They ran Joe and Libby Langdell's Village Mart for more than 20 years until they retired. The job paid $700. "It's one of the best actual memorials I've seen," he says. Some even like to dine on smaller shark species! alain picard wife / ap calculus bc multiple choice / did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. "I had to help my father out of his seat. Langdell is one of the last nine survivors from the Arizona. 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. Before the war started, a hospital stay that long would have earned a sailor a discharge, but not anymore. That was the way it was.". Born in 1914, seven months after the first bolts were tightened on a new battleship in Brooklyn, Langdell grew up wooded agricultural area along the Souhegan River in southern New Hampshire. For over an hour, in two waves, some 350 Japanese aircrafthaving taken off from six . He was attending midshipman's school at Northwestern University. They would serve together for a little over a year. On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy bombed the Pearl Harbor Naval base in a surprise attack. As he waited, he had a feeling he knew what would happen, but he didn't say anything. Stratton falls easily into the memories of his years on diving boats. Cook is invited to such events occasionally and sometimes introduced as an Arizona survivor. Hetrick turns a rusted chunk of metal over in his hands, running his fingers along the curves and edges. 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. Just stay together, hold hands and kick slowly 'cause there'll be sharks around. Photographs hang on the walls of his room. After so many years of travel, the Cooks have settled into a more tranquil pace. Cook was discharged in 1948 in San Diego and stuck around California, where he worked as a metal finisher at Van Nuys manufacturing plant. We cut the torpedoes loose.". As he prepared to jump off the burning ship, he took the shoes off and set them on the quarterdeck. You're the bravest man I ever know. He stood strong and tall right in front of this general. "When I got back home, my doctors here wanted to know about my medical background," Bruner said. The river wound through dense vegetation, leaving 15 or 20 feet of clearance on each side of the plane. He climbed aboard the ship, ducking to avoid bullets from the gunner planes. No sharks did not eat Titanic passengers. Cook has returned to Pearl Harbor three times and he likes the Arizona memorial. If a shark comes too close, hit it in the nose with your fist as hard as you can.". A young sailor ran in, out of breath. On Oct. 12, Langdell celebrated his 100th birthday with with his older son, John, who flew in from Spearfish, S.D. by Pia Peterson. With Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, William Lee Scott. We all have to remember that they did not die in vain.". A framed painting of the Arizona, the repair ship Vestal next to it. A few years later, a new station owner showed Anderson his plans to start a TV station. It's in good shape for a paper.". "Iremember hearing explosions at first," he says. "You know, you can see where I came out of, the hatchway. December 5, 2021 at 11:21 a.m. EST. Pearl Harbor was a United States Naval base on the island of Oahu, located west of Honolulu. We had survival training on the job. His mother had moved to Decatur, Ill., by then, so he followed and took a job at a hardware store. We can't see our own ships. Potts had not returned to Honolulu in the decades since he left for San Francisco in 1945. 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. He has told her about his escape from the Arizona. In 1971, Stratton was working long hours with a diving outfit on a nuclear power plant project not far from Santa Barbara. He liked teaching and liked the chance to instill discipline. Langdell was an ensign, an entry-level officer, not yet a year in the Navy. It is a piece of rigging used to secure a mooring line from a ship. Japanese torpedo bombers hit the Lexington and crippled the big ship. They continued to see each other and, when Langdell left for Hawaii, they corresponded, often. Hetrick was on board during battles at Midway and Wake Island and for the U.S. invasion of Iwo Jima early in 1945. ", "I was," Anderson said. Ke awa lau o Puuloa, the bay and lochs that make up the complex most people know simply as Pearl Harbor, was once the home of the guardian sharks, Kaahuphau and her brother Kahiuk. It wasn't, but the flash was a reminder, as if he needed anything more. On the other end of the line is an old shipmate from the USS Saratoga, the aircraft carrier where Hetrick worked as a mechanic through most of World War II. He wrote Libby a letter and suggested it would be a good idea if Libby visited her friend on or about a particular date. Eighty years later, many of those killed are finally returning home and being laid to rest. Finally, the four U.S. destroyers were ordered to mount a torpedo run. Stratton could not. The ship was dead in the water. Hetrick shrugs, trying to get comfortable in the recliner. But he could not be prepared for what he found on the charred hulk of the battleship. One of our cruisers, the heavy cruiser, got hit and water got into the oil. "It's always a great thing for me to see them," he says. He didn't have to pay for dinner. As far he was concerned he was saving lives.". He is one of nine living survivors from the attack on the USS Arizona, the battleship he boarded in 1941 when he was 17. 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. The Black Cats flew surveillance, search and rescue, sea patrol, but they proved especially valuable for nighttime assaults and nuisance raids on Japanese submarines and ships. The job wasn't what he expected in September, when he was discharged from the Navy. 