did sharks eat pearl harbor victims

He motions toward his gnarled ear. They bought a small ranch and, while Lonnie continued to work welding jobs, they grew walnuts, almonds, peaches, apples, nectarines, cherries and grapes. The Coghlan left San Francisco in September 1942 and sailed toward Pearl Harbor for an assignment. "He saved six people's lives. 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 . "There was a huge oil fire on the surface of the water fueled by the ships' tanks, so it created these giant fires all over the water," Nelson said. The lead-up to the Pearl Harbor attack. While this is a genuine threat to safety, it continues to remain statistically unlikely. Cook was a gunner's mate on the Arizona. Langdell's ship, the USS Arizona, lay dead in the water where she sank 14 minutes into the attack. It took Ray Jr. years, decades to piece together his father's story. "It was like a hard jolt.". This all changed when the United States declared war on Japan, bringing the country into World War II. elephant tail jewelry did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. An aerial view of "Battleship Row" at Pearl Harbor, photographed from a Japanese aircraft during the the bombing. McBride reached the last man, Raymond Haerry, a 20-year-old coxswain on the day of the assault. The telegram, which misspelled Conter's last name, promises further information and asks his family not to divulge Conter's posting. Repair crews were already at work on the battleships that had survived. A pistol sits on top of his television at home. 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. He doesn't like to talk about the attack. A painting of the Arizona hangs on the wall of a sitting room. That was the end of it.". He felt a tap on his shoulder. Farther down the paneled wall hangs a painting of the USS Arizona, the battleship Navy recruit Potts boarded in December 1939. "We took all the bodies we could find.". It hastened the United States' entry . An administrator at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, N.M., heard Anderson and talked him into joining the school to help improve its radio station and start a television station. They were trying to replenish submarines or send smaller ships in. war. It fit in that location. Or got fired. No sharks did not eat Titanic passengers. She nods and smiles. "I thought you'd be in flight school," he said. All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. For a long time, Haerry never talked about his experiences at Pearl Harbor. He was thrown into the ocean and waited 57 hours to be rescued while shipmates around him were eaten by sharks. They called the Marines out with rifles to protect the plane and the guys while we hauled it in.". By 1991, the 50thanniversary of the attack, the number of living Arizona crewmen had shrunk. "They were holed up behind sandbags, but they never got hit.". Cook worked in California, mostly welding jobs, until the union he belonged to called a strike. Since the 1920s . Conter told him about the lost orders. He stayed aboard the Solace about a month. He would answer questions, but in short bursts of description, with no emotion. "I just got discharged. He and Libby moved west to Walnut Creek east of San Francisco. He remembers when the order was given to abandon ship. Pearl Harbor was a United States Naval base on the island of Oahu, located west of Honolulu. They were married in an Episcopal Church on Van Ness Avenue. "They said what a wonderful place it was to live, with jobs and everything, so I bought a little place up in Spanish Fork," he says, "I'm still looking for that easy money.". 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. 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. sinastria di coppia karmica calcolo; quincy homeless shelter; plastic bags for cleaning oven racks; claudia procula death; farm jobs in vermont with housing He wasn't happy where he was, so he loaded up his big 12-cylinder Lincoln Zephyr and headed west. Other crewmen would roll out the shell, use a mechanical device to ram it in, then load four bags of powder behind it. He had stopped at Pearl Harbor more than a decade earlier, on his way to a posting in Korea. Anderson has returned to the Arizona memorial often and has taken his family there. And the ships needed experienced sailors. 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 . "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. "He said, 'I had survival training in the ocean. That summer, the ship joined others for the invasion at Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, one of the first major assaults against Japan by the Americans. He tries to abbreviate it: "We went to California and got married.". The paneled room behind the door in the living room of the Provo house is filled with trophies of almost any imaginable sort. 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. Pearl Harbor was the site of the unprovoked aerial attack on the United States by Japan on December 7, 1941. A year later, he felt better, so he re-enlisted. Haerry would come home on those days with cigar boxes full of the coins. he met his contact and not long after, he was standing in for Orson Welles in a scene from the movie "The Stranger.". 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. Nicaragua. Haerry says he wants lunch delivered to his room, but the nurse says no. Seventy-three years later, he is one of just nine survivors of the attack on the Arizona. Would Langdell agree to meet Abe on film? The ships encountered a Japanese fleet, two big cruisers, six destroyers, some troop ships, and engaged. The Japanese military had established strategic outposts in the Aleutian Islands and had its eye on Alaska. 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. We can't let it happen again.". 