Conter fought on through World War II, scraped past a lot of close calls, then went to Korea. "Are there any officers from the Arizona here?" It's the same place where the oil is leaking" oil stores aboard the ship that, even today, still seep to the surface "that's where I got out from below.". Did sharks eat Titanic victims? I even had a couple of dates with girls.". Hetrick thought about it. The report said most of the guys in the anti-aircraft batteries, where Jake fought, were shot down early in the assault. Whale sharks are found in warm waters in the Pacific . And in the back corner, a real trophy. He found a report by a gunner's mate. You have a great voice, he was told. 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 active in those groups for many years, serving as president of one devoted to the Arizona. A framed painting of the Arizona, the repair ship Vestal next to it. After that, he started teaching U.S. troops the skills of survival, evasion, resistance and escape. Updated: Dec 8, 2021 / 05:46 AM CST. He and a buddy would sneak off campus and hop freight trains to see how far they could get. "Lots of big band songs," Randy says, as the first bars of a brass line pour from the speakers. I think that's what kept me living to this day.". He took up golf seriously in Palm Springs and played in the Bob Hope Classic six times, once on a team with crooner Johnny Mathis. We can't let it happen again.". After the war, he worked as a stuntman for Orson Welles and John Wayne and helped build Alan Ladd's house in the hills outside Hollywood. Clayton Schenkelberg, who was born in 1917 in Iowa and joined the U.S. Navy in 1937, died in a senior care facility April 14 in San Diego. Potts returned to Illinois in late 1945 to await his formal discharge, hanging out in Chicago. A while later, he and Marietta were on the road again, to a missile base in Sturgess, S.D., to gas lines in Wisconsin and North Dakota. He first visited the Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor on the 50thanniversary of the attack and has returned since. Chile. "Are you out of the Navy, Andy?" "You either had a nice place aboard a ship and were high and dry or you didn't have anything," he reasoned. He and his wife, Doris, have lived in the same house for 54 years. They will celebrate 65 years of marriage in April. "It's easier if you come see it," the sailor said. She likes the story of how they tied the knot. They would be married in San Francisco, before the Frazier set sail. In the waters off Honolulu, he confronted his memories. ", "You will go to the Arizona and you will take off all the bodies and body parts above the water line," the man said. Ted asks. Langdell's ship, the USS Arizona, lay dead in the water where she sank 14 minutes into the attack. Enemy patrol planes spotted the ships and the raid was canceled. Nobody could debate what that was, no question about it.". 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. About a month later, Japanese suicide bombers sunk the Pringle near Okinawa. Conter's doctor has sidelined him for now for health reasons, but he is certain he will return soon. There's a little air bubble. Ray Jr. has arranged for his father's remains to be interred in the sunken Arizona, an honor accorded any of the sailors or Marines who survived the attack. He spent the rest of the day retrieving bodies from the harbor. It took Ray Jr. years, decades to piece together his father's story. During his voyage to Alaska, Cook remembers the flying fish, which stirred up the water like a torpedo wake. But he became restless. On Veteran's Day, he participated once more in a parade through Marysville, the next town over from Yuba City. "It sounded like someone shooting guns. In World War II, he fought at Guadalcanal, in the battle of the Coral Sea, at Okinawa and Iwo Jima. "Would you like a job?" Around 2005, he and Jeanne moved to Bullhead City. Stratton hesitated, then confirmed her suspicion. Ken Potts eases around the side of the pool table, waving toward items like a museum tour guide in a back room. Finally, the Navy gave him a medical discharge. His name was Cactus Jack and to his fans in southeastern New Mexico, he was the dulcet-voiced host of Sagebrush Serenade, a program of country music on KSWS radio. "The hat represents the Arizona. Yes, some of them were his friends. That's why the FBI was nosing around me, Potts thought. He looks forward to his time with the guys from his years in the Navy. Survivors' groups wanted to find all of them so their stories would not be lost. "So that's what we did," he says, staring out at the harbor nearly seven decades later. Once a shark finds its prey, it needs to decide on whether to eat or not based on smell and appearance. The cities were in ruins. In 1966, 25 years after the attack, Stratton returned to Pearl Harbor with his family. A sailor on the repair ship Vestal, tied up nearby, spotted them and threw them a line. 