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He helped rescue some of his shipmates. He told Ray about the plans to honor Pearl Harbor survivors at the statehouse. For a while, the young family lived in Puerto Rico as Haerry, now a chief boatswain's mate, drew new assignments aboard his tender. Servicemembers stationed in Hawaii took care of the memorial during the 2013 government shutdown: Servicemembers stationed in Hawaii treat Pearl Harbor as a living . "The sea was real rough when it came in and the sharks started gathering around. As he prepared to jump off the burning ship, he took the shoes off and set them on the quarterdeck. "We don't think you'd make it. He wrote Libby a letter and suggested it would be a good idea if Libby visited her friend on or about a particular date. They knew the oil tanker Tippecanoe was out there, but couldn't see her. The band had won a trophy in one of the competitions during their stay in Honolulu. His new employer manufactured industrial refrigeration units. he said. He keeps a folder of newspaper clippings, magazine stories and copies of a telegram. It took more courage on your part to present this wreath than it did for me to accept it.". The men followed orders in a fog of wonderment and confusion. Using its sonar equipment, the ship fired depth charges and eventually sank the enemy submarine. He could see the planes were flying too low for his guns anyway, but before his crew could figure out their next move, an armor-piercing bomb detonated near the powder magazine beneath the No. Many have since died. That's why the FBI was nosing around me, Potts thought. Langdell will return to the Arizona once more. So reads the telegram sent to the Mattituck home of Anna and Clifford Penny on Dec. 10, 1941. "I'd never seen so many guys with so much guts," he said. She prods him to move around more and to leave the room for meals. He and Libby moved west to Walnut Creek east of San Francisco. His name never appeared and he would leave for the day. Wherever he goes on the pickup, people ask him about his experience. There are over 470 species of sharks throughout the world. "I went back and told my mother I wasn't going up there anymore," he said. "He's there anytime I call him," Hetrick says. Potts returned to Illinois in late 1945 to await his formal discharge, hanging out in Chicago. he met his contact and not long after, he was standing in for Orson Welles in a scene from the movie "The Stranger.". UPDATE:John Anderson diedin November 2015, less than a year after this report. They are reminders of a moment in time he can never escape, a moment he sees again and again. "Are you in the Navy? 2 gun turret. During his voyage to Alaska, Cook remembers the flying fish, which stirred up the water like a torpedo wake. The best time for a bombing raid was after 1 a.m., when the ship was quiet. . In early January, Conter visited his young lady friend again and again, Admiral Calhoun was there. "I had to help my father out of his seat. 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. Posted on December 7, 2021, 5:08 pm. He knew he was near release the day an officer came by and launched into a pep talk about the war and the Navy's role in it. On Oct. 12, Langdell celebrated his 100th birthday with with his older son, John, who flew in from Spearfish, S.D. Conter's crews flew missions across the South Pacific: New Guinea, Borneo, New Britain, the coast off Perth, Australia. He doesn't like to talk about the attack. He hired on with a farm labor contractor and within a year, he and a guy he worked with started their own business, contracting with the orchard owners to harvest crops. The United States was a neutral country at the time; the attack led to its formal entry into World War II the next day. She likes the story of how they tied the knot. Salvage work would begin soon on others. An avocado tree grows in the backyard. For over an hour, in two waves, some 350 Japanese aircrafthaving taken off from six . "When we got up into the Aleutians, we started banging on the Japanese that had already landed," Bruner said. 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. 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. He fought cold and hunger on a ship nearly dead in the ocean off Alaska. It turned out most of the regular stuntmen were still in the military. The Stratton men have taken up a more personal cause. Calhoun told Conter to put in for the assignment. Potts had not returned to Honolulu in the decades since he left for San Francisco in 1945. Cha c sn phm trong gi hng. "Are you out of the Navy, Andy?" Haerry nods and like a good sailor taking orders from the chief, he pulls himself up with a walker and shuffles off to lunch. Explosions rocked the vessel and fires burned into the evening. By 1991, the 50thanniversary of the attack, the number of living Arizona crewmen had shrunk. "Would you like a job?" Their habitats include saltwater and freshwater alike. We all have to remember that they did not die in vain.". Stratton falls easily into the memories of his years on diving boats. It never returned, crippled in the Battle of the Coral Sea and scuttled by the Navy to keep the enemy from salvaging her. Cook was the gun captain on the Pringle at the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. One of our cruisers, the heavy cruiser, got hit and water got into the oil. 