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. Yes, he'll say, he was on the Arizona and he survived. They offered to perform at a gathering of Utah survivors. The offshore diving business could leave its own kind of scars. In the years after, he became active in survivors' groups and started going back to Pearl Harbor more often. One day, a Navy officer came on board and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer for an assignment in the aviation section. The job wasn't what he expected in September, when he was discharged from the Navy. There's a little air bubble. Trains run close enough to hear the horns during the day, but not close enough to make them a nuisance. "They agreed.". Early in the morning on Dec. 7, 1941, Japan's Imperial Navy launched a surprise airstrike on the US military base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu . Someone from the bureau had been asking questions. 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. It turned out little was the right word. "Next thing you know, I'm in a movie with John Wayne," Anderson says years later. 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. "Iremember hearing explosions at first," he says. "These guys were the first heroes of the war, even though the war hasn't been declared," Ray Jr. says. Anderson always talks about his brother, Delbert "Jake" Anderson, when he tells the story of his own escape from the burning ship. Conter's crews flew missions across the South Pacific: New Guinea, Borneo, New Britain, the coast off Perth, Australia. Bruner keeps mementos of his time on the Arizona in the sitting room. As a tender, he stayed on the surface, monitoring the divers working on rigs, piers, pipelines, any piece of seaside or seagoing equipment. Fish, in general, are the most common prey for sharks. One day, a young fellow knocked on his door. striking a number of people in the water. Libby had arranged stays north of the city. They could ride to the mainland then and leave for Florida. As he prepared for his new posting on the Frazier, Langdell decided to make a move. Alcohol. on the Arizonawhen the battleship sankon Dec. 7. the final survivor to be interred in the ship. "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. During the conference, the Pringle sailed into the Mediterranean Sea and anchored in a river. His dad will return finally at his death. 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. It wasn't, but the flash was a reminder, as if he needed anything more. He and Evelyn had their first son, Ray, Jr., in 1947. 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. He found a report by a gunner's mate. Ken Potts eases around the side of the pool table, waving toward items like a museum tour guide in a back room. "Some of the ships I was on had guys who liked to play the guitar, so I knew something about it. "What's up with this one? Debris from the Arizona showered the Tennessee's stern and started fires, but the vessel stayed afloat. 5 Jun. Three days had passed since Japanese bombers had punched a fiery hole in the Navy's Pacific fleet. Potts was returning to the Arizona with fresh produce when the first Japanese bombers dove into Pearl Harbor. USS Indianapolis at Mare Island. The ones after that were, too. On the same bookshelf sit mementos from his time on the Arizona. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. They were dead in the water.". He said he wanted Anderson to join the on-air staff. Anderson went aboard the USS Edsall, a destroyer that supported various military action at sea and ashore. "I didn't have any speaking parts, but I was working for the studio and they paid me.". He helped rescue some of his shipmates. They listened for their names and their service branch. dwayne johnson rock foundation contact. Haerry had made two runs to shore on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. Smoke rises from the battleship USS Arizona as it sinks . Naming Pearl Harbor. "He'd always have to be prompted.". When he returned home, he got another call from the band director. After his second discharge, he knocked around Nebraska again, working in his dad's tavern, then on a beer truck, but he grew bored. I quit. He went to work as a junior accountant for a prominent Boston firm. And there's a trophy in the corner the paneled room that means as much as anything else there. 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. 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. "He called me one night and said if you won't let me come to California, I found a lady who's got a new black Buick and I'm going to move to Texas.". 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. He was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in February 1954, the rank he held until he retired. "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. Their skin charred and falling off, the men crawled down the line to the Vestal. Large species also consume marine mammals such as dolphins, seals, sea lions, and porpoises, as well as large fish species such as tuna, mackerel, and even smaller shark species. He will tell his story to people he knows well and trusts, but he is 93 and the details are fading from his memory. "He was very military by then, very disciplined.". Conter and his buddy waited for new instructions, but heard nothing. "Sometimes they'd get shooting at you and you'd look at the shells and they looked like they were going to hit you. ", He stops in front of a newspaper, the front page of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin with the headline: "WAR! Their orders were lost on the Arizonawhen the battleship sankon Dec. 7. A sailor on the deck of the repair ship Vestal spotted the men and threw a line across. "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.". Now, stateside