Haerry nods and like a good sailor taking orders from the chief, he pulls himself up with a walker and shuffles off to lunch. Now, stateside again, Hetrick reported to a Navy station in San Diego, where he met the woman who would become his wife, Jeanne. A young sailor ran in, out of breath. The Saratoga was attacked by six Japanese suicide bombers within about 24 hours. Langdell will return to the Arizona once more. He weighed 92 pounds by the time he was sent to rehabilitation in Corona, Calif. did sharks eat pearl harbor victimsi miss you text art copy and paste. He was treated there for four months. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. He and a buddy would sneak off campus and hop freight trains to see how far they could get. The ships encountered a Japanese fleet, two big cruisers, six destroyers, some troop ships, and engaged. As the ships turned around, a squadron of enemy bombers appeared. He had visited before, but this trip meant more. "That's what I want to remember. Within a day or two, someone came into the ward and said a few of the wounded would be sent to California. In 2006, Hetrick returned to Pearl Harbor for the 65thanniversary of the Japanese attack. I guess he'd do anything he could for me. "From down inside, it wasn't too bad when they fired it," Cook said. Five years ago, Haerry moved into a nursing home, He stays in a room on the second floor. 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. He keeps up with what the military does, and some of it irritates him. With eyes too close or two far apart, a crewman could deliver faulty readings. Potts was touched. A stunt coordinator helped pull Anderson from the pile of cigarette crates that had broken his fall. "He was very military by then, very disciplined.". He had settled in New Mexico with his family. June 12, 2022 . Conter told the admiral he was interested in flight school, but doubted he would earn admission. A while back, Stratton and his wife Velma retired to Yuma and lived there about 15 years. They stayed composed as their stories were told, stories of bravery, of quick thinking. 3 gun turret. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. CARNIVOROUS SHARKS. He had chased Japanese soldiers along the coast of China three years before America declared war on Japan. "Can you tell me what ship did he go on after the Arizona?" "It sounded like someone shooting guns. If they found anything that belonged to the Navy or hadn't been approved, they'd take it. His name never appeared and he would leave for the day. "It ain't worth a damn if it ain't loaded," he says. mailchimp archive contacts Controle dos clientes e convnios; fatal car accident loveland colorado Abertura e fechamento de caixa, Sangria e despesas; Did he ever. Bruner was burned over more than two-thirds of his body. "We worked with a crane barge capable of lifting 700 tons," he sys. It sits today in the carport outside his home. One day, some smaller boats sailed past. "He should have the Navy Cross," Stratton says. 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. "The Arizona was a fighting battleship," Joe says. 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 . He has met many of his old friends and shipmates. At 100, he is the oldest. The fellow he was talking with recognized Anderson's voice and they realized they had served together on the Yangtze Patrol before Pearl Harbor. "You know, you can see where I came out of, the hatchway. The crews learned the routines of the Japanese ships. The men, their charred skin peeling away, climbed hand-over-hand across the line to safety. In his dining room in Colorado Springs, he keeps a replica of a hard diving helmet, the kind his divers used. He wanted men with eyes set in the right place on their face. 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. Other crewmen would roll out the shell, use a mechanical device to ram it in, then load four bags of powder behind it. The Macdonough pulled picket patrol often, protecting other troops and guarding against kamikaze attacks by Japanese planes. Almost imperceptibly, he sways. "Lou, let's go to flight school," Conter's buddy said one day. I wanted to know if you could do it for a couple of weeks.". Sailors found food and shelter wherever they could. Haerry accepted the medal, but found he could not speak. He built a reputation as a guy who could bring in the harvest on time. ", He stops in front of a newspaper, the front page of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin with the headline: "WAR! Enemy patrol planes spotted the ships and the raid was canceled. the young man asked. He returns his attention to the cranes and the catapults that flung the seaplanes into flight. Potts stayed in Honolulu until the end of the war. It took more courage on your part to present this wreath than it did for me to accept it.". But there are moments when he knows what he did meant something. By the end of the day, had persuaded Anderson to sign up for the Navy Reserve. "We don't think you'd make it. "I bought it at the receiving station in Pearl Harbor. The venture was working out well. Joe Langdell found a table in the wardroom of one of the ships moored in Pearl Harbor and sat down with his breakfast. By then, he'd seen the world, witnessed history before it was history. He and his wife, Doris, have lived in the same house for 54 years. Langdell's ship, the USS Arizona, lay dead in the water where she sank 14 minutes into the attack. He wanted to interview Langdell for his project. We all have to remember that they did not die in vain.". A clerk tried to complete the process, normally a routine, if messy, step to secure the permit. We swept the decks and took the small bones. No one among the groups knew where he was or what he was doing, but the woman persisted. Hetrick recovered. "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. 