did sharks eat pearl harbor victims did sharks eat pearl harbor victims

Discipline seems less important than it was in his day. He built a reputation as a guy who could bring in the harvest on time. "Lou, let's go to flight school," Conter's buddy said one day. "It's easier if you come see it," the sailor said. Haerry would come home on those days with cigar boxes full of the coins. The war's over.". Today, he tries to pass on what he knows to students of history. "They said, 'If you re-enlist, we'll send her over.' The United States declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, the day following the attack on Pearl Harbor. He wants to secure a proper medal for Joe George, the sailor from the Vestal who helped rescue the six men from the gunner's control tower. He resumed one of his old jobs from the Arizona, piloting motor launches from the receiving station out to the Navy ships. UPDATE:John Anderson diedin November 2015, less than a year after this report. Maybe next time. 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. "I put on two life jackets," Hetrick said. Enemy patrol planes spotted the ships and the raid was canceled. His work turned toward survival training in a new military program called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. His oldest son had joined the Navy and his first posting was aboard the USS Ouellet, a frigate. Fire had blackened much of the structure still visible. did sharks eat pearl harbor victimsi miss you text art copy and paste. You're on your own, every day.'". Japanese torpedo bombers hit the Lexington and crippled the big ship. "The hat represents the Arizona. "We picked up a couple of girls and made the rounds. "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. Langdell's ship, the USS Arizona, lay dead in the water where she sank 14 minutes into the attack. You can't leave the Navy.". So reads the telegram sent to the Mattituck home of Anna and Clifford Penny on Dec. 10, 1941. he said. His story is always in demand, though he'd just as soon not tell it in front of a lot of people. One of the survivors would receive the Rhode Island Cross. "Knock it off. It is a piece of rigging used to secure a mooring line from a ship. In California, he earned his naval seaman's license and went to work on a drilling rig offshore near Santa Barbara. He can tell stories about his years with the diving crews, but the truck has evolved into a reminder of another time. Years later, at a reunion in Tucson, Cook learned that one of his buddies from the Arizona had been sent to the Lexington and was in the Coral Sea when the carrier was attacked. He would draw out snippets and stash them away, collecting them until he would weave the barest narrative. Golfers play through 50 yards from Conter's driveway. 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. All rights reserved. The mast and towers near the bow tilted at a sickening angle. 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 spent long months on a tender, a vessel that carries equipment, parts and other supplies for ships at sea. Langdell took a right turn instead of a left and the newlyweds didn't realize their mistake until they stopped for gas in Gilroy, about 80 miles south of San Francisco. The river wound through dense vegetation, leaving 15 or 20 feet of clearance on each side of the plane. Pearl Harbor Warbirds offers the best Hawai'i flight adventure tours available. They moved to Modesto, Calif., where he got a job driving a produce truck in the fruit orchards. They offered to perform at a gathering of Utah survivors. 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. 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. The Americans stopped the Japanese ships and wiped out some of the top officers. Anderson picked up and moved to New Mexico. "What's up with this one? He signed up for a Navy program that allowed college graduates to attend officer candidate school and emerge as ensigns within three months. They listened for their names and their service branch. Mess hall duty. He saw Gene LaRocque, a man he'd served with aboard the Macdonough. Too many strategic decisions come down from Washington instead of from the commanders on the ground. In the waters off Honolulu, he confronted his memories. According to the History Channel, the Arizona "continues to spill up to 9 quarts of oil into the harbor each day " and visitors often say it is as if the ship were still bleeding. Finally, after a few weeks on the tanker, Potts was handed a new assignment. I quit. "Cover the decks, anywhere you can find them up to the top of the masts.". "We lit into them, started firing on them," Bruner said. "We made friends. Potts was working aboard an oil tanker, making short runs out of the harbor to refuel ships anchored off the coast. He was thrown into the ocean and waited 57 hours to be rescued while shipmates around him were eaten by sharks. "Once after we crossed the equator, one of the planes came back," he says. Calhoun quizzed Conter about his posting, his job on the ship. He was also interviewing a Japanese pilot named Zenji Abe, a pilot who had taken part in the raid on Pearl Harbor in 1941. ages 2, 3 and 8, together with a 14-year-old cousin . UPDATE:Joe Langdell diedin February 2015, months after this report. Deer and rabbits wander the hillside. Updated: Dec 8, 2021 / 05:46 AM CST. Some even like to dine on smaller shark species! "I came back to the pier one morning and my name was on the list to do KP work," he says. Potts returned to Illinois in late 1945 to await his formal discharge, hanging out in Chicago. 