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We were going to have a date the next day. Though Conter turned around the first time he ventured toward the sunken Arizona, he has been back since, to see it with other survivors. The best time for a bombing raid was after 1 a.m., when the ship was quiet. Whale sharks are found in warm waters in the Pacific . He had chased Japanese soldiers along the coast of China three years before America declared war on Japan. His story is always in demand, though he'd just as soon not tell it in front of a lot of people. Before the war started, a hospital stay that long would have earned a sailor a discharge, but not anymore. But he became restless. "We made friends. He catalogs the scars and their origin. It was constructed to comply with the 1922 Washington Naval . 2022-06-16 Uncategorized Uncategorized The easy stories he'd tell. The only question was how Langdell would send Libby word about his arrival from Pearl Harbor. "Lou, let's go to flight school," Conter's buddy said one day. Haerry held the rope that connected the ships as another crewman swung an ax to cut it. I asked the boss, 'how many hours is in a day for you?' "No," the worker said. Calhoun told Conter to put in for the assignment. "I'd already sent word, even before the first one got there," he says. The story follows two lifelong friends and a beautiful nurse who are caught up in the horror of an infamous Sunday morning in 1941. He would become the final survivor to be interred in the ship. 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. "The new ones, they didn't know beans.". Langdell knew Libby was friends with a skater in the Ice Follies, which was summering in San Francisco. "It sounded like someone shooting guns. Then we got hit.". As it fell, he was thrown from the ship into the harbor. He tries to abbreviate it: "We went to California and got married.". They could ride to the mainland then and leave for Florida. Conter served on the San Pablo and Half Moon. "One of the last ones" He talks about going aboard the Frazier. The report said most of the guys in the anti-aircraft batteries, where Jake fought, were shot down early in the assault. Two deer racks (his wife shot one, his son the other). "Three months later, I was in Korea.". A second telegram, dated Jan. 6 reported that Conter was alive and would contact his family. "We made so many landings," Anderson said. In order to produce enough energy to hunt and keep their body temperatures up, they have to feed on high-fat animals like seals and large tuna.The sharks have good eyesight, and they have electromagnetic sensors on their snout where they can tell the difference between a seal and a human from over 100 yards away. I wasn't working for nothing.". And my co-pilot, Lou Conter, saved my life. 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. "It never gets easy to go back," he says. He has trouble remembering the past. There were: Cook and another crewman. He hasn't hunted in a while, though he still reloads his own ammunition on a garage workbench. It's in good shape for a paper.". "It's just not going to happen. "Something had happened that no one could comprehend.". There, he lost his twin brother, "It was a bloody catastrophe, a bloody mess," he says. He wasn't happy where he was, so he loaded up his big 12-cylinder Lincoln Zephyr and headed west. Stratton told her why: He had been aboard the USS Arizona when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941. On Oct. 12, Langdell celebrated his 100th birthday with with his older son, John, who flew in from Spearfish, S.D. His dad will return finally at his death. Cook made it off alive. December 5, 2021 at 11:21 a.m. EST. Too many strategic decisions come down from Washington instead of from the commanders on the ground. 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. Cook has returned to Pearl Harbor three times and he likes the Arizona memorial. He keeps the mementos from his experience the maps, the photos, the clippings, the medals, the painting in a room behind a door on the side wall of the living room in the house where he has lived for 54 years. Today, the population can almost reach 1,500 when everyone is home. USS Indianapolis at Mare Island. "I'm a painter," he said. Japan wanted the northern Pacific to control its shipping routes and block U.S. attacks from that direction. Lonnie had taken up trap shooting and hoped to do a little hunting back home. A woman from Illinois drew Bruner's name. It sits today in the carport outside his home. Discipline seems less important than it was in his day. 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. An electro-mechanical computer would aim the guns. by Pia Peterson. Langdell says only this: "It took two days to take all the bodies. "Here's the one that told my mother I was missing in action on the Arizona," he says. 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. 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. 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. "The station wagon was for the captains of some of the ships that would come in," he said. "There's the battleships there's the Nevada, the Arizona, the Tennessee, the West Virginia, Maryland, the Oklahoma. She nods and smiles. "If you can stand up and stay up while we change the linen on this bed, we'll see about it.". The treaty also gave the US Navy exclusive access to use Pearl Harbor as a coaling and repair station. We can't see our own ships. One day in May, crewmen spotted two periscopes in the water and the Frazier opened fire. I think that's what kept me living to this day.". 