He was still active, so would report to the Navy Pier each morning to check a list for the names of sailors who had been given duties for the day. Rays. 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. Naming Pearl Harbor. Conter and his buddy waited for new instructions, but heard nothing. 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. The Saratoga was attacked by six Japanese suicide bombers within about 24 hours. striking a number of people in the water. "From down inside, it wasn't too bad when they fired it," Cook said. I still get to the point when I'm talking about it, first thing you know, I go to bed at night, wake up and can't sleep for a week.". a director yelled. He sits in his wheelchair as his son recites the narrative, keeping his father's story alive. They respected a guy who survived such a horrific attack. he said. The men followed orders in a fog of wonderment and confusion. The Navy captain who lived on Waikiki Beach gave a lot of parties and invited these guys. The paneled room behind the door in the living room of the Provo house is filled with trophies of almost any imaginable sort. Fire had blackened much of the structure still visible. 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. "I got the lay a wreath in front of the names of the fallen," he says quietly. Joe proposed and Libby accepted. And the ships needed experienced sailors. "We'd leave at 5:30 in the evening and stay out 12 or 14 hours, then return in the morning," Conter said. The ships sent up their own planes and turned back the assault. Anderson spoke to one of the tanker's crew about towing the Macdonough. Cook was a gunner's mate on the Arizona. Stratton and other men climbed into a small boat that took them ashore. The crew unloaded anything they could do without, to keep the damaged hull above the water line. They went out for coffee afterward. 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 . "He told you the story?" The next morning, the Arizona was still burning as oil flowed out of her full tanks. "They were very good days before the war. Did sharks eat Titanic passengers - Google Groups It scared him a little. "You," the fellow said. The ship carried four 5-inch anti-aircraft guns and six half-inch machine guns, and, initially, five 21-inch torpedo tubes. They spoil their granddaughters and can now move on to a new great-granddaughter. "Hi," he said, introducing himself. As it fell, he was thrown from the ship into the harbor. Aviators most often arose from left-arm rates. "I'm a painter," he said. He endured what he did, he says, because that was his job. She returned, puzzled. Japanese relieved at no Pearl Harbor apology - DW - 12/28/2016 Conter attended the same event and was seated next to Valerie. Anderson picked up and moved to New Mexico. "Well, I'd brushed enough paint on that damn ship, I figured I could do it," he says. He wanted to interview Langdell for his project. "When I got back home, my doctors here wanted to know about my medical background," Bruner said. He wanted to part of it. 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. The six-year Pentagon project identified nearly 400 who died on the USS Oklahoma in 1941. "After 36 hours, I still hadn't put in a day. "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. 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. He needed a truck to carry equipment back and forth, so he scouted out a car lot and bought a 1965 Chevrolet pickup. He wrote Libby a letter and suggested it would be a good idea if Libby visited her friend on or about a particular date. We'd go out and blow them up.". "They played country music because the people here loved that," Anderson says. By winter, temperatures plunged below zero. queensland figure skating. 2023 www.azcentral.com. Haerry says he wants lunch delivered to his room, but the nurse says no. "Cut!" "What's up with this one? We can't let it happen again.". When they sent me my discharge, I just stayed here.". As far he was concerned he was saving lives.". 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. UPDATE:John Anderson diedin November 2015, less than a year after this report. At 100, he is the oldest. 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. He got to know Alan Ladd, who had starred in a series of war movies. Potts picked up the Colt 45 he'd found on Ford Island on Dec. 7, 1941. Similarly, the . He keeps up with what the military does, and some of it irritates him. Whale sharks are found in warm waters in the Pacific . "They gave me 30 minutes to get off the ship and catch a transport to San Diego for training," he said. A year after World War II ended, Haerry went home for a while and married a girl he'd met not long before. The studios needed tough men who could handle dangerous situations. 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. ", "Fine," the worker said. By the time the woman from Illinois found him, he was ready to face his past. His work turned toward survival training in a new military program called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. world war ii. "What are you looking at?" Using its sonar equipment, the ship fired depth charges and eventually sank the enemy submarine. Then they'd go by.". Finally, the four U.S. destroyers were ordered to mount a torpedo run. Colombia. Conter's doctor has sidelined him for now for health reasons, but he is certain he will return soon. Joe Langdell found a table in the wardroom of one of the ships moored in Pearl Harbor and sat down with his breakfast. They danced. In 2011, he was one of six Rhode Islanders who had lived through the attack on Pearl Harbor, the only one from the Arizona. 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. It was constructed to comply with the 1922 Washington Naval . He was treated there for four months. About a year after he boarded the ship, he ran into a young recruit named Clyde Williams, a fellow from Okmulgee, Okla., a few miles down the road from Morris. Cook worked in California, mostly welding jobs, until the union he belonged to called a strike. "I had to help my father out of his seat. 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 . mailchimp archive contacts Controle dos clientes e convnios; fatal car accident loveland colorado Abertura e fechamento de caixa, Sangria e despesas; "They paid everybody in two dollar bills back then. 