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. Japan wanted the northern Pacific to control its shipping routes and block U.S. attacks from that direction. "The kids coming up now have never heard of it," he says, his voice tinged with sadness and dismay. Servicemembers stationed in Hawaii took care of the memorial during the 2013 government shutdown: Servicemembers stationed in Hawaii treat Pearl Harbor as a living . "Would you like to listen to it?" Once a month or so, Clarendon Hetrick's phone rings with a call from Utah. "These guys were the first heroes of the war, even though the war hasn't been declared," Ray Jr. says. No sharks did not eat Titanic passengers. Some even extend their consumption to seabirds. After Pearl Harbor, Langdell asked for a posting on one of the new destroyers the Navy was set to launch. "Sure, let's see it." "We worked with a crane barge capable of lifting 700 tons," he sys. 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. Finally, the four U.S. destroyers were ordered to mount a torpedo run. "They were saying, when it first started, some of the ones whose station was up here ", He traces his finger up onto the main forward mast, to the crow's nest and the bridge. For a long time, he didn't think he would ever return to Pearl Harbor. A month after the Coral Sea battle, Cook's ship was part of the American forces in the critical Battle of Midway. popeyes vs chicken express; do venmo requests expire He squinted and thought about where he was. Anderson smiled. But he doesn't tell his story anymore, not on his own. Two deer racks (his wife shot one, his son the other). DES MOINES, Iowa - A World War II veteran thought to be the oldest survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack died last month at 103. Conter was talking about survival, about coming back alive. Anderson picked up and moved to New Mexico. "I wasn't going out there. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. I'd been told things like that before. "Here's the one that told my mother I was missing in action on the Arizona," he says. For a lot of people, meeting Elvis and playing one of his first records on the air might sound like one of life's truly unforgettable days. She returned, puzzled. 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. For a while, the young family lived in Puerto Rico as Haerry, now a chief boatswain's mate, drew new assignments aboard his tender. Photographing survivors of the battleship USS Arizona. The Coghlan approached the Aleutians in October, as winter was pushing fall aside. "The sea was real rough when it came in and the sharks started gathering around. Nicaragua. He acknowledged the wreath. "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 planes took off and landed on the water; the pilots tied up to buoys near the ship. 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. Stratton could not. When he reaches that part of his story, he stops. Marietta shakes her head. Aviators most often arose from left-arm rates. Friends told them when the left the church, keep the water on their left. 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 Pearl Harbour . elephant tail jewelry did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. He describes the store of booze they pulled out of safe and the money. Cook has returned to Pearl Harbor three times and he likes the Arizona memorial. He says that decision was the best thing he could have done. Dec 12 2014. He put the disc on a turntable and dropped the needle. If a shark comes too close, hit it in the nose with your fist as hard as you can.". The tender didn't want to be tied to the larger ship when the worst of the storm blew through. On one mission, Haerry's tender was tied to a larger ship as the crew delivered supplies and completed maintenance tasks. Joe had met Elizabeth McGauhy in Chicago half a decade earlier. "We didn't hear much from the outside at first," Hetrick said. "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.". It fit in that location. Doctors treated him and he recovered, but the his fingers never healed properly. And there's a trophy in the corner the paneled room that means as much as anything else there. Hetrick was sent to the USS Lexington, an aircraft carrier. "He should have the Navy Cross," Stratton says. Pearl Harbor was the most important American . Now, Bruner prepares for his next trip in the Captain's Quarters. He was eating breakfast when he heard the first pops of the attack planes strafing Battleship Row. He jumped into the harbor, even though he had never passed his swimming test. He still tools around town in the truck, but it's a classic now, so he drives it almost as often to car shows. Some common species of fish sharks hunt include: Tuna. 