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. In 1967, Conter retired from the Navy. Pearl Harbor: Directed by Michael Bay. And in the back corner, a real trophy. Uncle Ray was nearing the end of his career in 1937 when John and Jake both decided to enlist. "They told me the team was already picked," he said. Discipline seems less important than it was in his day. They were dedicating it to Potts and wanted him to have it. He visited the memorial and was relieved to see the builders got it right. "He's there for me. It scared him a little. He won't talk much about the escape, or about the men who didn't make it across. "Why do you like the hat, dad?" He was eating breakfast when he heard the first pops of the attack planes strafing Battleship Row. 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. Once, I made a dive in a two-man submarine, down in over 1,200 feet of water off Santa Barbara coast. Guns. The only question was how Langdell would send Libby word about his arrival from Pearl Harbor. He said, 'whatever I can get out of you.' I'd been told things like that before. One day, he stopped for coffee at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. They generally prefer the shallows in temperate, tropical regions, which is usually where divers and surfers come into contact with them and potentially become the victims of shark trauma. "When they dropped that bomb that made our ammunition explode, it dang near broke the ship in two, so we couldn't go anywhere forward of that," he says. The Tennessee took hits in the attack, but two of the armor piercing bombs, the kind that sunk the Arizona, failed to detonate. A sailor on the repair ship Vestal, tied up nearby, spotted them and threw them a line. But he is proud of his service, of the other sailors on the Arizona. "We saved people on commercial ships on the seas, we rescued missionaries in the interior of China, we shot up a bunch of pirates," Anderson said. However, larger shark species like to eat large marine mammals and large fish species, including dolphins, sea lions, tuna, mackerel, and seals. About a year after he boarded the ship, he ran into a young recruit named Clyde Williams, a fellow from Okmulgee, Okla., a few miles down the road from Morris. They will celebrate 65 years of marriage in April. Haerry would come home on those days with cigar boxes full of the coins. In March, the crew turned back Japanese forces in the Battle of Komandorski. 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. He keeps a photo from that tournament on a bookshelf in an alcove off the kitchen. "It's just not going to happen. 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.". Donald Stratton completed the paperwork for a concealed weapons permit at the El Paso County Sheriff's Office and approached the counter to submit fingerprints. In 1966, 25 years after the attack, Stratton returned to Pearl Harbor with his family. The Navy began assigning sailors to new postings. When was the shark attack on the Jersey Shore? His oldest son had joined the Navy and his first posting was aboard the USS Ouellet, a frigate. Bruner laughs as he remembers the conversation. "I can understand that," Ray Jr. says. "I left them there and hoped to get them back," he says. He was the opening act for country superstar Hank Snow that night at the North High School auditorium. Haerry held the rope that connected the ships as another crewman swung an ax to cut it. In 2011, he was one of six Rhode Islanders who had lived through the attack on Pearl Harbor, the only one from the Arizona. Anderson always talks about his brother, Delbert "Jake" Anderson, when he tells the story of his own escape from the burning ship. His old co-pilot in the New Guinea days was asked once if he'd had survival training for the war. He struggles to speak at times (though when he's feeling good, he likes to flirt with the nurses). "It was rough weather, foggy, raining cold," Anderson said. The fireball from the explosion engulfed the six men in the box and trapped them. ("Two of us with the same rank were up for the same kind of job," he said. They met at a dance at the YWCA on North State Street. The Pearl Harbour . That's why the FBI was nosing around me, Potts thought. It is dated Dec. 21, 1941. 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. If a shark comes too close, hit it in the nose with your fist as hard as you can.". Three years ago, Ray Jr. received a call from a lieutenant colonel in the Rhode Island National Guard. Helpless, I watched your bomb sink the Arizona in nine minutes.". 