway in eastern Oklahoma. Did sharks eat Titanic victims? The buddy wasn't home, but his son-in-law answered. "I said, 'sure, I'll take it.' Hetrick slept on the battleship USS Tennessee, which had been moored just ahead of the Arizona along Ford Island. He ran to the anti-aircraft battery, his battle station, but there was no ammunition ready. The Lexington sailed out of Pearl Harbor not long after. "Talk about treating you like royalty," he says. He tries to abbreviate it: "We went to California and got married.". 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. The Navy wanted to keep him in Idaho, working with new recruits at a boot camp, but he pushed for a seagoing assignment and wound up on the destroyer USS Stack as a gunner's mate. Salmon. Someone from the bureau had been asking questions. Stratton falls easily into the memories of his years on diving boats. As he waited, he had a feeling he knew what would happen, but he didn't say anything. He stayed on the 17thfloor of a hotel on Waikiki Beach. "I'm a painter," he said. Sailors found food and shelter wherever they could. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. The tender didn't want to be tied to the larger ship when the worst of the storm blew through. By the time they were back, the icicles were forming again and two more guys would go out.". The United States declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, the day following the attack on Pearl Harbor. "Randy, come and turn on the music box." His kids and grandkids. Amidst the rush to war following the attack, there was also the painstaking effort to recover those who had been sunk with ships like the USS Oklahoma and the USS Arizona. Hetrick, who is 91, has outlived most of the men he knew on the Saratoga. on the Arizonawhen the battleship sankon Dec. 7. the final survivor to be interred in the ship. They struck up a conversation and, after a brief courtship, married. Abe offered condolences and said he prayed that all their souls were at peace. In the late 1930s, American foreign policy in the Pacific hinged on support for China, and . Though Conter turned around the first time he ventured toward the sunken Arizona, he has been back since, to see it with other survivors. "I wasn't going out there. We hauled it all back in.". "Through all that, I never did lose consciousness," he says. The Americans stopped the Japanese ships and wiped out some of the top officers. Schenkelberg was no stranger to hardships . The trophy sits on a small white base that raises it above other items on a shelf. 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. "OK," Bruner said. Fish, in general, are the most common prey for sharks. The ship provided fire support for the Marines going ashore. She prods him to move around more and to leave the room for meals. His dad has never sought recognition for his service on the Arizona and barely talks about the day of the attack. All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. But he didn't want to start his civilian life in the brig, so he left it in Honolulu. "That's what I'm catching up now. Only 35 dead were . "Some of the ships I was on had guys who liked to play the guitar, so I knew something about it. 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. "In the Army you were crawling around in the mud and everything else and I didn't want to do that.". He is one of nine living survivors of the Arizona and, at 97, he has amassed a lifetime of unforgettable days. Joe had met Elizabeth McGauhy in Chicago half a decade earlier. "Sure, let's see it." Cook was assigned to the USS Patterson, then two months later, transferred to the Aylwin, a destroyer that had been moored at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 and engaged the bombers as the attack began. He saw action across the South Pacific, patrolled areas where suicide bombers were attacking American destroyers. Around 2005, he and Jeanne moved to Bullhead City. "I decided I'd do whatever they told me to. Pearl Harbor was a United States Naval base on the island of Oahu, located west of Honolulu. Cook and the other men stayed below deck until the smoke from a fire forced them to leave. He was the opening act for country superstar Hank Snow that night at the North High School auditorium. He has been telling his story to an author, Ed McGrath, who is working on a book and a film about Bruner's escape from a collapsing tower on the ship. But Hetrick couldn't find work, so inside of six months, he signed up for the Navy Reserve. Conter and his buddy waited for new instructions, but heard nothing. Today, the population can almost reach 1,500 when everyone is home. Yes, a lot of brave men died. You need the exercise. 3 gun turret. This list and the accompanying graphics do not include encounters in which a shark does not actually bite a person or board (e.g. "We were told to watch out for them, these guys were assassins," Anderson said. Hetrick recovered. Oceanic whitetip sharks killed many of the surviving crew in the biggest attack on humans ever recorded Credit: Getty - Contributor. As he talks about Pearl Harbor again, other memories surface. 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. Cook was discharged in 1948 in San Diego and stuck around California, where he worked as a metal finisher at Van Nuys manufacturing plant. The mangled bodies such as J.J. Astor was probably caused by the 1st smokestack falling into the water and. No one among the groups knew where he was or what he was doing, but the woman persisted. Toward the end the war, Langdell was stationed in the Philippines, at a base in Manila. "We said we'd volunteer if they'd put two or three of us together on the same ship," he said. "We wouldn't get much fire back and by the time they sounded general quarters, we were on our way," Conter said. Kuwait. Nobody was expecting anything like that.". ", "It's a brand new destroyer, the Coghlan, DD-606," he said, "built right here in 'Frisco.". Bruner was the second-to-last man to leave the sinking ship. '", "Some things," he says, "you don't know about what they'll mean until years later.". Potts says, shaking his head. Conter's plane hadn't been out long in September 1943 when enemy bullets pierced one of their rear hatches and hit a parachute flare. Why not try radio? Sometimes we never landed, but we kept the line, always watching out for kamikazes.". He jumped into the harbor, even though he had never passed his swimming test. 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. Sharks hunt fish by using sensory receptors located on their sides. We carefully wrapped them in sheets. 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. It is dated Dec. 21, 1941. He settled in Palm Springs and built a career as a real estate developer, buying up land for commercial and residential projects. With Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, William Lee Scott. He stood strong and tall right in front of this general. "He saved six people's lives. Haerry says he wants lunch delivered to his room, but the nurse says no. But he became restless. Wherever he goes on the pickup, people ask him about his experience. The survivors' group that found him was right, he has concluded: The stories of the Arizona should not die with the men who lived them. If a plane crashed, crocodiles awaited in the river. For over an hour, in two waves, some 350 Japanese aircrafthaving taken off from six . A second telegram, dated Jan. 6 reported that Conter was alive and would contact his family. He wanted men with eyes set in the right place on their face. The primer went in last, before the end of the gun was sealed shut. Sharks in turn were revered because they . Long a bachelor again, Bruner has also entertained lady friends from time to time. They listened for their names and their service branch. He knew his brother hadn't made it off the Arizona alive, but he didn't know much else. He thinks back. "You know, you can see where I came out of, the hatchway. And my co-pilot, Lou Conter, saved my life. Someone had stacked the boxes too high and in the humid environment of the island, the cardboard had grown damp and weak. "Mr. Langdell, Mr. Langdell, you've got to come here quick," he said. The family sold maple syrup distilled from the trees on their farm. Cook worked in California, mostly welding jobs, until the union he belonged to called a strike.
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