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. Anything you choose is fine. He keeps up with what the military does, and some of it irritates him. Three days earlier, their 20-year-old son became the first Suffolk County casualty in World War II. Bruner toured Nagasaki in a Jeep with other Navy officers and chief mates. what is florentine milan straw. The ship provided fire support for the Marines going ashore. Hetrick shrugs, trying to get comfortable in the recliner. The offshore diving business could leave its own kind of scars. In the spring of 1943, the Macdonough headed north toward the Aleutian Islands, where Japan was trying to establish strategic strongholds that could control shipping lanes and thwart allied attacks on the Japanese islands. His story is always in demand, though he'd just as soon not tell it in front of a lot of people. Cook worked in California, mostly welding jobs, until the union he belonged to called a strike. He can tell stories about his years with the diving crews, but the truck has evolved into a reminder of another time. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. "They were very good days before the war. 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. Sometimes he can't control his emotions, so he declines speaking requests. On the 70thanniversary of the attack, the men had been brought to the state capitol to receive new honors. Three days had passed since Japanese bombers had punched a fiery hole in the Navy's Pacific fleet. "This shows where all the ships were," he says, pointing at a map depicting Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. the young man asked. Fires still burned on the broken USS Arizona the morning after the Japanese ambush. Seven decades later, he is one of nine living survivors from the Arizona. They eventually bought a home-furnishings outlet farther inland and finally built their own store in Yuba City, north of Sacramento. The family visited the Arizona memorial and toured other sites near the harbor. "We'd patrol at night. "Once after we crossed the equator, one of the planes came back," he says. Bruner thought it an odd request. And he keeps it loaded. He tried to save as many injured crewmen as he could, but when the sun set on Dec. 7, 1941, he was one of just 335 sailors who did not perish. Salvage work would begin soon on others. "The nights up there were already short, so I didn't get much sleep," Cook says. 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. Medals. Lots of men brought home scars from World War II and Korea. "No one knew where the hell I was," Bruner says. He waited for the result. The mangled bodies such as J.J. Astor was probably caused by the 1st smokestack falling into the water and. 1. Once a week, they motor on into Tulsa, where Marietta takes a china painting class and Lonnie wanders the aisles of sporting-goods stores. The crew unloaded anything they could do without, to keep the damaged hull above the water line. Langdell says only this: "It took two days to take all the bodies. Their ordeal . "I didn't have the slightest idea what would happen when I signed up," he said. Nope. June 12, 2022 June 12, 2022 0 Comments June 12, 2022 0 Comments The nurse who checks in on him regularly likes Haerry. "The stuff he likes.". Before the year was out, Cook was sent to gunnery school in Washington, D.C., and to the South Boston Navy Yard, where he joined the new destroyer Pringle on its shakedown cruise. Jobs were few, so he set off for Warner, Okla, with the idea of playing football at Connors State Agricultural College. I asked the boss, 'how many hours is in a day for you?' We got into a run-and-gun battle. "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. "Three months later, I was in Korea.". "We made friends. As the war with Japan intensified, the Navy was building new warships as fast as it could. In March, the crew turned back Japanese forces in the Battle of Komandorski. Once, I made a dive in a two-man submarine, down in over 1,200 feet of water off Santa Barbara coast. "Sometimes, we'd come back, eat, then sleep on the beach.". "I'd never seen so many guys with so much guts," he said. No one knew much about Bruner's years in the Navy, not the early years anyway. He had a record, a new song he was trying out. A pistol sits on top of his television at home. In 1967, Conter retired from the Navy. They found a way to take prints from the edges of his fingers, enough to satisfy the law. Hetrick earned a Purple Heart for wounds during one of the bombing raids. He has trouble remembering the past. He brought all of his family: his wife Jeanne, his three sons and their families. "We'd send two guys out to knock the icicles off the guns, then they'd high-tail it back in. He was cut loose in San Francisco and returned to Los Angeles, where he had married a girl back in late 1942. "No," the worker said. He remembers all the details and most of what happened later. 