again, Hetrick reported to a Navy station in San Diego, where he met the woman who would become his wife, Jeanne. "I'd do it a hundred times more," he says. Cook has returned to Pearl Harbor three times and he likes the Arizona memorial. As Conter told it, the story wasn't about punching sharks, or skulking in the jungle or chasing shadows to the waiting rescue boat. The best time for a bombing raid was after 1 a.m., when the ship was quiet. Finally, the Navy gave him a medical discharge. Posted on . He was soon aboard the USS Frazier, which left the shipyard at San Francisco in July 1942. The shock of jumping into a harbor knowing he couldn't swim. He stood strong and tall right in front of this general. The guns used the same type of control mechanisms Bruner had mastered on the Arizona. He's not sure he'd have learned that lesson if he hadn't enlisted in the Navy. He liked teaching and liked the chance to instill discipline. They had voted. 4 gun turret, with the men who died there and survivors who had died since. . Finally, after a few weeks on the tanker, Potts was handed a new assignment. Until his partner ran off with all the money. "Mr. Langdell, Mr. Langdell, you've got to come here quick," he said. They still had to climb onto the dock and then into a truck for a short ride to a Navy hospital. "I think my dad was one of the first American heroes of World War II.". Potts was working aboard an oil tanker, making short runs out of the harbor to refuel ships anchored off the coast. We hauled it all back in.". 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. Anything you choose is fine. "I'm a painter," he said. Before the attack, many Americans were reluctant to become involved in the war in Europe. Seabirds. From the Vestal, Bruner was taken to the USS Solace, a hospital ship in the harbor. "If you can stand up and stay up while we change the linen on this bed, we'll see about it.". Posted by ; royal canin yorkie dog food reviews; parkland psychiatric hospital dallas, tx . Their habitats include saltwater and freshwater alike. Around 2005, he and Jeanne moved to Bullhead City. We all have to remember that they did not die in vain.". 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 . It was one of the biggest rescues in World War II, but no one knew about it because everything was top secret in those days.". When he dies, his remains will be interred under the No. He still will not talk about it. @webtv.net wrote in message. He doesn't want to answer questions about his war service, shrugging them off or insisting he can't remember the details anymore. He had visited before, but this trip meant more. A carnivorous shark diet usually includes fish, mollusks, and crustaceans. "The hat represents the Arizona. In World War II, he fought at Guadalcanal, in the battle of the Coral Sea, at Okinawa and Iwo Jima. A total of 2,403 Americans died in the tragic attack 80 years ago and for many families there was never closure as bodies remained unidentified or left amongst the wreckage. "Andy, you had 12 years of the damnedest fighting I ever saw. Langdell returned to Pearl Harbor in 1976. Stratton's eyes brighten. Haerry accepted the medal, but found he could not speak. Conter had made friends with a young lady in Honolulu. On one mission, Haerry's tender was tied to a larger ship as the crew delivered supplies and completed maintenance tasks. He returns his attention to the cranes and the catapults that flung the seaplanes into flight. "They were very good days before the war. That led to a job in Roswell, the Sagebrush Serenade and Elvis Presley. What they didn't count on was the side-street parking. The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor began just before 8 a.m. local time Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. He was eating breakfast when he heard the first pops of the attack planes strafing Battleship Row. One day, he stopped for coffee at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood. After the war, Langdell returned to the family auction business in Massachusetts, but after all those years in Hawaii, the Philippines and in the tropical South Seas, he couldn't readjust to the cold. He called back a few days later. She prods him to move around more and to leave the room for meals. They moved to Modesto, Calif., where he got a job driving a produce truck in the fruit orchards. Conter attended the same event and was seated next to Valerie. Her sister knew Jack Warner, the film studio mogul, and invited Valerie to a movie premiere party Warner was hosting in Palm Springs for his latest project, "Camelot". The family visited the Arizona memorial and toured other sites near the harbor. But he became restless. His old co-pilot in the New Guinea days was asked once if he'd had survival training for the war. He handed the microphone to his son, Raymond Haerry, Jr., who spoke of his father's courage and resilience. Three days since the war started. Only a few hundred people lived there then. In 2011, he was one of six Rhode Islanders who had lived through the attack on Pearl Harbor, the only one from the Arizona. Her father was an engineer and a top executive for a dredging company with a big Navy contract. Three years later, Ray Haerry Jr. holds the cross in his hand, fighting back tears. We'd go out and blow them up.". In 1949, the newly created U.S. Air Force was trying to fill it out its ranks with experienced support crews, almost begging for mechanics who knew the aircraft. He visited the memorial and was relieved to see the builders got it right. Now, some courses require less than a week of field time. Today, he tries to pass on what he knows to students of history. You're on your own, every day.'". Back on land, Cook followed welding jobs from Kentucky and Pennsylvania to New Jersey and Long Island, west to