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. The ships sent up their own planes and turned back the assault. Farther down the paneled wall hangs a painting of the USS Arizona, the battleship Navy recruit Potts boarded in December 1939. We swept the decks and took the small bones. He gazes at the picture. 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. 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. "I hadn't told him he was going to be individually honored that day," he says. 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. Three days since the war started. 2022-06-16 Uncategorized Uncategorized A few incidents were possible shark bites, but shark involvement was not [] "I don't think I'll ever forget what I saw that day.". It hastened the United States' entry . Before the war started, a hospital stay that long would have earned a sailor a discharge, but not anymore. He stayed on the 17thfloor of a hotel on Waikiki Beach. Hetrick, who is 91, has outlived most of the men he knew on the Saratoga. Five years later, in 2011, he got a call from the band director at Timpview High School in Provo. "I think my dad was one of the first American heroes of World War II.". 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. One of the men started yelling. Haerry felt the entire ship life out of the water. He was the opening act for country superstar Hank Snow that night at the North High School auditorium. 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. With eyes too close or two far apart, a crewman could deliver faulty readings. They are the marks of a survivor, 73 years on. Peeling potatoes. "That must be old Clyde Williams," he thought, the Arizona band member killed at Pearl Harbor. Sea turtles. By the time they were back, the icicles were forming again and two more guys would go out.". They struck up a conversation and, after a brief courtship, married. Never would've found it.". In 1940, Anderson reported to the Arizona once more, joining his brother for the first time since they had enlisted. Sight-setters and pointers would locate targets visually and determine their distance and range. The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor began just before 8 a.m. local time Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. He had settled in New Mexico with his family. In time, he felt no anger toward the Japanese, but he couldn't forget what they did. "We can't forget what happened there that day. He decided to head back to the water. As he prepared to jump off the burning ship, he took the shoes off and set them on the quarterdeck. The trophy sits on a small white base that raises it above other items on a shelf. Now, some courses require less than a week of field time. Potts was touched. He tries to abbreviate it: "We went to California and got married.". Then they'd go by.". No one knew much about Bruner's years in the Navy, not the early years anyway. The Langdells ended up honeymooning in Monterey and Carmel on the central California coast. By Christmas, he was in a hospital at Mare Island near San Francisco. medge. The exhausted crew dragged ashore an hour later and hid in the jungle, fearful they would be captured by Japanese soldiers. He had stopped at Pearl Harbor more than a decade earlier, on his way to a posting in Korea. He got to know Alan Ladd, who had starred in a series of war movies. Potts says, shaking his head. Hetrick took a motor launch to the receiving station on shore, where he and other survivors were allowed to shower and given a change of clothes. Not war stories, usually, not unless one of them has had it out with a doctor or a pushy clerk. Today, he is one of nine remaining survivors from the mighty battleship. The Lexington sailed out of Pearl Harbor not long after. We cut the torpedoes loose.". If a shark comes too close, hit it in the nose with your fist as hard as you can.". The day when they assigned him and a crew of divers to a motor launch and sent them to the Arizona to remove bodies of dead sailors. Once he was awakened by a loud noise and a flash and thought his ship was under attack. Occasionally, they head into Okmulgee for an evening out at the One Fire, a casino operated by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Joe had met Elizabeth McGauhy in Chicago half a decade earlier. Sharks hunt fish by using sensory receptors located on their sides. Medals. Joe proposed and Libby accepted. After the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the United States opted to construct a naval base in 1899. Las Vegas seems to like Hetrick. 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 . It took more courage on your part to present this wreath than it did for me to accept it.". Then we got hit.". The worst shark attack in recorded history also happened to be a disaster for the US Navy. 