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. If the shark feels like a dead fish isn't worth its time, it will leave without wasting more energy. They will celebrate 65 years of marriage in April. "When I got back home, my doctors here wanted to know about my medical background," Bruner said. Similarly, the . "I cleaned up my language," he says, admitting he deployed a salty vocabulary, even after leaving active duty. Military Casualties. Anderson grew up in the Red River Valley of northern Minnesota, the son of a prominent local judge. "They paid me by the day," he said. 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. He needed a truck to carry equipment back and forth, so he scouted out a car lot and bought a 1965 Chevrolet pickup. Occasionally, they would close the store and hook a 33-foot trailer to a pick-up truck. He called back a few days later. a director yelled. Hetrick was still just 21 by then, but a seasoned sailor who shared little in common with the 17-year-old kid who left high school and joined the Navy on his parents' signature. Since the 1920s . You're on your own, every day.'". I guess he'd do anything he could for me. That caught the lieutenant colonel's interest. Someone from the bureau had been asking questions. "I ran the decompression chamber on jobs. north but again I'm not a shark expert. "No one knew where the hell I was," Bruner says. All rights reserved. He had a ticket home to Minnesota, but decided to find a place to stay and come up with a plan. 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. Sea turtles. Tall pines tower over the house. He told Ray about the plans to honor Pearl Harbor survivors at the statehouse. When Anderson said he was, his old friend was incredulous. he said. As soon as he turned 18, he enlisted in the Navy. He was smart enough to excel, but started cutting classes not long after the start of his first semester. Usually, sharks will prioritize eating: Smaller fish. UPDATE:Joe Langdell diedin February 2015, months after this report. The United States declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, the day following the attack on Pearl Harbor. (See Pearl Harbor Attack.) This time the objective was clear. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. The Frazier patrolled the South Pacific at first, but in early 1943, steamed northward toward Alaska, where Japan was trying to secure positions in the Aleutian Islands. But there are moments when he knows what he did meant something. 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. "What are you looking at?" "I told another kid if they come back again tonight, I'm leaving.". Before the big battleship could leave Puget Sound, Anderson volunteered for another mission, joining the small Asiatic Fleet along the coast of China. Stories of survival. He left home at 5 every morning and took a ferry from Jamestown to the Navy base. He watched the band perform and stood as a survivor of the Arizona, one of the sailors who lived. It never returned, crippled in the Battle of the Coral Sea and scuttled by the Navy to keep the enemy from salvaging her. If a plane crashed, crocodiles awaited in the river. They met at a dance at the YWCA on North State Street. So he did. Almost imperceptibly, he sways. "We lit into them, started firing on them," Bruner said. Did he know anything about meteorology? They knew the oil tanker Tippecanoe was out there, but couldn't see her. 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. At 93, he is one of the last survivors ofthe attack on the Arizona. After that, he steamed north to Kodiak, Alaska, where other Navy ships were trying to turn back Japanese inroads throughout the strategically important Aleutian Islands. She likes the story of how they tied the knot. And he has watched with dismay the changes in survival training. The steeple clock chimed and a statue of an angel wielding a sword emerged from an alcove and knocked Anderson off the steeple. He was in the studio on Valentine's Day 1955 when a nervous young man walked in. 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. "I do as much as I can to keep his story alive," his son says. Potts picked up the Colt 45 he'd found on Ford Island on Dec. 7, 1941. Finally, she located some of Bruner's tax records and found his address and telephone number. His work turned toward survival training in a new military program called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. He had turned 90 and was starting over again. Cook was discharged in 1948 in San Diego and stuck around California, where he worked as a metal finisher at Van Nuys manufacturing plant. 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. When they said, 'grab your sea bags and let's go,' I did.". Some even extend their consumption to seabirds. At 100, he is the oldest. He was able to visit the national cemetery at an area called the Punch Bowl. He can't relive those images anymore. The next morning, the Arizona was still burning as oil flowed out of her full tanks. Another five minutes, Bruner figured, and they'd have run out of ammunition. I had to take them to the parties and sit there until it was over.". He knew his brother hadn't made it off the Arizona alive, but he didn't know much else. Minutes later, the Japanese attacked and the Arizona was on fire, sinking beneath the surface. The Macdonough pulled picket patrol often, protecting other troops and guarding against kamikaze attacks by Japanese planes. 