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. Conter and others in his group boarded a boat to go out to the platform and see his old ship. Before the war started, a hospital stay that long would have earned a sailor a discharge, but not anymore. Haerry accepted the medal, but found he could not speak. Cook was the gun captain on the Pringle at the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. I quit. His fingers were almost smooth, lacking all but a few of the swirls that create an identity. Crustaceans. Conter got his wings in November 1942. By 1991, the 50th . "Well, I'd brushed enough paint on that damn ship, I figured I could do it," he says. "I cleaned up my language," he says, admitting he deployed a salty vocabulary, even after leaving active duty. Cook made it to his battle station on Dec. 7, 1941, but the Arizona was moored in a cramped harbor and couldn't have fired the big guns even in a prolonged assault. A few days later, the drove through the crumbling streets of Hiroshima. He did not reach a hospital for several days, but doctors still saved his hand. "This went on for four straight hours. A few years after that, they left for Las Vegas, where their son, Bob, and his family help them get around. By winter, temperatures plunged below zero. Bruner started as a painter, trained as a carpenter, then helped start a new sheet-metal department. "We had to have two crews, a regular crew and a stand-by crew lined up waiting," Bruner said. "I really miss it.". He fiddles with the radio. 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. World War II veterans are a special breed, Lt. Col. Denis Riel said as the men accepted the medals. "Not Navy ships, other ships. He refused to cut the line no matter what. His work turned toward survival training in a new military program called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. When they sent me my discharge, I just stayed here.". Pearl Harbor was a United States Naval base on the island of Oahu, located west of Honolulu. As he talks about Pearl Harbor again, other memories surface. He is one of nine living survivors of the Arizona and, at 97, he has amassed a lifetime of unforgettable days. The studios needed tough men who could handle dangerous situations. He got the west coast and I got the east coast. Debris from the Arizona showered the Tennessee's stern and started fires, but the vessel stayed afloat. Joe Langdell found a table in the wardroom of one of the ships moored in Pearl Harbor and sat down with his breakfast. He struggles to speak at times (though when he's feeling good, he likes to flirt with the nurses). From Virginia, he went to Utah, to France and then to Albuquerque, where he retired in November 1961. He spent long months on a tender, a vessel that carries equipment, parts and other supplies for ships at sea. As the boat heaved, the man with the ax missed and hit Haerry's hand, nearly severing it from his wrist. The six-year Pentagon project identified nearly 400 who died on the USS Oklahoma in 1941. But he kept most of it to himself until he started meeting up with other survivors, years after he retired from the military. I heard the general say, 'You're a remarkable guy.' Though Conter turned around the first time he ventured toward the sunken Arizona, he has been back since, to see it with other survivors. In 2006, Hetrick returned to Pearl Harbor for the 65thanniversary of the Japanese attack. At the time, sailors wore patches designating their rates, the enlisted expression of rank, on the right or left sleeve, depending on their assignment. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. No one among the groups knew where he was or what he was doing, but the woman persisted. "We got into San Francisco," he says, "and they never even opened my bags. 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. Anderson demanded to know. For some reason I had always thought that the titanic had gone down way farther North. "He wanted the east coast, I wanted the west coast. "I just didn't want to. He handed the microphone to his son, Raymond Haerry, Jr., who spoke of his father's courage and resilience. His service on the Arizona also seemed to give him added credibility among the young sailors. Hetrick saw a new opportunity and joined. They called the Marines out with rifles to protect the plane and the guys while we hauled it in.". 