did sharks eat pearl harbor victimsdid sharks eat pearl harbor victims

The band members had decided they wanted to honor survivors from that day. "I was back here on leave before the war started and he was here too," Cook says. queensland figure skating. Deer and rabbits wander the hillside. Not war stories, usually, not unless one of them has had it out with a doctor or a pushy clerk. "I just got discharged. "Cover the decks, anywhere you can find them up to the top of the masts.". The Solace dispatched motor boats to the Arizona to rescue wounded sailors and her crew pulled others from the water. Seventy-three years later, he is one of just nine survivors of the attack on the Arizona. 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. Conter fought on through World War II, scraped past a lot of close calls, then went to Korea. He was sent to the Los Alamitos Naval Air Station up the coast in Orange County. He stayed on the 17thfloor of a hotel on Waikiki Beach. "I was here all the time. Potts says, shaking his head. He was 20 when he escaped the burning wreckage ofthe USS Arizonain Pearl Harbor. Pictures of past parades. He bought another gun in the states and he is never far from it. Stratton climbed to his feet and, biting back the pain, he stood and when his bed was ready, he collapsed back into it. He keeps a photo from that tournament on a bookshelf in an alcove off the kitchen. The marching band had been invited to fly to Pearl Harbor and perform at activities commemorating the 70thanniversary of the attack. Though Conter turned around the first time he ventured toward the sunken Arizona, he has been back since, to see it with other survivors. He looked for what he called medium spacing. The body parts we put in pillow cases. He introduced him to other officers. The sky began to darken and the wind grew. In Alaska, he helped set up platforms that could keep up with tides that rose and fell as much as 32 feet. With Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, William Lee Scott. Doctors and nurses wove among gurneys, administering morphine shots and looking for the victims most in need. These Photos Of The Pearl Harbor Attack Are Still Shocking Decades Later "A day that will live in infamy." By . When she says anything, I tell her I'm catching up from the war.". In 2011, he was one of six Rhode Islanders who had lived through the attack on Pearl Harbor, the only one from the Arizona. The crews were based on tender ships moored in secluded harbors. "I went back and told my mother I wasn't going up there anymore," he said. They called the Marines out with rifles to protect the plane and the guys while we hauled it in.". As soon as he turned 18, he enlisted in the Navy. "You I know.") Langdell was an ensign, an entry-level officer, not yet a year 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.". In his dining room in Colorado Springs, he keeps a replica of a hard diving helmet, the kind his divers used. "So they knew.". Their skin charred and falling off, the men crawled down the line to the Vestal. Uncle Ray was nearing the end of his career in 1937 when John and Jake both decided to enlist. "It sounded like someone shooting guns. Whether they're a spiny dogfish all the way to great whites, sharks love eating fish. They met at a dance at the YWCA on North State Street. They were trying to replenish submarines or send smaller ships in. After he returned from Korea, Haerry was promoted to master chief petty officer, signifying his experience and level of service. They went out for coffee afterward. "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. Lonnie and Marietta Cook met in Morris after the war, but the road to their home here today winds thousands of miles across the country. "There's the battleships there's the Nevada, the Arizona, the Tennessee, the West Virginia, Maryland, the Oklahoma. Seabirds. "We'd send two guys out to knock the icicles off the guns, then they'd high-tail it back in. The ship carried four 5-inch anti-aircraft guns and six half-inch machine guns, and, initially, five 21-inch torpedo tubes. 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. Haerry ran away from home to join the Navy. Chile. He still remembers the day he saw the Arizona in dry dock at Bremerton, Wash. "It was quite a sight for an old flatlander like me to see a 35,000-ton battleship out of the water," he says. Langdell says only this: "It took two days to take all the bodies. 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 was out to sea nine months out of the year, only home for three months," Ray Jr. says. His mother had moved to Decatur, Ill., by then, so he followed and took a job at a hardware store. By the time they were back, the icicles were forming again and two more guys would go out.". "This went on for four straight hours. He missed enough of his classes that he was finally asked to leave. "I just didn't want to. ("Two of us with the same rank were up for the same kind of job," he said. The inscription reads "Spirit of Aloha Award, Timpview High School Marching Band.". Sometimes, Japanese pilots attended memorial ceremonies and some of the other survivors would shake their hands. They could ride to the mainland then and leave for Florida. Anderson picked up and moved to New Mexico. As they talked, Ray mentioned that his dad had been aboard the Arizona. But he kept most of it to himself until he started meeting up with other survivors, years after he retired from the military. At his request, he was assigned