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 . And it holds deep meaning for Potts, even though he did nothing to win it. He motions toward his gnarled ear. The men stayed afloat until another plane saw the burning wreckage and tossed out a life raft. When they sent me my discharge, I just stayed here.". The Americans stopped the Japanese ships and wiped out some of the top officers. He's not so fond of the crowds around Honolulu and doesn't plan to go back. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. They moved to Santa Maria, not far from Santa Barbara, to be near their oldest son, then to Colorado Springs to be near Randy. Five years later, in 2011, he got a call from the band director at Timpview High School in Provo. He could see the band was sincere. Whale Shark (Rhincodon typus) The whale shark is the largest shark species, and also the biggest fish species in the world. ", "It's a brand new destroyer, the Coghlan, DD-606," he said, "built right here in 'Frisco.". Conter's crews flew missions across the South Pacific: New Guinea, Borneo, New Britain, the coast off Perth, Australia. In 1940, Anderson reported to the Arizona once more, joining his brother for the first time since they had enlisted. The Langdells ended up honeymooning in Monterey and Carmel on the central California coast. Except the cap. He was nervous about volunteering for anything, but he raised his hand. He joined the USS Arizona Reunion Association and stays in touch with a few of the remaining survivors. "We had to have two crews, a regular crew and a stand-by crew lined up waiting," Bruner said. "The lesson I've learned from that experience is that the 1,177 men entombed on the ship right now will never know the love of a wife or the joy of grandchildren," he said. Seventy-three years later, he is one of just nine survivors of the attack on the Arizona. He had turned down a promotion to ensign, preferring the camaraderie of the enlisted ranks. "They tried to jump off. He finished his stint in the Navy in Shanghai, working shore patrol the way he did back in Honolulu. Cook has returned to Pearl Harbor three times and he likes the Arizona memorial. On one mission, Haerry's tender was tied to a larger ship as the crew delivered supplies and completed maintenance tasks. "I was on a date on that Saturday night with a gal I'd been running around with," he says. "They agreed.". Farther down the paneled wall hangs a painting of the USS Arizona, the battleship Navy recruit Potts boarded in December 1939. "The new ones, they didn't know beans.". The steeple clock chimed and a statue of an angel wielding a sword emerged from an alcove and knocked Anderson off the steeple. "But it was a lot better than being shot at.". "These guys were the first heroes of the war, even though the war hasn't been declared," Ray Jr. says. Nicaragua. Not war stories, usually, not unless one of them has had it out with a doctor or a pushy clerk. The band had won a trophy in one of the competitions during their stay in Honolulu. "We made friends. As he recounts the experience, he rubs his hands together, then holds them out, turning them over. The attack was devastating for the Americans, though the Japanese . From Virginia, he went to Utah, to France and then to Albuquerque, where he retired in November 1961. "We took off," Bruner said, "firing just as fast as we could. It never returned, crippled in the Battle of the Coral Sea and scuttled by the Navy to keep the enemy from salvaging her. "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 June 12, 2022 0 Comments June 12, 2022 0 Comments Abe offered condolences and said he prayed that all their souls were at peace. The guns used the same type of control mechanisms Bruner had mastered on the Arizona. Haerry sailed on Navy ships through World War II and again during the Korean conflict. Everything was taken ashore and properly taken care of.". He hasn't hunted in a while, though he still reloads his own ammunition on a garage workbench. They still had to climb onto the dock and then into a truck for a short ride to a Navy hospital. On the morning of May 8, the fighting intensified as American aircraft tried to turn back the enemy planes. Before the trip, Langdell hadn't talked much about his years in the war, about his time on the Arizona. Conter attended the same event and was seated next to Valerie. As a youngster, Anderson heard stories about the Navy from his uncle, a man named Ray Stokes. "Never heard of it.". Finally, the Navy gave him a medical discharge. He stood strong and tall right in front of this general. The war's over.". He's not sure he'd have learned that lesson if he hadn't enlisted in the Navy. "Hi," he said, introducing himself. Sometimes he can't control his emotions, so he declines speaking requests. Trains run close enough to hear the horns during the day, but not close enough to make them a nuisance. Japan wanted the northern Pacific to control its shipping routes and block U.S. attacks from that direction. He would become the final survivor to be interred in the ship. 