He wanted one last unforgettable day. He tried to keep his thoughts on the work in the office. The body parts we put in pillow cases. The next night, an American PT boat retrieved all 10 men. Yes, he'll say, he was on the Arizona and he survived. 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 looks forward to his time with the guys from his years in the Navy. "Talk about treating you like royalty," he says. Bruner started as a painter, trained as a carpenter, then helped start a new sheet-metal department. She tracked him to the Los Angeles area, then started a phone search. He likes to wear a cap that identifies him as a veteran of the Arizona. An impressive collection of restaurant menus from 30 years of cross-country searches for used cars. I don't think sharks go that far. As he waited, he had a feeling he knew what would happen, but he didn't say anything. Aviators most often arose from left-arm rates. He spent long months on a tender, a vessel that carries equipment, parts and other supplies for ships at sea. Although he is 97, he decided he couldn't miss a final reunion this year and he bought his tickets early. "I went and found the head guy and by the time I got through explaining things to him," Potts says, "my name was never on that list again.". A carnivorous shark diet usually includes fish, mollusks, and crustaceans. "I told the men, 'If a shark comes close, hit it in the nose with your fist as hard as you can.'". The war's over.". "I cleaned up my language," he says, admitting he deployed a salty vocabulary, even after leaving active duty. "I really miss it.". 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. Haerry felt the entire ship life out of the water. UPDATE: Bruner died in 2019. But John Anderson, the Navy chief petty officer who called himself Cactus Jack on the air, had a good head start already. "The kids coming up now have never heard of it," he says, his voice tinged with sadness and dismay. "When we got up into the Aleutians, we started banging on the Japanese that had already landed," Bruner said. The Americans stopped the Japanese ships and wiped out some of the top officers. Finally, the Navy gave him a medical discharge. "We picked up a couple of girls and made the rounds. His name was Cactus Jack and to his fans in southeastern New Mexico, he was the dulcet-voiced host of Sagebrush Serenade, a program of country music on KSWS radio. All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. The United States was a neutral country at the time; the attack led to its formal entry into World War II the next day. The men helped one another, holding up anyone who weakened. Stratton hesitated, then confirmed her suspicion. He doesn't like to talk about the attack. '", "Some things," he says, "you don't know about what they'll mean until years later.". As the ships turned around, a squadron of enemy bombers appeared. Stratton falls easily into the memories of his years on diving boats. Whether they're a spiny dogfish all the way to great whites, sharks love eating fish. A woman from Illinois drew Bruner's name. I asked the boss, 'how many hours is in a day for you?' Haerry accepted the medal, but found he could not speak. The buddy wasn't home, but his son-in-law answered. He eases the truck out of the carport, far enough to show it off. He told Ray about the plans to honor Pearl Harbor survivors at the statehouse. One of the survivors would receive the Rhode Island Cross. The paneled room behind the door in the living room of the Provo house is filled with trophies of almost any imaginable sort. Tall pines tower over the house. They eventually bought a home-furnishings outlet farther inland and finally built their own store in Yuba City, north of Sacramento. ", He stops in front of a newspaper, the front page of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin with the headline: "WAR! "I hadn't told him he was going to be individually honored that day," he says. When he left Morris the first time in 1939 after high school, Cook wasn't sure where he'd end up. He and his wife, Doris, have lived in the same house for 54 years. He owns a chunk of the ship's burned deck, a reminder he keeps in a box with a few other items. "It was boring," Potts says. 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. We cut the torpedoes loose.". Stratton climbed to his feet and, biting back the pain, he stood and when his bed was ready, he collapsed back into it. Usually, sharks will prioritize eating: Smaller fish. Haerry would come home on those days with cigar boxes full of the coins. Another five minutes, Bruner figured, and they'd have run out of ammunition. Just stories, the kind buddies tell each other. He was nervous about volunteering for anything, but he raised his hand. They met at a dance at the YWCA on North State Street. "I got the lay a wreath in front of the names of the fallen," he says quietly. 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. "Sure, let's see it." The Langdells ended up honeymooning in Monterey and Carmel on the central California coast. By Christmas, he was in a hospital at Mare Island near San Francisco. Anderson picked up and moved to New Mexico. Bruner keeps mementos of his time on the Arizona in the sitting room. He's not so fond of the crowds around Honolulu and doesn't plan to go back. The Macdonough pulled picket patrol often, protecting other troops and guarding against kamikaze attacks by Japanese planes. Almost three decades later, he was the plant manager, second-in-command. The Japanese-American mother, father and their three children. The lead-up to the Pearl Harbor attack. The Coghlan left San Francisco in September 1942 and sailed toward Pearl Harbor for an assignment. "Are you out of the Navy, Andy?" One day, a young fellow knocked on his door. By 1991, the 50thanniversary of the attack, the number of living Arizona crewmen had shrunk. pearl harbor 1941. uss arizona. "It was like a hard jolt.". 