to the officer candidate school in Newport, R.I. He had escaped the USS Arizona, the battleship whose losses surpassed any other. "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. Then they'd go by.". The planes could fly at low altitudes, then buzz upward for a bombing run, confounding enemy gunners trying to calculate speed and distance. Potts was working aboard an oil tanker, making short runs out of the harbor to refuel ships anchored off the coast. Anderson's road to the radio booth started in Hollywood, with a screen test at a studio where he had worked. Stratton told her why: He had been aboard the USS Arizona when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941. Potts had not returned to Honolulu in the decades since he left for San Francisco in 1945. Cook stood on a shelf in the gun mount with his big binoculars and watched the Marines raise the flag to mark the U.S. victory. "They told me the team was already picked," he said. It had been shortly after midnight when their ship, the USS Indianapolis, was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine in the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, some 500 miles east of the . The guns hit the periscope. "I witnessed your attack from Ford Island. Before the attack, many Americans were reluctant to become involved in the war in Europe. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. Handout . "Through all that, I never did lose consciousness," he says. In 1940, Anderson reported to the Arizona once more, joining his brother for the first time since they had enlisted. Debris from the Arizona showered the Tennessee's stern and started fires, but the vessel stayed afloat. The shock of jumping into a harbor knowing he couldn't swim. 9. . "I said goodbye and left.". Except the cap. He . The fireball from the explosion engulfed the six men in the box and trapped them. The report said most of the guys in the anti-aircraft batteries, where Jake fought, were shot down early in the assault. alain picard wife / ap calculus bc multiple choice / did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. A while back, Stratton and his wife Velma retired to Yuma and lived there about 15 years. The story follows two lifelong friends and a beautiful nurse who are caught up in the horror of an infamous Sunday morning in 1941. Three years later, Ray Haerry Jr. holds the cross in his hand, fighting back tears. Inside the packets were the captains' new orders, military secrets, classified information that required clearance to handle. 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. The Edsall sailed farther north, then headed to the Philippines, where they played baseball with a group of indigenous Moros, who had fought the United States more than 20 years earlier. He returned to Oklahoma again and started his own business, outfitting a one-ton Ford pickup with a winch and other equipment that let him work the oil fields. The Macdonough pulled picket patrol often, protecting other troops and guarding against kamikaze attacks by Japanese planes. "They said, 'If you re-enlist, we'll send her over.' 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 . He says that decision was the best thing he could have done. Cook made it off alive. It is respectful. They said, 'You should have been dead a long time ago.'". LaRocque asked. a director yelled. From the Vestal, Bruner was taken to the USS Solace, a hospital ship in the harbor. 4 Comments. He was able to visit the national cemetery at an area called the Punch Bowl. They bought a small ranch and, while Lonnie continued to work welding jobs, they grew walnuts, almonds, peaches, apples, nectarines, cherries and grapes. 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. 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. We hauled it all back in.". DES MOINES, Iowa - A World War II veteran thought to be the oldest survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack died last month at 103. "I didn't have the slightest idea what would happen when I signed up," he said. "We got halfway there and I told them to turn around," Conter said. He joined the USS Arizona Reunion Association and stays in touch with a few of the remaining survivors. The United States declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, the day following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Anderson has returned to the Arizona memorial often and has taken his family there. He will tell his story to people he knows well and trusts, but he is 93 and the details are fading from his memory. McBride reached the last man, Raymond Haerry, a 20-year-old coxswain on the day of the assault. 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. We were going to have a date the next day. "He was very military by then, very disciplined.". "I'd do it a hundred times more," he says. Hetrick was still just 21 by then, but a seasoned sailor who shared little in common with the 17-year-old kid who left high school and joined the Navy on his parents' signature. Oceanic whitetip sharks killed many of the surviving crew in the biggest attack on humans ever recorded Credit: Getty - Contributor. Until his partner ran off with all the money. He eases the truck out of the carport, far enough to show it off. The Coghlan turned back, almost spent. 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. 