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. UPDATE: Bruner died in 2019. In time, he felt no anger toward the Japanese, but he couldn't forget what they did. Three days earlier, their 20-year-old son became the first Suffolk County casualty in World War II. He wasn't ready to see it all again, to sharpen the memories he'd tried to dull. They could ride to the mainland then and leave for Florida. -Ryan Dutcher. He keeps a folder of newspaper clippings, magazine stories and copies of a telegram. 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. Only 335 men survived the bombing of the USS Arizona, the mighty battleship whose loss at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, inspired a nation to go to war. Posted by ; royal canin yorkie dog food reviews; parkland psychiatric hospital dallas, tx . About a month later, Japanese suicide bombers sunk the Pringle near Okinawa. Potts picked up the Colt 45 he'd found on Ford Island on Dec. 7, 1941. He looks forward to his time with the guys from his years in the Navy. You're on your own, every day.'". With Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, William Lee Scott. The things I don't want to remember was the blood.". Finally, they made their way to Salinas, Calif., just inland from Monterey on the central coast. As Conter told it, the story wasn't about punching sharks, or skulking in the jungle or chasing shadows to the waiting rescue boat. His dad operated a livery stable and a small dairy and later earned money as an auctioneer. 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 nights up there were already short, so I didn't get much sleep," Cook says. His work turned toward survival training in a new military program called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. He tried to keep his thoughts on the work in the office. 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. Their backs are gray, blue, or brown in color and covered with regularly arranged light spots. They found a way to take prints from the edges of his fingers, enough to satisfy the law. Bruner and the Coghlan returned to Honolulu and finished out the war in the South Pacific. "It gets your breath when you first see it," he says. Deer and rabbits wander the hillside. (See Pearl Harbor Attack.) dwayne johnson rock foundation contact. Hetrick thought about it. He had held on to it through the war. "They said, 'If you re-enlist, we'll send her over.' He called back a few days later. After his second discharge, he knocked around Nebraska again, working in his dad's tavern, then on a beer truck, but he grew bored. Only 35 dead were . "It's easier if you come see it," the sailor said. In early January, Conter visited his young lady friend again and again, Admiral Calhoun was there. His younger son believes the experience changed his dad forever. 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. In 2006, Langdell walked along the steep shoreline of Ford Island, the Arizona memorial in the background. And the ships needed experienced sailors. Servicemembers stationed in Hawaii took care of the memorial during the 2013 government shutdown: Servicemembers stationed in Hawaii treat Pearl Harbor as a living . He agreed to play it on his show. The six men stared straight ahead, almost as if they were back in line, at attention. 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. When he reaches that part of his story, he stops. The USS Shaw explodes after being hit by bombs during the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in this December 7, 1941 photo. It identifies Stratton as a survivor of the attack that sank the ship. 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. Usually, sharks will prioritize eating: Smaller fish. He squeezes past the pool table, past the photos and the maps and the medals. "To go through that to me is incomprehensible. Finally, she located some of Bruner's tax records and found his address and telephone number. The United States was a neutral country at the time; the attack led to its formal entry into World War II the next day. After that, he steamed north to Kodiak, Alaska, where other Navy ships were trying to turn back Japanese inroads throughout the strategically important Aleutian Islands. "This went on for four straight hours. The Navy captain who lived on Waikiki Beach gave a lot of parties and invited these guys. He played a lot of golf, but missed California. Bruner was one of them. Using its sonar equipment, the ship fired depth charges and eventually sank the enemy submarine. This all changed when the United States declared war on Japan, bringing the country into World War II. Posted on December 7, 2021, 5:08 pm. We were going to have a date the next day. He catalogs the scars and their origin. He worked on board as a mechanic for a torpedo squadron and ended up in charge of the hydraulic shop. The song, "Hound Dog" and the singer, Elvis Presley, both went over pretty well, the way Cactus Jack remembers it. A few days later, the drove through the crumbling streets of Hiroshima. As they talked, Ray mentioned that his dad had been aboard the Arizona. He bought another gun in the states and he is never far from it. During the conference, the Pringle sailed into the Mediterranean Sea and anchored in a river. So reads the telegram sent to the Mattituck home of Anna and Clifford Penny on Dec. 10, 1941.