Bruner started as a painter, trained as a carpenter, then helped start a new sheet-metal department. He saw action across the South Pacific, patrolled areas where suicide bombers were attacking American destroyers. He . "Mr. Langdell, Mr. Langdell, you've got to come here quick," he said. "Cover the decks, anywhere you can find them up to the top of the masts.". Within a day or two, someone came into the ward and said a few of the wounded would be sent to California. Yes, a lot of brave men died. dwayne johnson rock foundation contact. 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. "It ain't worth a damn if it ain't loaded," he says. 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. Admiral Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy came to the conclusion that for the Japanese to be victorious in the pacific, they had to destroy the . The Macdonough stayed until September, then sailed back on patrol in the Pacific. The Pentagon said Tuesday it would exhume and try to identify the remains of nearly 400 sailors and Marines killed when the USS Oklahoma sank in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Langdell's ship, the USS Arizona, lay dead in the water where she sank 14 minutes into the attack. By 1991, the 50th . The steeple clock chimed and a statue of an angel wielding a sword emerged from an alcove and knocked Anderson off the steeple. For a while, the young family lived in Puerto Rico as Haerry, now a chief boatswain's mate, drew new assignments aboard his tender. Whale sharks can grow to 65 feet in length and weigh up to 75,000 pounds. He bought another gun in the states and he is never far from it. 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 . After his second discharge, he knocked around Nebraska again, working in his dad's tavern, then on a beer truck, but he grew bored. There were: Cook and another crewman. He asked his brother, Ted, to visit Libby and see if she could cook. She likes the story of how they tied the knot. "It's just not going to happen. Then we had to go back.". It fit in that location. Once, I made a dive in a two-man submarine, down in over 1,200 feet of water off Santa Barbara coast. He can't relive those images anymore. He introduced him to other officers. A lot of people agree that what George did was heroic, but the Navy balks at every step, in part because George disobeyed a direct order. "He's there for me. The family visited the Arizona memorial and toured other sites near the harbor. "The hat represents the Arizona. A platform marked the wreckage of the USS Arizona. And that's what he told every soldier and airman who took his courses.*. "We were told to watch out for them, these guys were assassins," Anderson said. He stopped in the small town of Payson, Utah. 3 min read. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. They ran Joe and Libby Langdell's Village Mart for more than 20 years until they retired. As he waited, he had a feeling he knew what would happen, but he didn't say anything. And it holds deep meaning for Potts, even though he did nothing to win it. The Japanese-American mother, father and their three children. The sky began to darken and the wind grew. 2022-06-16 Uncategorized Uncategorized It wasn't, but the flash was a reminder, as if he needed anything more. When they said, 'grab your sea bags and let's go,' I did.". Cook is invited to such events occasionally and sometimes introduced as an Arizona survivor. "I never talked about it much then," he 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. He spent long months on a tender, a vessel that carries equipment, parts and other supplies for ships at sea. Pearl Harbor: Directed by Michael Bay. Hetrick turns a rusted chunk of metal over in his hands, running his fingers along the curves and edges. Cook made it off alive. Did he know anything about meteorology? He liked teaching and liked the chance to instill discipline. Bruner thought it an odd request. John was sent from training camp in Illinois to Bremerton, Wash. Langdell was discharged at the war's end and returned to Massachusetts, where his wife, Libby, waited. Finally, after a few weeks on the tanker, Potts was handed a new assignment. Potts had not returned to Honolulu in the decades since he left for San Francisco in 1945. He describes the store of booze they pulled out of safe and the money. The band would cover all expenses for him and Doris. Their habitats include saltwater and freshwater alike. Trains run close enough to hear the horns during the day, but not close enough to make them a nuisance. "It acknowledges to people that I'm a survivor," Joe replies, his voice soft. "We'd patrol at night. He's never been back. Photographs. He didn't know what to tell them. "What houses they built!" He stayed there for months. He catalogs the scars and their origin. A few years after that, they left for Las Vegas, where their son, Bob, and his family help them get around. Not long after he returned to Pearl Harbor near the end of the war, Anderson searched out some of the battle reports from Dec. 7, 1941. Before the end of the war, he went to San Diego for gunner's mate school. The guns hit the periscope. His ships steamed across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal to Africa. 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.". 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. He and Libby moved west to Walnut Creek east of San Francisco. He doesn't want to answer questions about his war service, shrugging them off or insisting he can't remember the details anymore. The marching band had been invited to fly to Pearl Harbor and perform at activities commemorating the 70thanniversary of the attack. Knives. These Photos Of The Pearl Harbor Attack Are Still Shocking Decades Later "A day that will live in infamy." By . By the end of the day, had persuaded Anderson to sign up for the Navy Reserve. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. He handed the microphone to his son, Raymond Haerry, Jr., who spoke of his father's courage and resilience. He will tell his story to people he knows well and trusts, but he is 93 and the details are fading from his memory. As they talked, Ray mentioned that his dad had been aboard the Arizona. "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.". Handout . The Lexington sailed out of Pearl Harbor not long after. 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 stopped at Pearl Harbor more than a decade earlier, on his way to a posting in Korea. That didn't last long and he headed back to Morris, where he met Marietta. The United States declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, the day following the attack on Pearl Harbor. 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. As he was packing, a buddy warned him that his possessions would be searched at the port in San Francisco. He would work in the port director's office, delivering sealed packets to the captains of Navy ships. Williams was on deck, tuning up to play for colors, an early call after the previous day's fleet Battle of the Bands on shore. On the 70thanniversary of the attack, the men had been brought to the state capitol to receive new honors. on the Arizonawhen the battleship sankon Dec. 7. the final survivor to be interred in the ship. Almost imperceptibly, he sways. He said he wanted Anderson to join the on-air staff. A few years later, a new station owner showed Anderson his plans to start a TV station. You need the exercise. Lou Conter is telling the story of the night his patrol bomber was shot down seven miles off the coast of New Guinea, dumping the seaplane's 10-man crew into the Pacific Ocean. "They were holed up behind sandbags, but they never got hit.". The treaty also gave the US Navy exclusive access to use Pearl Harbor as a coaling and repair station. He has met many of his old friends and shipmates. The Coghlan approached the Aleutians in October, as winter was pushing fall aside. 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. The tanker towed them to Adak, Alaska, and from there, another ship took the crippled destroyer to San Francisco for repairs. "We would go in with a landing party or we furnished artillery for the landing force. Bruner looked each recruit in the eyes to determine the right job, but he wasn't testing their mettle, not yet. Potts was based out of the port director's office there were two, one at the harbor, one on the ninth floor of the Aloha Tower in downtown Honolulu but he logged most of his hours at the controls of the motor boat, a Jeep or a station wagon. Bruner keeps mementos of his time on the Arizona in the sitting room. Song's got some zip to it, he said. He played a lot of golf, but missed California. A few incidents were possible shark bites, but shark involvement was not [] And he still likes to talk about that other young fellow from Oklahoma, the one who didn't make it home. Just stories, the kind buddies tell each other. He spent the rest of the day retrieving bodies from the harbor. 11 Oldest Pearl Harbor Survivors (Updated 2021) December 7, 1941 is a date that everyone in America has committed to memory. "No," the worker said. BuzzFeed News Photo Editor. Other crewmen would roll out the shell, use a mechanical device to ram it in, then load four bags of powder behind it. The six-year Pentagon project identified nearly 400 who died on the USS Oklahoma in 1941. "There's the battleships there's the Nevada, the Arizona, the Tennessee, the West Virginia, Maryland, the Oklahoma. "I really miss it.". All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. Whale sharks are found in warm waters in the Pacific . Conter fought on through World War II, scraped past a lot of close calls, then went to Korea. I still get to the point when I'm talking about it, first thing you know, I go to bed at night, wake up and can't sleep for a week.". The primer went in last, before the end of the gun was sealed shut. Fire had blackened much of the structure still visible. Here is a story he will tell, a memory he will keep. His new employer manufactured industrial refrigeration units. One of our cruisers, the heavy cruiser, got hit and water got into the oil. I don't think sharks go that far. When he reaches that part of his story, he stops. UPDATE: Bruner died in 2019. We all have to remember that they did not die in vain.". Some even extend their consumption to seabirds. He stayed on the 17thfloor of a hotel on Waikiki Beach. "To see the people I knew back in those days," he says. There are a few personal photos on the table, but nothing from his years in the Navy. He was assigned a battle station in the No. He joined the USS Arizona Reunion Association and stays in touch with a few of the remaining survivors. He returned after the war to his home along the railway in eastern Oklahoma. "The kids coming up now have never heard of it," he says, his voice tinged with sadness and dismay. "That must be old Clyde Williams," he thought, the Arizona band member killed at Pearl Harbor. Cook asked. Cook was the gun captain on the Pringle at the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. He keeps a photo from that tournament on a bookshelf in an alcove off the kitchen. UPDATE:Joe Langdell diedin February 2015, months after this report. "I told another kid if they come back again tonight, I'm leaving.". "I said, 'sure, I'll take it.' / Reuters. But he is proud of his service, of the other sailors on the Arizona. "I was back here on leave before the war started and he was here too," Cook says. "I was always wanting to learn more when I was younger," says Hetrick's younger son, Robert, who lives not far from his dad in Las Vegas. She returned, puzzled. Everything was taken ashore and properly taken care of.". His wife, Libby, who died two years