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. He was on his own once again, he and his young family. Langdell will return to the Arizona once more. "You know, you can see where I came out of, the hatchway. The ones after that were, too. A stunt coordinator helped pull Anderson from the pile of cigarette crates that had broken his fall. "You I know.") By April 1940, the Navy seemed like a good idea and by summer, he was on board the Arizona, stationed at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The paneled room behind the door in the living room of the Provo house is filled with trophies of almost any imaginable sort. The exhausted crew dragged ashore an hour later and hid in the jungle, fearful they would be captured by Japanese soldiers. Rays. Fish, in general, are the most common prey for sharks. He had stopped at Pearl Harbor more than a decade earlier, on his way to a posting in Korea. In California, he earned his naval seaman's license and went to work on a drilling rig offshore near Santa Barbara. 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. Inside the packets were the captains' new orders, military secrets, classified information that required clearance to handle. We swept the decks and took the small bones. One day, a Navy officer came on board and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer for an assignment in the aviation section. Potts was returning to the Arizona with fresh produce when the first Japanese bombers dove into Pearl Harbor. Stories of survival. His name never appeared and he would leave for the day. "To see the people I knew back in those days," he says. did sharks attack titanic survivors. He could see the band was sincere. alain picard wife / ap calculus bc multiple choice / did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. His old co-pilot in the New Guinea days was asked once if he'd had survival training for the war. "The station wagon was for the captains of some of the ships that would come in," he said. One day, some smaller boats sailed past. At the USS Arizona memorial, he became friends with a National Park Service historian and inspired a Pearl Harbor action figure that the service sold at the gift shop. If they found anything that belonged to the Navy or hadn't been approved, they'd take it. He said he wanted Anderson to join the on-air staff. 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. Langdell returned to Pearl Harbor in 1976. The day after the attack, President Franklin D . "I think my dad was one of the first American heroes of World War II.". 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. In 1971, Stratton was working long hours with a diving outfit on a nuclear power plant project not far from Santa Barbara. The parties sometimes dragged into the early morning hours. The report: Oh, yes, she can cook. His mother had moved to Decatur, Ill., by then, so he followed and took a job at a hardware store. "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. He had visited before, but this trip meant more. did sharks eat pearl harbor victimssig sauer minimalist folding stock. "I told the men, 'If a shark comes close, hit it in the nose with your fist as hard as you can.'". 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. The ones that gave him nightmares, the stories from the day he nearly burned to death, he kept to himself. He felt a tap on his shoulder. The ship was dead in the water. On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy bombed the Pearl Harbor Naval base in a surprise attack. He weighed 92 pounds by the time he was sent to rehabilitation in Corona, Calif. ", "Fine," the worker said. The fellow he was talking with recognized Anderson's voice and they realized they had served together on the Yangtze Patrol before Pearl Harbor. He wanted to part of it. 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. The smell of burned skin filled the air. And that's what he told every soldier and airman who took his courses.*. "It didn't take me that long. The inscription reads "Spirit of Aloha Award, Timpview High School Marching Band.". Today, he is one of nine remaining survivors from the mighty battleship. He returned after the war to his home along the railway in eastern Oklahoma. The ship steamed toward the Asiatic Pacific and soon Anderson was chasing Japanese forces again, only this time the United States was at war. On the Arizona, he worked on the deck crew. Conter served on the San Pablo and Half Moon. A woman from Illinois drew Bruner's name. 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. Not war stories, usually, not unless one of them has had it out with a doctor or a pushy clerk. Their orders were lost on the Arizonawhen the battleship sankon Dec. 7. The woman helped connect Bruner with other survivors from the Arizona and Pearl Harbor. They catch up. Among those killed were over 1,700 aboard the USS Arizona, 103 . The venture was working out well. "He said, 'I had survival training in the ocean. Colombia. "We got halfway there and I told them to turn around," Conter said. . As he was packing, a buddy warned him that his possessions would be searched at the port in San Francisco.