North Dakota and Wisconsin and finally to a ranch house in Salinas, Calif., where he raised a family and stayed put for almost 30 years. The Navy captain who lived on Waikiki Beach gave a lot of parties and invited these guys. The buddy wasn't home, but his son-in-law answered. Potts picked up the Colt 45 he'd found on Ford Island on Dec. 7, 1941. Bruner started as a painter, trained as a carpenter, then helped start a new sheet-metal department. What do great white sharks eat in Hawaii? The first couple of trips back to Hawaii were difficult. I even had a couple of dates with girls.". An impressive collection of restaurant menus from 30 years of cross-country searches for used cars. Japan wanted the northern Pacific to control its shipping routes and block U.S. attacks from that direction. In California, he earned his naval seaman's license and went to work on a drilling rig offshore near Santa Barbara. pearl harbor 1941. uss arizona. You're the bravest man I ever know. When he left Morris the first time in 1939 after high school, Cook wasn't sure where he'd end up. Of the 1,196 men aboard, 900 made it into the water alive. The song, "Hound Dog" and the singer, Elvis Presley, both went over pretty well, the way Cactus Jack remembers it. As he talks about Pearl Harbor again, other memories surface. amc gremlin for sale washington state did sharks attack titanic survivors. The Macdonough had collided with another destroyer, the Sicard. The planes could fly at low altitudes, then buzz upward for a bombing run, confounding enemy gunners trying to calculate speed and distance. The Macdonough stayed until September, then sailed back on patrol in the Pacific. north but again I'm not a shark expert. He was active in those groups for many years, serving as president of one devoted to the Arizona. Did he know anything about meteorology? 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. The six men stared straight ahead, almost as if they were back in line, at attention. "I appreciate your thoughtfulness. His new employer manufactured industrial refrigeration units. Deer and rabbits wander the hillside. 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. "When somebody says get out of here and you're on a hundred tons of ammunition, well, you don't question it," he says. The easy stories he'd tell. "It ain't worth a damn if it ain't loaded," he says. UPDATE:Joe Langdell diedin February 2015, months after this report. His younger son believes the experience changed his dad forever. It sits a little higher than most items, but not necessarily on a platform. He first visited the Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor on the 50thanniversary of the attack and has returned since. He could see the band was sincere. Part of his shoulder was blown off. The Hirasaki family suffered some of the worst losses that terrible morning. 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. 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. December 7, 1941: Pearl Harbor Casualties. He joined the USS Arizona Reunion Association and stays in touch with a few of the remaining survivors. A month after the Coral Sea battle, Cook's ship was part of the American forces in the critical Battle of Midway. One of our cruisers, the heavy cruiser, got hit and water got into the oil. Among his responsibilities was overseeing the naval officers' clubs in the area. Anderson smiled. He wanted to part of it. He keeps up with what the military does, and some of it irritates him. His work turned toward survival training in a new military program called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. Las Vegas seems to like Hetrick. There were: Cook and another crewman. Three days later, he and his buddy were on a ship to San Francisco and then a train to Pensacola. Anderson grew up in the Red River Valley of northern Minnesota, the son of a prominent local judge. 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. Oceanic whitetip sharks killed many of the surviving crew in the biggest attack on humans ever recorded Credit: Getty - Contributor. The things I don't want to remember was the blood.". He sits in his wheelchair as his son recites the narrative, keeping his father's story alive. The pieces the largest is about as long as a bus sit in a salvage yard on the Waipi'o Peninsula on Oahu. "We're were out and around. When he reaches that part of his story, he stops. "We'd send two guys out to knock the icicles off the guns, then they'd high-tail it back in. Some even extend their consumption to seabirds. "It is only by the grace of God that I stand here today," he said. It is dated Dec. 21, 1941. Langdell says only this: "It took two days to take all the bodies. I asked the boss, 'how many hours is in a day for you?' We had survival training on the job. A second telegram, dated Jan. 6 reported that Conter was alive and would contact his family. Photographs. He endured what he did, he says, because that was his job. I still had to wait 29 years for that guy to come back and take his brush back.". He likes chocolate and is disappointed if Ray Jr. forgets it. Each of the six men were at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes swarmed the Navy fleet in an ambush that would provoke war. "Remember Pearl Harbor!" became a rallying cry for the U.S. during World War II. "It gets your breath when you first see it," he says. He owns a chunk of the ship's burned deck, a reminder he keeps in a box with a few other items. The Navy censors would never allow such information in a letter. Haerry straightened in his seat as his story was told. Guns. But when Ka'ahupahau realized that the girl actually did die, she regretted her rash order and instead said that sharks should never attack humans in the Pearl Harbor region.

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