ago. "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. Libby got the message. "We're were out and around. elephant tail jewelry did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. medge. I had one pair of dungarees and that was it, that and a towel and shaving gear.". Of the 1,196 men aboard, 900 made it into the water alive. He gave Anderson the name of a contact there. Then they'd go by.". With a gun, he could defend himself. "Are you out of the Navy, Andy?" "I thought you'd be in flight school," he said. Three days earlier, their 20-year-old son became the first Suffolk County casualty in World War II. But he became restless. striking a number of people in the water. It took Ray Jr. years, decades to piece together his father's story. We had survival training on the job. "But I had a brother in Vietnam who didn't want to talk about it at all, so I guess I realized if they want to talk, they'll talk. 2023 www.azcentral.com. They will celebrate 65 years of marriage in April. A tale of war and romance mixed in with history. They moved to Modesto, Calif., where he got a job driving a produce truck in the fruit orchards. Joe saved six lives and he didn't get crap. "Randy, come and turn on the music box." Conter was stationed on the Arizona at Pearl Harbor in September 1941, when he turned 20. At the time, sailors wore patches designating their rates, the enlisted expression of rank, on the right or left sleeve, depending on their assignment. Would Ken be willing to go as a guest of honor? 1. 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. Just another site did sharks eat pearl harbor victims They bought a small ranch and, while Lonnie continued to work welding jobs, they grew walnuts, almonds, peaches, apples, nectarines, cherries and grapes. They moved to Santa Maria, not far from Santa Barbara, to be near their oldest son, then to Colorado Springs to be near Randy. "Would you like a job?" They are the marks of a survivor, 73 years on. did sharks eat pearl harbor victimshavelock wool australia. Crustaceans. 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 . Did sharks eat Titanic victims? Langdell arrived at Pearl Harbor along a different path than many of the young sailors, who signed up for the service because they were unable to find work as civilians. "I put on two life jackets," Hetrick said. As he talks about Pearl Harbor again, other memories surface. Haerry accepts the chocolate bars his son has brought him. Octopus. "She went to California and I followed her," Lonnie says. On the same bookshelf sit mementos from his time on the Arizona. As they walked toward it, Langdell reeled at an odor. The Coghlan left San Francisco in September 1942 and sailed toward Pearl Harbor for an assignment. Nobody could debate what that was, no question about it.". 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. His mother had moved to Decatur, Ill., by then, so he followed and took a job at a hardware store. He helped rescue some of his shipmates. He knew his brother hadn't made it off the Arizona alive, but he didn't know much else. They covered the growing seasons: cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, grapes. The ship steamed toward the Asiatic Pacific and soon Anderson was chasing Japanese forces again, only this time the United States was at war. He then spent 14 months recovering in Great . '", "Some things," he says, "you don't know about what they'll mean until years later.". Rays. The Black Cats flew surveillance, search and rescue, sea patrol, but they proved especially valuable for nighttime assaults and nuisance raids on Japanese submarines and ships. The exhausted crew dragged ashore an hour later and hid in the jungle, fearful they would be captured by Japanese soldiers. In late 1943, Conter flew a mission to rescue more than 200 coast watchers in New Guinea. Haerry accepted the medal, but found he could not speak. 3 gun turret. The offshore diving business could leave its own kind of scars. Hotline & WhatsApp : +971556212280 | Landline : +97143873596 , +97167499398 james reynolds obituary. 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 half-swam, half-walked the 70 yards to Ford Island and manned a mounted machine gun. He was able to visit the national cemetery at an area called the Punch Bowl. 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. Hetrick still likes to talk about the new shoes he bought the day before the attack in Honolulu. A woman from Illinois drew Bruner's name. They were dead in the water.". Thickets of tangled shrubs and rows of trees are visible from his window. north but again I'm not a shark expert. Whether they're a spiny dogfish all the way to great whites, sharks love eating fish. "He saved six people's lives. Joe Langdell found a table in the wardroom of one of the ships moored in Pearl Harbor and sat down with his breakfast. The shock of jumping into a harbor knowing he couldn't swim. You're on your own, every day.'". He liked the idea of working as an aircraft mechanic, so he volunteered. Pearl Harbor, naval base and headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Honolulu county, southern Oahu Island, Hawaii, U.S. They trade stories. After that, he started teaching U.S. troops the skills of survival, evasion, resistance and escape. "We said we'd volunteer if they'd put two or three of us together on the same ship," he said. A sign over the arched door marks the room as "Captain's Quarters.". He stayed aboard the Solace about a month. We swept the decks and took the small bones. Framed medals. "Hi," he said, introducing himself. Yet in a place where you couldn't cross the street without running into a war vet, Bruner was not just another ex-sailor who made it home. He was nervous about volunteering for anything, but he raised his hand. Haerry straightened in his seat as his story was told. Pearl Harbor was a United States Naval base on the island of Oahu, located west of