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. poil bulbe noir ou blanc; juego de ollas royal prestige 7 piezas; ano ang kahalagahan ng agrikultura sa industriya; nashville hotels with ev charging But there are moments when he knows what he did meant something. He points out the cranes and the locations along the ship where he would tie up the motor boats he piloted to fetch supplies and ferry sailors to and from shore. December 7, 1941: Pearl Harbor Casualties. "I cleaned up my language," he says, admitting he deployed a salty vocabulary, even after leaving active duty. He was attending midshipman's school at Northwestern University. 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. One of our cruisers, the heavy cruiser, got hit and water got into the oil. That didn't last long and he headed back to Morris, where he met Marietta. "It is only by the grace of God that I stand here today," he said. His wife, Libby, who died two years ago. The nurse who checks in on him regularly likes Haerry. Why Did Pearl Harbor Happen? In the waters off Honolulu, he confronted his memories. The men followed orders in a fog of wonderment and confusion. We had survival training on the job. 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. He has trouble remembering the past. All rights reserved. There are over 470 species of sharks throughout the world. He acknowledged the wreath. He wanted to part of it. Answer (1 of 23): Before I begin this answer I must confess to a surprising degree of ignorance, I once thought myself pretty well versed in maritime history and sea lore, until I began research for this answer. He brought all of his family: his wife Jeanne, his three sons and their families. One, Joe Langdell, lives about 40 miles away in Yuba City. Ray Jr. seems surprised. A carnivorous shark diet usually includes fish, mollusks, and crustaceans. As the 50thanniversary of the attack neared, Langdell got a call from a documentary filmmaker. The man walked over and looked at Langdell's name tag. When they sent me my discharge, I just stayed here.". Bruner was one of them. "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.". June 12, 2022 . Similarly, the . "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. We'd go out and blow them up.". He asked if Jeanne could come with him. "I said, 'Well, come on, then,'" Marietta says, and in 1950, they wed. That's where the cross-country adventures begin. No one seemed to be in charge on Ford Island, where Cook had spent the night. 3 gun turret. Now, stateside again, Hetrick reported to a Navy station in San Diego, where he met the woman who would become his wife, Jeanne. He is one of nine living survivors from the attack on the USS Arizona, the battleship he boarded in 1941 when he was 17. Alcohol. He ran to the anti-aircraft battery, his battle station, but there was no ammunition ready. "It acknowledges to people that I'm a survivor," Joe replies, his voice soft. He hasn't hunted in a while, though he still reloads his own ammunition on a garage workbench. Before the trip, Langdell hadn't talked much about his years in the war, about his time on the Arizona. During his voyage to Alaska, Cook remembers the flying fish, which stirred up the water like a torpedo wake. He fought with other sailors in the Battle of Midway and watched the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. He agreed to play it on his show. In U.S. history the name recalls the surprise Japanese air attack on December 7, 1941, that temporarily crippled the U.S. Fleet and resulted in the United States' entry into World War II. One morning, he was at his desk, catching up on paperwork, when he heard a vehicle screech to a halt outside. In late 1943, Conter flew a mission to rescue more than 200 coast watchers in New Guinea. A sailor on the deck of the repair ship Vestal spotted the men and threw a line across. Joe had met Elizabeth McGauhy in Chicago half a decade earlier. In 1949, the newly created U.S. Air Force was trying to fill it out its ranks with experienced support crews, almost begging for mechanics who knew the aircraft. 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. It is about three feet tall, with a carved island figure on top and the silhouette of a Hawaiian warrior on a plaque. The tender didn't want to be tied to the larger ship when the worst of the storm blew through. As Conter told it, the story wasn't about punching sharks, or skulking in the jungle or chasing shadows to the waiting rescue boat. Without them, Riel said, who knows where we'd be today. As a tender, he stayed on the surface, monitoring the divers working on rigs, piers, pipelines, any piece of seaside or seagoing equipment. Three days since the war started. 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. Framed medals. Conter had made friends with a young lady in Honolulu. For years, Stratton wore the scars from the Arizona without talking about them much. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. Haerry says he wants lunch delivered to his room, but the nurse says no. The fellow told him to report to the front gate of Sam Goldwyn's studio in Hollywood on Monday morning. Hetrick, who is 91, has outlived most of the men he knew on the Saratoga. 4. 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. He settled in Palm Springs and built a career as a real estate developer, buying up land for commercial and residential projects. "From down inside, it wasn't too bad when they fired it," Cook said. Langdell will return to the Arizona once more. As he prepared to jump off the burning ship, he took the shoes off and set them on the quarterdeck. "Remember Pearl Harbor!" became a rallying cry for the U.S. during World War II. Inside, he found broken bottles scattered in a soggy soup of booze and cardboard. 