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. There are a few personal photos on the table, but nothing from his years in the Navy. Conter was talking about survival, about coming back alive. It wasn't, but the flash was a reminder, as if he needed anything more. And he still likes to talk about that other young fellow from Oklahoma, the one who didn't make it home. In 1967, Conter retired from the Navy. I'd been told things like that before. The fireball from the explosion engulfed the six men in the box and trapped them. He finished his training and was discharged in December 1945. He catalogs the scars and their origin. Finally, they made their way to Salinas, Calif., just inland from Monterey on the central coast. Guns. He refused to cut the line no matter what. Then we had to go back.". So he did. alain picard wife / ap calculus bc multiple choice / did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. Only 35 dead were . 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. Tensions between Japan and the U.S. simmered throughout the early 20th century and came to a boil in the 1930s as Japan attempted to conquer China, even . Bruner was one of them. The Navy occasionally cuts away small bits of the wreckage for memorials. While this is a genuine threat to safety, it continues to remain statistically unlikely. Jobs were few, so he set off for Warner, Okla, with the idea of playing football at Connors State Agricultural College. A sign over the arched door marks the room as "Captain's Quarters.". He fought cold and hunger on a ship nearly dead in the ocean off Alaska. One of our cruisers, the heavy cruiser, got hit and water got into the oil. Answer: Yes- in 1945, after the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese torpedo. On the morning of May 8, the fighting intensified as American aircraft tried to turn back the enemy planes. He was cut loose in San Francisco and returned to Los Angeles, where he had married a girl back in late 1942. Nicaragua. They could ride to the mainland then and leave for Florida. Photographs hang on the walls of his room. Haerry straightened in his seat as his story was told. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. The Navy censors would never allow such information in a letter. He started chatting up a regular customer, a contractor, and got a job building houses. poil bulbe noir ou blanc; juego de ollas royal prestige 7 piezas; ano ang kahalagahan ng agrikultura sa industriya; nashville hotels with ev charging Pearl Harbor centres on a cloverleaf-shaped, artificially . 4 Comments. ", "It's a brand new destroyer, the Coghlan, DD-606," he said, "built right here in 'Frisco.". But he is proud of his service, of the other sailors on the Arizona. The ship remained anchored outside Pearl Harbor for most of a month as U.S. commanders planned their next move against the Japanese in the South Pacific. is clu gulager still alive did sharks attack titanic survivors. He had held on to it through the war. They had voted. He has told her about his escape from the Arizona. In order to produce enough energy to hunt and keep their body temperatures up, they have to feed on high-fat animals like seals and large tuna.The sharks have good eyesight, and they have electromagnetic sensors on their snout where they can tell the difference between a seal and a human from over 100 yards away. They will celebrate 65 years of marriage in April. He did not reach a hospital for several days, but doctors still saved his hand. Nope. "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. Survivors' groups wanted to find all of them so their stories would not be lost. For years, Stratton wore the scars from the Arizona without talking about them much. 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 mangled bodies such as J.J. Astor was probably caused by the 1st smokestack falling into the water and. mailchimp archive contacts Controle dos clientes e convnios; fatal car accident loveland colorado Abertura e fechamento de caixa, Sangria e despesas; 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 shock of jumping into a harbor knowing he couldn't swim. Bruner keeps mementos of his time on the Arizona in the sitting room. "I went back and told my mother I wasn't going up there anymore," he said. Why not try radio? He pushes his shirtsleeves up to show his arms. "Randy, come and turn on the music box." 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. They hopped in a Jeep and head up the hill toward one of the Quonset huts, the one where liquor for the officers' clubs was stored. But John Anderson, the Navy chief petty officer who called himself Cactus Jack on the air, had a good head start already. In 2006, one of his sons offered to take Potts to Hawaii for the 65thanniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. Just another site did sharks eat pearl harbor victims They are reminders of a moment in time he can never escape, a moment he sees again and again. Whale sharks can grow to 65 feet in length and weigh up to 75,000 pounds. He clashed with the station manager of the radio station and finally quit. A second telegram, dated Jan. 6 reported that Conter was alive and would contact his family. He acknowledged the wreath. As they walked toward it, Langdell reeled at an odor. Japan and China were at war again and America was trying to protect its interests without getting involved in the conflict. He's not sure he'd have learned that lesson if he hadn't