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. Knives. From the shore, he helped wounded men from the water, men whose bodies had been torn apart by bombs and bullets and fire. "I told another kid if they come back again tonight, I'm leaving.". The body parts we put in pillow cases. As the boat heaved, the man with the ax missed and hit Haerry's hand, nearly severing it from his wrist. There was a tradition at the end of training that the graduates would give the chief a silver dollar. The story of the USS Indianapolis has become legendary with regards to shark attacks, and is known as the worst shark attack in recorded history. 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. The worst shark attack in recorded history also happened to be a disaster for the US Navy. I still had to wait 29 years for that guy to come back and take his brush back.". Pictures of past parades. Peeling potatoes. He stayed there for months. The Saratoga was attacked by six Japanese suicide bombers within about 24 hours. "What are you looking at?" Some common species of fish sharks hunt include: Tuna. 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. "Once after we crossed the equator, one of the planes came back," he says. ages 2, 3 and 8, together with a 14-year-old cousin . Everything was taken ashore and properly taken care of.". "They were very good days before the war. 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. Here's what he revealed: The USS Arizona (BB-39) burns after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. For Haerry, McBride had a the state's highest military honor, the Rhode Island Cross. "It never gets easy to go back," he says. He then spent 14 months recovering in Great . He joined the Navy because it seemed like a better environment. 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 was on his own once again, he and his young family. "We had 10 or 12 sharks around us all the time," Conter says. We left and never fired a shot at them.". "In three days, we rescued 219 coast watchers without losing anybody," Conter said. Conter told the admiral he was interested in flight school, but doubted he would earn admission. LaRocque took Anderson to San Pedro, where his current ship was anchored. These Photos Of The Pearl Harbor Attack Are Still Shocking Decades Later "A day that will live in infamy." By . The shock of jumping into a harbor knowing he couldn't swim. As anniversaries of the attack passed, Ray Jr. would asked his dad if he wanted to visit the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor. "He told you the story?" "Mr. Langdell," he said, "when you're done with your breakfast, you'll report to the pier and you'll be met by a motor whale boat and a party of 20 enlisted men with sheets and pillow cases. He would work in the port director's office, delivering sealed packets to the captains of Navy ships. In Alaska, he helped set up platforms that could keep up with tides that rose and fell as much as 32 feet. "They said, 'If you re-enlist, we'll send her over.' He wanted to interview Langdell for his project. Another five minutes, Bruner figured, and they'd have run out of ammunition. Langdell lives now in a skilled nursing center. "It is only by the grace of God that I stand here today," he said. In February, the Aylwin was part of a U.S. task force preparing for a raid on a Japanese base at Raubal, on the island of New Britain near Australia. When he left Morris the first time in 1939 after high school, Cook wasn't sure where he'd end up. They bought a small ranch and, while Lonnie continued to work welding jobs, they grew walnuts, almonds, peaches, apples, nectarines, cherries and grapes. "A brush painter.". He was smart enough to excel, but started cutting classes not long after the start of his first semester. Anderson decided he had nothing to lose. I saw one airplane, with a big red meatball on the side. He finished his training and was discharged in December 1945. He tried not to remember the days after the attack. Doctors treated him and he recovered, but the his fingers never healed properly. He first visited the Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor on the 50thanniversary of the attack and has returned since. By Christmas, he was in a hospital at Mare Island near San Francisco. He heard the same stories from his grandmother and his aunts. What he heard wasn't quite country music, but he liked it and he told the kid. With Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, William Lee Scott. "The Japanese were only a mile away. That was the end of it.". It turned out little was the right word. He was still adjusting to his new life in Colorado, hundreds of miles inland from his old home in coastal California and more than a mile higher in elevation. Five years ago, Haerry moved into a nursing home, He stays in a room on the second floor. He thinks back. The man in the boat was from Muskogee, a town about 40 miles east of Morris. Whale Shark (Rhincodon typus) The whale shark is the largest shark species, and also the biggest fish species in the world. When was the shark attack on the Jersey Shore? 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. On the morning of May 8, the fighting intensified as American aircraft tried to turn back the enemy planes. He . They were married in an Episcopal Church on Van Ness Avenue. 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. He would answer questions, but in short bursts of description, with no emotion. He would draw out snippets and stash them away, collecting them until he would weave the barest narrative. No one seemed to be in charge on Ford Island, where Cook had spent the night. He asked his brother, Ted, to visit Libby and see if she could cook. 