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. It turned out little was the right word. "It's hard to explain." With eyes too close or two far apart, a crewman could deliver faulty readings. He was thrown into the ocean and waited 57 hours to be rescued while shipmates around him were eaten by sharks. As they talked, Ray mentioned that his dad had been aboard the Arizona. "I bought it at the receiving station in Pearl Harbor. The next night, an American PT boat retrieved all 10 men. Photos of the ship and other survivors at reunions in Honolulu. "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.". The song, "Hound Dog" and the singer, Elvis Presley, both went over pretty well, the way Cactus Jack remembers it. He stayed on the 17thfloor of a hotel on Waikiki Beach. She was attending an art academy to learn dress designing. On the same bookshelf sit mementos from his time on the Arizona. Yes, he'll say, he was on the Arizona and he survived. Not war stories, usually, not unless one of them has had it out with a doctor or a pushy clerk. Not long after, a second plane dropped a life raft and all 10 of the crew made to shore and, the next night, back to the base. Their ordeal . One day, a Navy officer came on board and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer for an assignment in the aviation section. They spoil their granddaughters and can now move on to a new great-granddaughter. Pictures of past parades. They were dead in the water.". Then they'd go by.". Three days later, he and his buddy were on a ship to San Francisco and then a train to Pensacola. If a shark comes too close, hit it in the nose with your fist as hard as you can.". He then spent 14 months recovering in Great . The gun took away some of the terror he had felt from the moment he saw the first bomber, the panic he felt when he found the armories on board the ship locked. Bruner was put in charge of the gun batteries. USS Indianapolis was a Portland class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy. "When we got up into the Aleutians, we started banging on the Japanese that had already landed," Bruner said. During the conference, the Pringle sailed into the Mediterranean Sea and anchored in a river. He likes chocolate and is disappointed if Ray Jr. forgets it. A clerk tried to complete the process, normally a routine, if messy, step to secure the permit. She returned, puzzled. As they walked toward it, Langdell reeled at an odor. He had a record, a new song he was trying out. You're the bravest man I ever know. This all changed when the United States declared war on Japan, bringing the country into World War II. The Japanese-American mother, father and their three children. He finished his stint in the Navy in Shanghai, working shore patrol the way he did back in Honolulu. He touches the diving helmet. After about six months of training in San Diego, Hetrick returned to Honolulu and joined the USS Saratoga, the sister ship of the Lexington. He said he wanted Anderson to join the on-air staff. His wife, Libby, who died two years ago. As far he was concerned he was saving lives.". The pieces the largest is about as long as a bus sit in a salvage yard on the Waipi'o Peninsula on Oahu. The mangled bodies such as J.J. Astor was probably caused by the 1st smokestack falling into the water and. Enemy patrol planes spotted the ships and the raid was canceled. "They agreed.". Be immersed in the details of the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor and . '", "Some things," he says, "you don't know about what they'll mean until years later.". He is one of nine living survivors of the Arizona and, at 97, he has amassed a lifetime of unforgettable days. evolution golf cart forum 1914-1941:The mightiest ship at sea | Dec. 7, 1941: The attack that changed the world| Documentary: 'Witness to Infamy' | 2014: The final toast. Knives. Still traveling at 17 knots, the Indianapolis began taking on massive amounts of water; the ship sank in just 12 minutes. In the late 1930s, American foreign policy in the Pacific hinged on support for China, and . 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. "They were saying, when it first started, some of the ones whose station was up here ", He traces his finger up onto the main forward mast, to the crow's nest and the bridge. The flare exploded and started a fire, which forced the plane into the water. Hetrick recovered. "We'd patrol at night. Farther down the paneled wall hangs a painting of the USS Arizona, the battleship Navy recruit Potts boarded in December 1939. They traveled around the country, meeting up with other USS Arizona survivors, with shipmates from the Frazier. 1. "Remember Pearl Harbor!" became a rallying cry for the U.S. during World War II. Squid. It scared him a little. Stratton logged thousands of miles of travel. "You know, you can see where I came out of, the hatchway. OAHU BOMBED BY JAPANESE PLANES", "That's one of the first extras that was put out that day," Potts says. He is one of nine living survivors from the attack on the USS Arizona, the battleship he boarded in 1941 when he was 17. 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. "It was like a hard jolt.". Many have since died. Stratton hesitated, then confirmed her suspicion. 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. Wherever he goes on the pickup, people ask him about his experience. No one among the groups knew where he was or what he was doing, but the woman persisted. "Once after we crossed the equator, one of the planes came back," he says. We hauled it all back in.". One of the first people to do that.". 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. They are reminders of a moment in time he can never escape, a moment he sees again and again. For a lot of people, meeting Elvis and playing one of his first records on the air might sound like one of life's truly unforgettable days. Golfers play through 50 yards from Conter's driveway. He had visited before, but this trip meant more. ", "Fine," the worker said. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. "That's what I'm catching up now. He started chatting up a regular customer, a contractor, and got a job building houses. Just stories, the kind buddies tell each other. He had held on to it through the war. Hetrick slept on the battleship USS Tennessee, which had been moored just ahead of the Arizona along Ford Island. @webtv.net wrote in message. They called the Marines out with rifles to protect the plane and the guys while we hauled it in.". But he could not be prepared for what he found on the charred hulk of the battleship. Some even like to dine on smaller shark species! And he was allowed to visit a part of the Arizona few people ever see. Today, he tries to pass on what he knows to students of history. He returned after the war to his home along the railway in eastern Oklahoma. 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 liked the idea of working as an aircraft mechanic, so he volunteered. He's never been back. He says that decision was the best thing he could have done. They listened for their names and their service branch. "I'd never seen so many guys with so much guts," he said. His job was to put the primer in the big 14-inch gun. "They played country music because the people here loved that," Anderson says. In the spring of 1943, the Macdonough headed north toward the Aleutian Islands, where Japan was trying to establish strategic strongholds that could control shipping lanes and thwart allied attacks on the Japanese islands. As Cactus Jack, Anderson made a few concessions to his seagoing past. Song's got some zip to it, he said. Japanese torpedo bombers hit the Lexington and crippled the big ship. Helpless, I watched your bomb sink the Arizona in nine minutes.". As the USS Arizona burned and sunk into the harbor, Stratton and five other men had been trapped on an anti-aircraft gun control platform on the ship's foremast, burned in a fireball when below-deck ammunition exploded. When he dies, his remains will be interred under the No. "The Navy Department deeply regrets to inform you that your son Louis Anthony Counter quartermaster third class US Navy is missing following action in the performance of his duty.". 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. 3 gun turret. "It hadn't really sunk in what had happened.". The ship steamed toward the Asiatic Pacific and soon Anderson was chasing Japanese forces again, only this time the United States was at war. He still will not talk about it. He was soon aboard the USS Frazier, which left the shipyard at San Francisco in July 1942. Deer and rabbits wander the hillside. In 1940, Anderson reported to the Arizona once more, joining his brother for the first time since they had enlisted. "They paid everybody in two dollar bills back then. Salmon. 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.". He met up with some of the guys from the turret crew and they hopped a boat to shore, where there was a call for volunteers to join the Navy's destroyers. An impressive collection of restaurant menus from 30 years of cross-country searches for used cars. It was as if he had none. He was 20 when he escaped the burning wreckage ofthe USS Arizonain Pearl Harbor. The Pentagon said Tuesday it would exhume and try to identify the remains of nearly 400 sailors and Marines killed when the USS Oklahoma sank in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Ray Jr. has arranged for his father's remains to be interred in the sunken Arizona, an honor accorded any of the sailors or Marines who survived the attack. The inscription reads "Spirit of Aloha Award, Timpview High School Marching Band.". He waited for the result. He worked on board as a mechanic for a torpedo squadron and ended up in charge of the hydraulic shop. "We took all the bodies we could find.". They went out for coffee afterward. "I would tell them. All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. He and his father chat a little. About a month later, Japanese suicide bombers sunk the Pringle near Okinawa. "He said, 'I had survival training in the ocean. "The stuff he likes.". "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. Haerry ran away from home to join the Navy. "But it was a lot better than being shot at.". He doesn't like to talk about the attack. Without them, Riel said, who knows where we'd be today. The Navy wanted to keep him in Idaho, working with new recruits at a boot camp, but he pushed for a seagoing assignment and wound up on the destroyer USS Stack as a gunner's mate. 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 remembers the crewman trying to climb a ladder to escape through a hatchway on the deck. "Iremember hearing explosions at first," he says. Hetrick saw a new opportunity and joined. Bruner thought it an odd request. UPDATE: Bruner died in 2019. "I had to help my father out of his seat. 5 Jun. In California, he earned his naval seaman's license and went to work on a drilling rig offshore near Santa Barbara. Once a week, they motor on into Tulsa, where Marietta takes a china painting class and Lonnie wanders the aisles of sporting-goods stores. "That lumber was so damn green then, we used to kid we had to shoot the squirrels out of it.". They were having trouble reading his prints, she told Stratton. I had one pair of dungarees and that was it, that and a towel and shaving gear.". Haerry felt the entire ship life out of the water. "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. Were there sharks Pearl Harbor? Pearl Harbor was the site of the unprovoked aerial attack on the United States by Japan on December 7, 1941. The guns used the same type of control mechanisms Bruner had mastered on the Arizona.