enlisted in the Navy. "He wanted the east coast, I wanted the west coast. We can't see our own ships. I think it was one of the proudest days of my father's life.". what is florentine milan straw. I wasn't working for nothing.". "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. Cook has returned to Pearl Harbor three times and he likes the Arizona memorial. Anderson went aboard the USS Edsall, a destroyer that supported various military action at sea and ashore. Around 2005, he and Jeanne moved to Bullhead City. "I was on a date on that Saturday night with a gal I'd been running around with," he says. Trains run close enough to hear the horns during the day, but not close enough to make them a nuisance. Not long after, a second plane dropped a life raft and all 10 of the crew made to shore and, the next night, back to the base. The attack was devastating for the Americans, though the Japanese . "To go through that to me is incomprehensible. Langdell knew Libby was friends with a skater in the Ice Follies, which was summering in San Francisco. Yes, some of them were his friends. "He was very military by then, very disciplined.". Hetrick turns a rusted chunk of metal over in his hands, running his fingers along the curves and edges. "I motioned to crane operator what we needed, what tools to send down." "The sea was real rough when it came in and the sharks started gathering around. They were married in an Episcopal Church on Van Ness Avenue. He tried not to remember the days after the attack. She prods him to move around more and to leave the room for meals. Photographs. "It ain't worth a damn if it ain't loaded," he says. He was able to visit the national cemetery at an area called the Punch Bowl. He had visited before, but this trip meant more. "I'd already sent word, even before the first one got there," he says. The band would cover all expenses for him and Doris. Langdell lives now in a skilled nursing center. A sailor on the deck of the repair ship Vestal spotted the men and threw a line across. "They gave me 30 minutes to get off the ship and catch a transport to San Diego for training," he said. did sharks eat pearl harbor victimssig sauer minimalist folding stock. She nods and smiles. 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. "I got the lay a wreath in front of the names of the fallen," he says quietly. "We got into San Francisco," he says, "and they never even opened my bags. He finally received his orders to return to the states. He handed the microphone to his son, Raymond Haerry, Jr., who spoke of his father's courage and resilience. About halfway through the cruise, the Pringle was ordered to accompany the battleship Iowa to Africa, where President Roosevelt was to attend a conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Morocco. During his voyage to Alaska, Cook remembers the flying fish, which stirred up the water like a torpedo wake. Until his partner ran off with all the money. Among his responsibilities was overseeing the naval officers' clubs in the area. Bruner started as a painter, trained as a carpenter, then helped start a new sheet-metal department. Lonnie had taken up trap shooting and hoped to do a little hunting back home. Sometimes, Japanese pilots attended memorial ceremonies and some of the other survivors would shake their hands. Civilian Casualties. But he became restless. In Korea, Conter flew 29 missions, but his work in Naval intelligence left him vulnerable if the North Koreans captured him, so he was shipped to Washington, D.C. "I was here all the time. And he was allowed to visit a part of the Arizona few people ever see. He was treated there for four months. As he prepared for his new posting on the Frazier, Langdell decided to make a move. Joe saved six lives and he didn't get crap. Before the trip, Langdell hadn't talked much about his years in the war, about his time on the Arizona. "The station wagon was for the captains of some of the ships that would come in," he said. He jumped into the harbor, even though he had never passed his swimming test. The men stayed afloat until another plane saw the burning wreckage and tossed out a life raft. "Are you out of the Navy, Andy?" "Talk about treating you like royalty," he says. Uncle Ray was nearing the end of his career in 1937 when John and Jake both decided to enlist. The story follows two lifelong friends and a beautiful nurse who are caught up in the horror of an infamous Sunday morning in 1941. 2023 www.azcentral.com. With Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, William Lee Scott. That was enough to rattle nerves on board the ship, which was at general quarters every day an hour before sundown and an hour before sunrise. All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. 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. "They were holed up behind sandbags, but they never got hit.". 