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 . As they talked, Ray mentioned that his dad had been aboard the Arizona. On the morning of May 8, the fighting intensified as American aircraft tried to turn back the enemy planes. The fellow he was talking with recognized Anderson's voice and they realized they had served together on the Yangtze Patrol before Pearl Harbor. "You either had a nice place aboard a ship and were high and dry or you didn't have anything," he reasoned. He sits in his wheelchair as his son recites the narrative, keeping his father's story alive. By the end of the day, had persuaded Anderson to sign up for the Navy Reserve. And as the victims' blood spread through the water, sharks - which can smell blood up to three miles away - were attracted to the defenceless sailors, creating a feeding frenzy. The crew was evacuated and another U.S. destroyer scuttled the Lexington to keep the Japanese from capturing her. They had voted. elephant tail jewelry did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. I saw one airplane, with a big red meatball on the side. Haerry had made two runs to shore on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. Helpless, I watched your bomb sink the Arizona in nine minutes.". When the regular stuntmen returned and the studio cut loose the subs, Ladd hired some of them to work on his house in the Holmby Hills above Los Angeles. As the boat heaved, the man with the ax missed and hit Haerry's hand, nearly severing it from his wrist. Then we got hit.". In his dining room in Colorado Springs, he keeps a replica of a hard diving helmet, the kind his divers used. It was carrying parts of the Little Boy atomic bomb as a top secret mission and the Navy learned about its sinking four days after ot was torpedoed. The Saratoga sailed across the South Pacific, to Guam, the Philippines, around New Guinea. 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. Hetrick was on board during battles at Midway and Wake Island and for the U.S. invasion of Iwo Jima early in 1945. Joe proposed and Libby accepted. Sharks hunt fish by using sensory receptors located on their sides. It fit in that location. From Virginia, he went to Utah, to France and then to Albuquerque, where he retired in November 1961. "They paid everybody in two dollar bills back then. He and Libby moved west to Walnut Creek east of San Francisco. He's not sure he'd have learned that lesson if he hadn't enlisted in the Navy. By the time they were back, the icicles were forming again and two more guys would go out.". The first couple of trips back to Hawaii were difficult. Tensions between Japan and the U.S. simmered throughout the early 20th century and came to a boil in the 1930s as Japan attempted to conquer China, even . ", "I was," Anderson said. "They tried to jump off. The man told him later he had broken both his hips in one of the explosions and had survived only because Hetrick was there to urge him on. He was eating breakfast when he heard the first pops of the attack planes strafing Battleship Row. Guns. They would be married in San Francisco, before the Frazier set sail. Sea turtles. With a total of 1,195 men aboard, about 300 went down with the ship. If a plane crashed, crocodiles awaited in the river. "Through all that, I never did lose consciousness," he says. Japan wanted the northern Pacific to control its shipping routes and block U.S. attacks from that direction. "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. 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. Pearl Harbor attack, (December 7, 1941), surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, by the Japanese that precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. Naming Pearl Harbor. He motions toward his gnarled ear. "Some of the ships I was on had guys who liked to play the guitar, so I knew something about it. Her father was an engineer and a top executive for a dredging company with a big Navy contract. 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. what is florentine milan straw. Friends told them when the left the church, keep the water on their left. / Reuters. A framed painting of the Arizona, the repair ship Vestal next to it. 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. Colombia. They called the Marines out with rifles to protect the plane and the guys while we hauled it in.". The tanker towed them to Adak, Alaska, and from there, another ship took the crippled destroyer to San Francisco for repairs. What they didn't count on was the side-street parking. He built a reputation as a guy who could bring in the harvest on time. "I put on two life jackets," Hetrick said. "Once after we crossed the equator, one of the planes came back," he says. The men followed orders in a fog of wonderment and confusion. "They said, 'If you re-enlist, we'll send her over.' 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. He thinks back. "That's what I want to remember. "We got into San Francisco," he says, "and they never even opened my bags. He had chased Japanese soldiers along the coast of China three years before America declared war on Japan. He likes chocolate and is disappointed if Ray Jr. forgets it. 5 Jun. He was soon flying one of the Navy's Black Cats, a squadron of long-range patrol bombers painted black for night missions. 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. 