Honolulu. During construction of the memorial, the Navy sliced off pieces of the Arizona's wreckage to make room for the structure that sits above the sunken ship today. The United States was a neutral country at the time; the attack led to its formal entry into World War II the next day. Inside, he found broken bottles scattered in a soggy soup of booze and cardboard. Potts was touched. "Sometimes, we'd come back, eat, then sleep on the beach.". An administrator at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, N.M., heard Anderson and talked him into joining the school to help improve its radio station and start a television station. evolution golf cart forum Five years later, in 2011, he got a call from the band director at Timpview High School in Provo. "On the day I swore into the Air Force, I was still in my Navy uniform," he said. That was the end of it.". The Coghlan supported Army landings and Navy bombing runs. Today, he is one of nine remaining survivors from the mighty battleship. The buddy wasn't home, but his son-in-law answered. He tries to abbreviate it: "We went to California and got married.". Browse 2,614 pearl harbor attack stock photos and images available, or search for world war ii or pearl harbor 1941 to find more great stock photos and pictures. The mangled bodies such as J.J. Astor was probably caused by the 1st smokestack falling into the water and. 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. Sentiment ran high against the Japanese, he said, but also against U.S. leaders whose decisions many questioned in the aftermath. "Three months later, I was in Korea.". An impressive collection of restaurant menus from 30 years of cross-country searches for used cars. Since the 1920s . "It was boring," Potts says. He was on Ford Island when the Japanese attacked, training for new assignment. He eases the truck out of the carport, far enough to show it off. Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, that was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. A few years ago, the Cooks attended a fund-raising dinner at a local American Legion post. "I went and found the head guy and by the time I got through explaining things to him," Potts says, "my name was never on that list again.". 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. But when Ka'ahupahau realized that the girl actually did die, she regretted her rash order and instead said that sharks should never attack humans in the Pearl Harbor region. "This shows where all the ships were," he says, pointing at a map depicting Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. The Saratoga had returned to Pearl Harbor by the time the Japanese surrendered. They continued to see each other and, when Langdell left for Hawaii, they corresponded, often. 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. The things I don't want to remember was the blood.". The job wasn't what he expected in September, when he was discharged from the Navy. 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. For Haerry, McBride had a the state's highest military honor, the Rhode Island Cross. "These guys were the first heroes of the war, even though the war hasn't been declared," Ray Jr. says. There, he lost his twin brother, "It was a bloody catastrophe, a bloody mess," he says. June 12, 2022 . "We're right-arm rates." "It was like a hard jolt.". He ran to the anti-aircraft battery, his battle station, but there was no ammunition ready. Only a few hundred people lived there then. The new shoes he left on the deck of the sinking ship, the ones he intended to retrieve later. I had to take them to the parties and sit there until it was over.". He would draw out snippets and stash them away, collecting them until he would weave the barest narrative. Or got fired. He's more like family than just a friend.". 4 gun turret, with the men who died there and survivors who had died since. Part of his shoulder was blown off. Sailors found food and shelter wherever they could. June 12, 2022 June 12, 2022 0 Comments June 12, 2022 0 Comments The worst shark attack in recorded history also happened to be a disaster for the US Navy. In the years after, he became active in survivors' groups and started going back to Pearl Harbor more often. 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. Smoke rises from the battleship USS Arizona as it sinks . But John Anderson, the Navy chief petty officer who called himself Cactus Jack on the air, had a good head start already. He climbed aboard the ship, ducking to avoid bullets from the gunner planes. But he could not be prepared for what he found on the charred hulk of the battleship. He wanted to part of it. In 1971, Stratton was working long hours with a diving outfit on a nuclear power plant project not far from Santa Barbara. After he returned from Korea, Haerry was promoted to master chief petty officer, signifying his experience and level of service. On Veteran's Day, he participated once more in a parade through Marysville, the next town over from Yuba City. I even had a couple of dates with girls.". He visited the memorial and was relieved to see the builders got it right. Once a week, they motor on into Tulsa, where Marietta takes a china painting class and Lonnie wanders the aisles of sporting-goods stores. He hasn't hunted in a while, though he still reloads his own ammunition on a garage workbench. After high school, Langdell enrolled at Boston University, working nights to pay for his classes, and in 1938, he earned a degree in business administration. 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. "Here's the one that told my mother I was missing in action on the Arizona," he says. He had turned 90 and was starting over again. "Andy, you had 12 years of the damnedest fighting I ever saw. Crippled ships still floated around the mooring posts along Ford Island.

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