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. He gave Anderson the name of a contact there. His oldest son had joined the Navy and his first posting was aboard the USS Ouellet, a frigate. He had held on to it through the war. Many places around the world are named for a stand-out feature, and Pearl Harbor is no different. He visited the memorial and was relieved to see the builders got it right. 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. He played a lot of golf, but missed California. Haerry straightened in his seat as his story was told. He was treated there for four months. Now, some courses require less than a week of field time. I had to take them to the parties and sit there until it was over.". They still had to climb onto the dock and then into a truck for a short ride to a Navy hospital. 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. Pearl Harbor, naval base and headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Honolulu county, southern Oahu Island, Hawaii, U.S. The Navy censors would never allow such information in a letter. Smoke rises from the battleship USS Arizona as it sinks . This day, which marks the attack on Pearl Harbor, has come to be known as the "Day of Infamy" (derived from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech the day after the attack). Servicemembers stationed in Hawaii took care of the memorial during the 2013 government shutdown: Servicemembers stationed in Hawaii treat Pearl Harbor as a living . Most sharks are carnivores, meaning their diets consist of live prey, including fish, crustaceans, and mollusks. The tanker towed them to Adak, Alaska, and from there, another ship took the crippled destroyer to San Francisco for repairs. The crew unloaded anything they could do without, to keep the damaged hull above the water line. Haerry held the rope that connected the ships as another crewman swung an ax to cut it. "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. He wasn't happy where he was, so he loaded up his big 12-cylinder Lincoln Zephyr and headed west. Framed medals. Kitchen patrol. Since the 1920s . UPDATE:Joe Langdell diedin February 2015, months after this report. He started on a small station, playing organ music. He eases the truck out of the carport, far enough to show it off. The Tennessee took hits in the attack, but two of the armor piercing bombs, the kind that sunk the Arizona, failed to detonate. For a long time, he didn't think he would ever return to Pearl Harbor. 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. On a fall day in 1945, John Anderson teetered on the base of a church steeple 110 feet above the ground. "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.". "The new ones, they didn't know beans.". He and a buddy had been talking about their future in the Navy. John was sent from training camp in Illinois to Bremerton, Wash. The story follows two lifelong friends and a beautiful nurse who are caught up in the horror of an infamous Sunday morning in 1941. His dad will return finally at his death. Conter's crews flew missions across the South Pacific: New Guinea, Borneo, New Britain, the coast off Perth, Australia. This list and the accompanying graphics do not include encounters in which a shark does not actually bite a person or board (e.g. He put the disc on a turntable and dropped the needle. The inscription reads "Spirit of Aloha Award, Timpview High School Marching Band.". After his second discharge, he knocked around Nebraska again, working in his dad's tavern, then on a beer truck, but he grew bored. 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. "You," the fellow said. On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Cook was changing clothes at his locker, savoring the thought of a day in Honolulu with the $60 he'd won in a craps game the night before. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. "It was boring," Potts says. Usually, sharks will prioritize eating: Smaller fish. And it holds deep meaning for Potts, even though he did nothing to win it. "In the service, if you didn't use nasty words, you weren't a good sailor.". 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. In 1967, Conter retired from the Navy. But there are moments when he knows what he did meant something. The Americans stopped the Japanese ships and wiped out some of the top officers. He didn't know what to tell them. The ship was moored in the shallows of Pearl Harbor's . "We're were out and around. Did sharks eat Titanic victims? "Not Navy ships, other ships. After an initial run-in with the guard at the gate ("Three weeks ago, I was shooting at people and killing them and I didn't even know who they were," he growled at the guard. They danced. Stratton climbed to his feet and, biting back the pain, he stood and when his bed was ready, he collapsed back into it. @webtv.net wrote in message. Cook worked in California, mostly welding jobs, until the union he belonged to called a strike. he said. "In the Army you were crawling around in the mud and everything else and I didn't want to do that.". A sailor on the deck of the repair ship Vestal spotted the men and threw a line across. All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. He asked for volunteers. It sits today in the carport outside his home. He enrolled, but after a couple of weeks, the noisy streetcars and the police sirens kept him up all night. I asked the boss, 'how many hours is in a day for you?' High winds could slam one ship into the other and sink one or both of the vessels. Yes, he'll say, he was on the Arizona and he survived. "I knew everything that was going on.". Afew weeks after the war started, sometime in early 1942, Potts opened a letter from his mother. war. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. The Saratoga had returned to Pearl Harbor by the time the Japanese surrendered. To prepare for the trip, they were studying World War II history, attending lectures, writing research papers. In Hawaiian custom, sharks were cared for by families who fed them and kept their bodies free of barnacles. It took more courage on your part to present this wreath than it did for me to accept it.". A tale of war and romance mixed in with history. He asked his brother, Ted, to visit Libby and see if she could cook. The telegram, which misspelled Conter's last name, promises further information and asks his family not to divulge Conter's posting. The day after the attack, President Franklin D . "I ain't seen 'em since.". Among those killed were over 1,700 aboard the USS Arizona, 103 . As the boat heaved, the man with the ax missed and hit Haerry's hand, nearly severing it from his wrist. Conter fought on through World War II, scraped past a lot of close calls, then went to Korea. He saw Gene LaRocque, a man he'd served with aboard the Macdonough. His ships steamed across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal to Africa. They bought a small ranch and, while Lonnie continued to work welding jobs, they grew walnuts, almonds, peaches, apples, nectarines, cherries and grapes. We carefully wrapped them in sheets. He touches the diving helmet. The worst shark attack in recorded history also happened to be a disaster for the US Navy. "If you can stand up and stay up while we change the linen on this bed, we'll see about it.". But the war was over. As Cactus Jack, Anderson made a few concessions to his seagoing past. Anderson smiled. Anderson has returned to the Arizona memorial often and has taken his family there. The band members had decided they wanted to honor survivors from that day. The ship accompanied General Douglas MacArthur to the Philippines and was anchored in the harbor off Nagasaki, Japan, when the second atomic bomb exploded. Potts says, shaking his head. By the time they were back, the icicles were forming again and two more guys would go out.". Too many strategic decisions come down from Washington instead of from the commanders on the ground. Sometimes, Japanese pilots attended memorial ceremonies and some of the other survivors would shake their hands. Only 35 dead were . When he first arrived at Pearl Harbor, Hetrick wasn't even old enough to buy a beer until he found a place where they didn't ask questions if a guy was in a service uniform. ", "You will go to the Arizona and you will take off all the bodies and body parts above the water line," the man said. Anderson's road to the radio booth started in Hollywood, with a screen test at a studio where he had worked. The Pearl Harbour . Pictures of past parades. Potts stayed in Honolulu until the end of the war. He had turned down a promotion to ensign, preferring the camaraderie of the enlisted ranks. He was at a restaurant last summer and someone noticed his USS Arizona cap. 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.". I wasn't working for nothing.". Anderson always talks about his brother, Delbert "Jake" Anderson, when he tells the story of his own escape from the burning ship. As anniversaries of the attack passed, Ray Jr. would asked his dad if he wanted to visit the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor. 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. He won't talk much about the escape, or about the men who didn't make it across. Bruner started as a painter, trained as a carpenter, then helped start a new sheet-metal department. 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. "I just didn't want to. Admiral Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy came to the conclusion that for the Japanese to be victorious in the pacific, they had to destroy the . Cook was assigned to the USS Patterson, then two months later, transferred to the Aylwin, a destroyer that had been moored at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 and engaged the bombers as the attack began. Finally, they made their way to Salinas, Calif., just inland from Monterey on the central coast. They spoil their granddaughters and can now move on to a new great-granddaughter. world war ii. Never would've found it.". Sailors found food and shelter wherever they could. Sailors jumped into fires to escape sinking vessels. (See Pearl Harbor Attack.) He looks forward to his time with the guys from his years in the Navy. In the documentary, "The Life and Death of a Lady," Langdell and Abe speak, side by side on the memorial. Yes, some of them were his friends. He missed enough of his classes that he was finally asked to leave. "I can understand that," Ray Jr. says. 2 gun turret. A second telegram, dated Jan. 6 reported that Conter was alive and would contact his family. Over the course of nearly two hours during the morning of December 7th, 1941, a fleet of Japanese fighters and bombers assaulted the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in hopes of crippling the US Navy for the duration of World War II. And he keeps it loaded. 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. Before the end of the war, he went to San Diego for gunner's mate school. Debris from the Arizona showered the Tennessee's stern and started fires, but the vessel stayed afloat. Conter and others in his group boarded a boat to go out to the platform and see his old ship. Marietta shakes her head. "It was like a hard jolt.". Three years later, Ray Haerry Jr. holds the cross in his hand, fighting back tears. "That's what I'm catching up now. "When somebody says get out of here and you're on a hundred tons of ammunition, well, you don't question it," he says. "He's there anytime I call him," Hetrick says. Or got fired. Farther down the paneled wall hangs a painting of the USS Arizona, the battleship Navy recruit Potts boarded in December 1939. Would Ken be willing to go as a guest of honor? 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. "I'd never seen so many guys with so much guts," he said. "We don't think you'd make it. Keeping the memories alive. Haerry ran away from home to join the Navy. Survivors' groups wanted to find all of them so their stories would not be lost. Langdell will return to the Arizona once more. He then spent 14 months recovering in Great . He liked the idea of working as an aircraft mechanic, so he volunteered. "He'd always have to be prompted.". 