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. All those sailors from all those places and here was a guy who was practically a neighbor. ", "Baloney," Conter replied. The job wasn't what he expected in September, when he was discharged from the Navy. He had escaped the USS Arizona, the battleship whose losses surpassed any other. He wanted one last unforgettable day. popeyes vs chicken express; do venmo requests expire One, Joe Langdell, lives about 40 miles away in Yuba City. He says that decision was the best thing he could have done. "Andy, you had 12 years of the damnedest fighting I ever saw. He still will not talk about it. "We took all the bodies we could find.". "I had to help my father out of his seat. A moment passes. This time the objective was clear. In the years after, he became active in survivors' groups and started going back to Pearl Harbor more often. Langdell will return to the Arizona once more. Were there sharks Pearl Harbor? Sentiment ran high against the Japanese, he said, but also against U.S. leaders whose decisions many questioned in the aftermath. 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. He endured what he did, he says, because that was his job. He will answer questions about that December day when he escaped the burning wreckage of the Arizona, reciting as many of the details as he can remember. He worked on board as a mechanic for a torpedo squadron and ended up in charge of the hydraulic shop. Late in the year, after an overhaul in San Francisco, the Coghlan returned to patrol duty off the Aleutians with a half dozen other U.S. vessels. "It's where the war started.". Their ordeal . Explosions rocked the vessel and fires burned into the evening. He had taken a bullet to the back of his leg as he was climbing the tower, but the burns were far worse. Anderson spoke to one of the tanker's crew about towing the Macdonough. Without them, Riel said, who knows where we'd be today. "What are you looking at?" The ones that gave him nightmares, the stories from the day he nearly burned to death, he kept to himself. The job paid $700. A month after the Coral Sea battle, Cook's ship was part of the American forces in the critical Battle of Midway. The things I don't want to remember was the blood.". "What houses they built!" 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. The burn ward filled with the injured. An aerial view of "Battleship Row" at Pearl Harbor, photographed from a Japanese aircraft during the the bombing. A painting of the Arizona hangs on the wall of a sitting room. His own battle station was beneath the gun turret shattered by the last bomb to hit the Arizona. Stratton could not. In early January, Conter visited his young lady friend again and again, Admiral Calhoun was there. The ship was moored in the shallows of Pearl Harbor's . What he heard wasn't quite country music, but he liked it and he told the kid. 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. For an hour or so, the two men talk. Colombia. Marietta shakes her head. The two men not only met, they took a boat to the USS Arizona memorial and laid a wreath in front of the wall with the names of the crewmen who died on the ship. After that, he started teaching U.S. troops the skills of survival, evasion, resistance and escape. For Hetrick, the section of mooring line links him to those final moments of the Arizona. Ray Jr. seems surprised. DES MOINES, Iowa - A World War II veteran thought to be the oldest survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack died last month at 103. The inscription reads "Spirit of Aloha Award, Timpview High School Marching Band.". Conter and his buddy waited for new instructions, but heard nothing. He remembers when the order was given to abandon ship. "I'd never seen so many guys with so much guts," he said. No sharks did not eat Titanic passengers. It is respectful. As the war with Japan intensified, the Navy was building new warships as fast as it could. Three days earlier, their 20-year-old son became the first Suffolk County casualty in World War II. When they sent me my discharge, I just stayed here.". He wanted to part of it. However, larger shark species like to eat large marine mammals and large fish species, including dolphins, sea lions, tuna, mackerel, and seals. He stayed aboard the Solace about a month. He made bargemaster on a huge drilling rig, but yearned for something more interesting, so he got a job as a tender with a commercial deep sea diving business. The Stratton men have taken up a more personal cause. "I decided I'd do whatever they told me to. On the same bookshelf sit mementos from his time on the Arizona. They said, 'You should have been dead a long time ago.'". Just stories, the kind buddies tell each other. The body parts we put in pillow cases. "Remember Pearl Harbor!" became a rallying cry for the U.S. during World War II. He was soon aboard the USS Frazier, which left the shipyard at San Francisco in July 1942. A few years after that, they left for Las Vegas, where their son, Bob, and his family help them get around. Or both. "Would you like a job?" A platform marked the wreckage of the USS Arizona. His mother had moved to Decatur, Ill., by then, so he followed and took a job at a hardware store. The six men stared straight ahead, almost as if they were back in line, at attention. Knives. He struggles to speak at times (though when he's feeling good, he likes to flirt with the nurses). The Saratoga sailed across the South Pacific, to Guam, the Philippines, around New Guinea. He went to work as a junior accountant for a prominent Boston firm. Three months before he would mark 30 years with the company, he was let go, bought out like a lot other older workers in those days.