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. Photographing survivors of the battleship USS Arizona. 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. ", "Baloney," Conter replied. "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.". 5 Jun. As he was packing, a buddy warned him that his possessions would be searched at the port in San Francisco. The Navy censors would never allow such information in a letter. Helpless, I watched your bomb sink the Arizona in nine minutes.". 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. In 1971, Stratton was working long hours with a diving outfit on a nuclear power plant project not far from Santa Barbara. He wanted men with eyes set in the right place on their face. He and Evelyn had their first son, Ray, Jr., in 1947. "You know, you can see where I came out of, the hatchway. Las Vegas seems to like Hetrick. The band had won a trophy in one of the competitions during their stay in Honolulu. He had a record, a new song he was trying out. The tanker towed them to Adak, Alaska, and from there, another ship took the crippled destroyer to San Francisco for repairs. 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. 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. That caught the lieutenant colonel's interest. Now, some courses require less than a week of field time. Be immersed in the details of the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor and . As the 50thanniversary of the attack neared, Langdell got a call from a documentary filmmaker. Bruner laughs as he remembers the conversation. Their backs are gray, blue, or brown in color and covered with regularly arranged light spots. They moved to Santa Maria, not far from Santa Barbara, to be near their oldest son, then to Colorado Springs to be near Randy. He heard the same stories from his grandmother and his aunts. "He said, 'I had survival training in the ocean. 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. 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. amc gremlin for sale washington state did sharks attack titanic survivors. "These guys were the first heroes of the war, even though the war hasn't been declared," Ray Jr. says. ", He stops in front of a newspaper, the front page of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin with the headline: "WAR! He and his wife, Doris, have lived in the same house for 54 years. The day after the attack, President Franklin D . "So that's what we did," he says, staring out at the harbor nearly seven decades later. "You can't get a guy hungry in three or four days," Conter says. I wanted to know if you could do it for a couple of weeks.". He struggles to speak at times (though when he's feeling good, he likes to flirt with the nurses). That led to a job in Roswell, the Sagebrush Serenade and Elvis Presley. "It never gets easy to go back," he says. They had voted. "No one knew where the hell I was," Bruner says. He was on Ford Island when the Japanese attacked, training for new assignment. We had survival training on the job. Here is a story he will tell, a memory he will keep. The Saratoga sailed across the South Pacific, to Guam, the Philippines, around New Guinea. Although he is 97, he decided he couldn't miss a final reunion this year and he bought his tickets early. He fought with other sailors in the Battle of Midway and watched the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. He signed up for a Navy program that allowed college graduates to attend officer candidate school and emerge as ensigns within three months. "I just got discharged. ", "I was," Anderson said. 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. Cook got the buddy's telephone number and tried to call him. Potts was based out of the port director's office there were two, one at the harbor, one on the ninth floor of the Aloha Tower in downtown Honolulu but he logged most of his hours at the controls of the motor boat, a Jeep or a station wagon. He's more like family than just a friend.". Russell Penny, killed at Pearl Harbor, was Suffolk's first WWII But one day and one place in Cook's 94 years seem to embody all the rest, the day in December 1941 when the young sailor from Oklahoma escaped the ship that sent America to war. Handout . The best time for a bombing raid was after 1 a.m., when the ship was quiet. He still tools around town in the truck, but it's a classic now, so he drives it almost as often to car shows. "We were told to watch out for them, these guys were assassins," Anderson said. June 12, 2022 . 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. LaRocque took Anderson to San Pedro, where his current ship was anchored. Crippled ships still floated around the mooring posts along Ford Island. 3 gun turret. 4 Comments. "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. Once a week, they motor on into Tulsa, where Marietta takes a china painting class and Lonnie wanders the aisles of sporting-goods stores. USS Indianapolis was a Portland class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy. The cities were in ruins. did sharks attack titanic survivors. Before the war started, a hospital stay that long would have earned a sailor a discharge, but not anymore. He had five brothers, including Jake, and four sisters, all grouped so close in age that paying for college wasn't practical for their folks. His son reaches in the cab and queues up one of the hundreds of songs he and his daughter downloaded onto the new MP3 player. A stunt coordinator helped pull Anderson from the pile of cigarette crates that had broken his fall. He tries to abbreviate it: "We went to California and got married.". The fireball from the explosion engulfed the six men in the box and trapped them. A storm was approaching, a big one by the looks of it. Bruner lives alone, in a post-war neighborhood in the far northern edges of Orange County. "We're right-arm rates." 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. did sharks attack titanic survivors - befalcon.com Would Ken be willing to go as a guest of honor? In Hawaiian custom, sharks were cared for by families who fed them and kept their bodies free of barnacles. The men, their charred skin peeling away, climbed hand-over-hand across the line to safety. "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.

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