4. A few years after that, they left for Las Vegas, where their son, Bob, and his family help them get around. He waited for the result. In 2006, Hetrick returned to Pearl Harbor for the 65thanniversary of the Japanese attack. By the time the woman from Illinois found him, he was ready to face his past. For 30 years, Lauren Bruner punched a clock at a manufacturing plant south of Los Angeles, a World War II veteran in a landscape crawling with them. Song's got some zip to it, he said. Minutes later, the Japanese attacked and the Arizona was on fire, sinking beneath the surface. Conter was talking about survival, about coming back alive. Soon, he became one of the earliest TV weathermen and an evening fixture in Roswell homes, or at least those with televisions. 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. A pistol sits on top of his television at home. The band would cover all expenses for him and Doris. Just stories, the kind buddies tell each other. "It was a big ship with a lot of metal, I'll tell you." "Well, I'd brushed enough paint on that damn ship, I figured I could do it," he says. At the time, sailors wore patches designating their rates, the enlisted expression of rank, on the right or left sleeve, depending on their assignment. As he recounts the experience, he rubs his hands together, then holds them out, turning them over. ", "It's a brand new destroyer, the Coghlan, DD-606," he said, "built right here in 'Frisco.". December 7, 1941: Pearl Harbor Casualties. Cook enlisted in the Navy in 1940 and was assigned to the USS Arizona, one of the largest battleships in the fleet with a crew that, at full complement, numbered more than 1,500. His old co-pilot in the New Guinea days was asked once if he'd had survival training for the war. They traveled around the country, meeting up with other USS Arizona survivors, with shipmates from the Frazier. Ke awa lau o Puuloa, the bay and lochs that make up the complex most people know simply as Pearl Harbor, was once the home of the guardian sharks, Kaahupahau and her brother Kahiuka. 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. UPDATE: Bruner died in 2019. He had a record, a new song he was trying out. Were there sharks Pearl Harbor? It never returned, crippled in the Battle of the Coral Sea and scuttled by the Navy to keep the enemy from salvaging her. Lonnie had taken up trap shooting and hoped to do a little hunting back home. A painting of the Arizona hangs on the wall of a sitting room. By 1941, he worked the cranes on the ship, a job that entailed retrieving the Arizona's small seaplanes after they landed on the water. His wife, Libby, who died two years ago. He had chased Japanese soldiers along the coast of China three years before America declared war on Japan. He jumped into the harbor, even though he had never passed his swimming test. You need the exercise. Guns. Cook and the other men stayed below deck until the smoke from a fire forced them to leave. In 1966, 25 years after the attack, Stratton returned to Pearl Harbor with his family. On the same bookshelf sit mementos from his time on the Arizona. He said, 'whatever I can get out of you.' He introduced him to other officers. At Kulangsu, an international settlement on an island off the southern Chinese coast, Anderson's unit ran into the French Foreign Legion, who had been cornered by Japanese soldiers on a high ridge. "After 36 hours, I still hadn't put in a day. on the Arizonawhen the battleship sankon Dec. 7. the final survivor to be interred in the ship. Salvage work would begin soon on others. You don't fire guns in port, so I ran out real quick to see what was happening. 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. The bomb that shattered the Arizona's bow exploded as Cook and the others climbed out of the turret. When he left Morris the first time in 1939 after high school, Cook wasn't sure where he'd end up. "Never heard of it.". Put in eight years at least and you'll have a pension, he promised. If the shark feels like a dead fish isn't worth its time, it will leave without wasting more energy. Haerry says he wants lunch delivered to his room, but the nurse says no. He was eating breakfast when he heard the first pops of the attack planes strafing Battleship Row. He cleaned and painted day after day, but he also operated the motor boats used to ferry crew members to shore, a job that let him leave the ship periodically. A clerk tried to complete the process, normally a routine, if messy, step to secure the permit. He started chatting up a regular customer, a contractor, and got a job building houses. He told his story as his son, Ted, recorded it on video. It fit in that location. Be immersed in the details of the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor and . He acknowledged the wreath. At this one, he was looking around the room and he saw a picture of a sailor way back in the back, in a setting arranged like a memorial. did sharks eat pearl harbor victimshavelock wool australia. The Solace dispatched motor boats to the Arizona to rescue wounded sailors and her crew pulled others from the water. At nights, Anderson was taking classes in meteorology and electronics, trying to learn skills that could help him stand out among all the returning servicemen and women. "Some of the ships I was on had guys who liked to play the guitar, so I knew something about it. Fish, in general, are the most common prey for sharks. The men, their charred skin peeling away, climbed hand-over-hand across the line to safety. "We worked with a crane barge capable of lifting 700 tons," he sys. He returns his attention to the cranes and the catapults that flung the seaplanes into flight. It scared him a little. Without them, Riel said, who knows where we'd be today. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. Before the trip, Langdell hadn't talked much about his years in the war, about his time on the Arizona.