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. On the Arizona, he worked on the deck crew. On the 70thanniversary of the attack, the men had been brought to the state capitol to receive new honors. ", "Baloney," Conter replied. Stratton and other men climbed into a small boat that took them ashore. It sits today in the carport outside his home. Stratton's eyes brighten. 2023 www.azcentral.com. The planes flew up the Sepik River from the northern coast of New Guinea. "We won't get in," Conter said. An impressive collection of restaurant menus from 30 years of cross-country searches for used cars. An aerial view of "Battleship Row" at Pearl Harbor, photographed from a Japanese aircraft during the the bombing. He liked the idea of working as an aircraft mechanic, so he volunteered. Naming Pearl Harbor. USS Indianapolis was a Portland class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy. A month after the Coral Sea battle, Cook's ship was part of the American forces in the critical Battle of Midway. The ship accompanied General Douglas MacArthur to the Philippines and was anchored in the harbor off Nagasaki, Japan, when the second atomic bomb exploded. As the USS Arizona burned and sunk into the harbor, Stratton and five other men had been trapped on an anti-aircraft gun control platform on the ship's foremast, burned in a fireball when below-deck ammunition exploded. One of the first people to do that.". He was thrown into the ocean and waited 57 hours to be rescued while shipmates around him were eaten by sharks. Haerry accepted the medal, but found he could not speak. Whale sharks are found in warm waters in the Pacific . Guns. When the fourth bomb detonated in the powder magazine, anyone left was blown over the side. The Coghlan approached the Aleutians in October, as winter was pushing fall aside. He would sail to San Francisco on one of the cruise ships refitted to move troops, the Lurline, or maybe the Matsonia. Photographing survivors of the battleship USS Arizona. / Reuters. 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.". The trophy sits on a small white base that raises it above other items on a shelf. He didn't know what to tell them. "You either had a nice place aboard a ship and were high and dry or you didn't have anything," he reasoned. The telegram, which misspelled Conter's last name, promises further information and asks his family not to divulge Conter's posting. dwayne johnson rock foundation contact. 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. Almost three decades later, he was the plant manager, second-in-command. Sharks hunt fish by using sensory receptors located on their sides. But he doesn't tell his story anymore, not on his own. But he could not be prepared for what he found on the charred hulk of the battleship. "Mr. Langdell, Mr. Langdell, you've got to come here quick," he said. "Hi," he said, introducing himself. The first couple of trips back to Hawaii were difficult. "It was boring," Potts says. What they didn't count on was the side-street parking. He still tools around town in the truck, but it's a classic now, so he drives it almost as often to car shows. He clears his throat. The flare exploded and started a fire, which forced the plane into the water. Finally, she located some of Bruner's tax records and found his address and telephone number. He sits in his wheelchair as his son recites the narrative, keeping his father's story alive. He worked his way up to crew chief on a squadron of B-26 bombers, After 18 months overseas, he returned to Langley Field in Virginia. Eighty years later, many of those killed are finally returning home and being laid to rest. What he heard wasn't quite country music, but he liked it and he told the kid. He owns a chunk of the ship's burned deck, a reminder he keeps in a box with a few other items. Explosions rocked the vessel and fires burned into the evening. The band would cover all expenses for him and Doris. Once a shark finds its prey, it needs to decide on whether to eat or not based on smell and appearance. Here is a story he will tell, a memory he will keep. "We were told to watch out for them, these guys were assassins," Anderson said. As he prepared for his new posting on the Frazier, Langdell decided to make a move. One day, a Navy officer came on board and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer for an assignment in the aviation section. He was also interviewing a Japanese pilot named Zenji Abe, a pilot who had taken part in the raid on Pearl Harbor in 1941. 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. 1. He handed the microphone to his son, Raymond Haerry, Jr., who spoke of his father's courage and resilience. No one knew much about Bruner's years in the Navy, not the early years anyway. 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. In World War II, he fought at Guadalcanal, in the battle of the Coral Sea, at Okinawa and Iwo Jima. They still had to climb onto the dock and then into a truck for a short ride to a Navy hospital. His new employer manufactured industrial refrigeration units. "Would you like to listen to it?" For Hetrick, the section of mooring line links him to those final moments of the Arizona. 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.

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did sharks eat pearl harbor victims