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. Since the 1920s . And he has watched with dismay the changes in survival training. 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. Stories of survival. "I didn't have the slightest idea what would happen when I signed up," he said. Photographs hang on the walls of his room. He remembers when the order was given to abandon ship. striking a number of people in the water. As he walked past a bar, still in his Navy uniform, a fellow popped out the door and looked Anderson up and down, checking him out more closely someone would ordinarily. It scared him a little. "If you can stand up and stay up while we change the linen on this bed, we'll see about it.". As a youngster, Anderson heard stories about the Navy from his uncle, a man named Ray Stokes. "No," the worker said. "I thought you'd be in flight school," he said. the young man asked. "To go through that to me is incomprehensible. Nobody was expecting anything like that.". He was soon flying one of the Navy's Black Cats, a squadron of long-range patrol bombers painted black for night missions. As the 50thanniversary of the attack neared, Langdell got a call from a documentary filmmaker. He put the disc on a turntable and dropped the needle. 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. He liked teaching and liked the chance to instill discipline. Pearl Harbor, naval base and headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Honolulu county, southern Oahu Island, Hawaii, U.S. Of the 1,196 men aboard, 900 made it into the water alive. 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. Toward the end the war, Langdell was stationed in the Philippines, at a base in Manila. The Japanese-American mother, father and their three children. It is about three feet tall, with a carved island figure on top and the silhouette of a Hawaiian warrior on a plaque. "It's one of the best actual memorials I've seen," he says. He was assigned a battle station in the No. This all changed when the United States declared war on Japan, bringing the country into World War II. 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. At 100, he is the oldest. The crew unloaded anything they could do without, to keep the damaged hull above the water line. I had one pair of dungarees and that was it, that and a towel and shaving gear.". "The station wagon was for the captains of some of the ships that would come in," he said. The Navy began assigning sailors to new postings. "We worked with a crane barge capable of lifting 700 tons," he sys. "I'd do it a hundred times more," he says. They continued to see each other and, when Langdell left for Hawaii, they corresponded, often. No one among the groups knew where he was or what he was doing, but the woman persisted. Pearl Harbor was the site of the unprovoked aerial attack on the United States by Japan on December 7, 1941. Before the trip, Langdell hadn't talked much about his years in the war, about his time on the Arizona. "I didn't have any speaking parts, but I was working for the studio and they paid me.". Conter fought on through World War II, scraped past a lot of close calls, then went to Korea. Afterward, Langdell sought out other survivors who had formed reunion organizations. Why is the FBI checking up on you, she wanted to know. person grazed by a shark), nor incidents classified by the International Shark Attack File as boat attacks, scavenge, or doubtful. The California was way down here. Soon, he became one of the earliest TV weathermen and an evening fixture in Roswell homes, or at least those with televisions. He keeps up with what the military does, and some of it irritates him. The Navy censors would never allow such information in a letter. By the time they were back, the icicles were forming again and two more guys would go out.". He doesn't want to answer questions about his war service, shrugging them off or insisting he can't remember the details anymore. From Virginia, he went to Utah, to France and then to Albuquerque, where he retired in November 1961. But he is proud of his service, of the other sailors on the Arizona. For an hour or so, the two men talk. He moved to Provo and sold cars until 1990. He and a buddy had been talking about their future in the Navy. "You know, you can see where I came out of, the hatchway. The Coghlan approached the Aleutians in October, as winter was pushing fall aside. Almost imperceptibly, he sways. The only question was how Langdell would send Libby word about his arrival from Pearl Harbor. The six-year Pentagon project identified nearly 400 who died on the USS Oklahoma in 1941. The trophy sits on a small white base that raises it above other items on a shelf. Occasionally, they would close the store and hook a 33-foot trailer to a pick-up truck. "Would you like to listen to it?" Potts was working aboard an oil tanker, making short runs out of the harbor to refuel ships anchored off the coast. The ship was dead in the water. As a tender, he stayed on the surface, monitoring the divers working on rigs, piers, pipelines, any piece of seaside or seagoing equipment. Conter got his wings in November 1942. After so many years of travel, the Cooks have settled into a more tranquil pace. Stratton's eyes brighten. 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. 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 was on Ford Island when the Japanese attacked, training for new assignment. Mess hall duty. "They told me the team was already picked," he said. Except the cap. "He was very military by then, very disciplined.". That same year, he met his wife, Valerie, in Palm Springs. Stratton climbed to his feet and, biting back the pain, he stood and when his bed was ready, he collapsed back into it. 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 . USS Indianapolis at Mare Island. The ships sent up their own planes and turned back the assault. A clerk tried to complete the process, normally a routine, if messy, step to secure the permit. He struggles to speak at times (though when he's feeling good, he likes to flirt with the nurses). He can tell stories about his years with the diving crews, but the truck has evolved into a reminder of another time. On a fall day in 1945, John Anderson teetered on the base of a church steeple 110 feet above the ground. He was able to visit the national cemetery at an area called the Punch Bowl. 1. Hetrick was on board during battles at Midway and Wake Island and for the U.S. invasion of Iwo Jima early in 1945. He asked for volunteers. "These captains of the ships, when they left the states, they had no idea where they were going, just that they're going via Pearl Harbor," Potts said. Stratton could not. 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. @webtv.net wrote in message. Part of his shoulder was blown off. 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. Hetrick saw a new opportunity and joined. 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 . Cook is invited to such events occasionally and sometimes introduced as an Arizona survivor. But he doesn't tell his story anymore, not on his own. He remembers all the details and most of what happened later. He played a lot of golf, but missed California. And he still likes to talk about that other young fellow from Oklahoma, the one who didn't make it home. "It's where the war started.". Afew weeks after the war started, sometime in early 1942, Potts opened a letter from his mother. No one knew much about Bruner's years in the Navy, not the early years anyway. Lots of men brought home scars from World War II and Korea. "I would tell them. Sometimes, Japanese pilots attended memorial ceremonies and some of the other survivors would shake their hands. Jobs were few, so he set off for Warner, Okla, with the idea of playing football at Connors State Agricultural College. He has met many of his old friends and shipmates. December 7, 1941: Pearl Harbor Casualties. Cook and the other men stayed below deck until the smoke from a fire forced them to leave. Japanese torpedo bombers hit the Lexington and crippled the big ship. The planes took off and landed on the water; the pilots tied up to buoys near the ship. "The Arizona was a fighting battleship," Joe says. It sits a little higher than most items, but not necessarily on a platform. Langdell returned to Pearl Harbor in 1976. Civilian Casualties. Bruner looked each recruit in the eyes to determine the right job, but he wasn't testing their mettle, not yet. Three days later, he and his buddy were on a ship to San Francisco and then a train to Pensacola. Rays. And he was allowed to visit a part of the Arizona few people ever see. Put in eight years at least and you'll have a pension, he promised. He fiddles with the radio. The men, their charred skin peeling away, climbed hand-over-hand across the line to safety. 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. All rights reserved. It is dated Dec. 21, 1941. The ship was to turn around and steam toward Alaska. A few years after that, they left for Las Vegas, where their son, Bob, and his family help them get around. In the documentary, "The Life and Death of a Lady," Langdell and Abe speak, side by side on the memorial. "I told the men, 'If a shark comes close, hit it in the nose with your fist as hard as you can.'". did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. Kuwait. A month after the Coral Sea battle, Cook's ship was part of the American forces in the critical Battle of Midway. Pearl Harbor Warbirds offers the best Hawai'i flight adventure tours available. Once he was awakened by a loud noise and a flash and thought his ship was under attack. Before the attack, many Americans were reluctant to become involved in the war in Europe. The ship provided fire support for the Marines going ashore. Before the end of the war, he went to San Diego for gunner's mate school. "I'm a painter," he said. The tanker towed them to Adak, Alaska, and from there, another ship took the crippled destroyer to San Francisco for repairs. Did sharks eat Titanic victims? He finally received his orders to return to the states. They offered to perform at a gathering of Utah survivors. "You either had a nice place aboard a ship and were high and dry or you didn't have anything," he reasoned. Eighty years later, many of those killed are finally returning home and being laid to rest. He bought another gun in the states and he is never far from it. Photographing survivors of the battleship USS Arizona. He could see the band was sincere. For a long time, Haerry never talked about his experiences at Pearl Harbor. 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. "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. Abe offered condolences and said he prayed that all their souls were at peace. "We made so many landings," Anderson said. The family sold maple syrup distilled from the trees on their farm. On Veteran's Day, he participated once more in a parade through Marysville, the next town over from Yuba City.