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. Inside, he found broken bottles scattered in a soggy soup of booze and cardboard. After the war, he worked as a stuntman for Orson Welles and John Wayne and helped build Alan Ladd's house in the hills outside Hollywood. We got as close as 5,000 yards, which was point-blank for those ships. She nods and smiles. He liked the idea of working as an aircraft mechanic, so he volunteered. I heard the general say, 'You're a remarkable guy.' He could see the band was sincere. Pearl Harbor became one of the major reason for the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy (in 1893) and the kingdoms annexation (in 1898) by the US government.The Spanish American war began that same year in the Philippines and Cuba which ended with the US winning both territories from the Spanish. Nobody could debate what that was, no question about it.". (See Pearl Harbor Attack.) The best time for a bombing raid was after 1 a.m., when the ship was quiet. The exhausted crew dragged ashore an hour later and hid in the jungle, fearful they would be captured by Japanese soldiers. In the documentary, "The Life and Death of a Lady," Langdell and Abe speak, side by side on the memorial. "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. A while later, he and Marietta were on the road again, to a missile base in Sturgess, S.D., to gas lines in Wisconsin and North Dakota. By 1991, the 50th . The Saratoga was attacked by six Japanese suicide bombers within about 24 hours. "It's easier if you come see it," the sailor said. He got the west coast and I got the east coast. The Saratoga had returned to Pearl Harbor by the time the Japanese surrendered. They knew the oil tanker Tippecanoe was out there, but couldn't see her. Cook never got a chance to catch up with his buddy, but marveled at the connections he seemed to make from his short stint aboard the Arizona. Langdell knew Libby was friends with a skater in the Ice Follies, which was summering in San Francisco. He knew his brother hadn't made it off the Arizona alive, but he didn't know much else. Never would've found it.". ages 2, 3 and 8, together with a 14-year-old cousin . For years, Stratton wore the scars from the Arizona without talking about them much. He had visited before, but this trip meant more. As he recounts the experience, he rubs his hands together, then holds them out, turning them over. "I do as much as I can to keep his story alive," his son says. "Never heard of it.". Seabirds. Japanese torpedo bombers hit the Lexington and crippled the big ship. queensland figure skating. They found a way to take prints from the edges of his fingers, enough to satisfy the law. "We don't think you'd make it. Would Langdell agree to meet Abe on film? on the Arizonawhen the battleship sankon Dec. 7. the final survivor to be interred in the ship. Bruner was burned over more than two-thirds of his body. I wasn't working for nothing.". Conter was at the young lady's house one day when her father received an important visitor: Admiral William Calhoun, the commander of base force for the Pacific Fleet. This all changed when the United States declared war on Japan, bringing the country into World War II. His wife, Libby, who died two years ago. "I just didn't want to. He stayed on the 17thfloor of a hotel on Waikiki Beach. "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. He decided to head back to the water. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. 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 ship was to turn around and steam toward Alaska. World War II veterans are a special breed, Lt. Col. Denis Riel said as the men accepted the medals. Hetrick still likes to talk about the new shoes he bought the day before the attack in Honolulu. The job wasn't what he expected in September, when he was discharged from the Navy. Haerry ran away from home to join the Navy. "We were told to watch out for them, these guys were assassins," Anderson said. A sailor on the repair ship Vestal, tied up nearby, spotted them and threw them a line. For Haerry, McBride had a the state's highest military honor, the Rhode Island Cross. I had to take them to the parties and sit there until it was over.". He started on a small station, playing organ music. He would work in the port director's office, delivering sealed packets to the captains of Navy ships. While this is a genuine threat to safety, it continues to remain statistically unlikely. They were dead in the water.". As Cactus Jack, Anderson made a few concessions to his seagoing past. The crews learned the routines of the Japanese ships. He fiddles with the radio. He had turned down a promotion to ensign, preferring the camaraderie of the enlisted ranks. "I'm a painter," he said. Salvage work would begin soon on others. 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. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, just before 8:00 a.m. (local time) on Sunday, December 7, 1941. But he doesn't tell his story anymore, not on his own. They bought a small ranch and, while Lonnie continued to work welding jobs, they grew walnuts, almonds, peaches, apples, nectarines, cherries and grapes. A platform marked the wreckage of the USS Arizona. And he has watched with dismay the changes in survival training. He and a buddy had been talking about their future in the Navy. The ship was still a day away from Honolulu when the captain received new orders. 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. "I ain't seen 'em since.". Or both. "One day our boat was stacked with two dollar bills," he said. I'd been told things like that before. "In three days, we rescued 219 coast watchers without losing anybody," Conter said. He wasn't ready to see it all again, to sharpen the memories he'd tried to dull. He wanted men with eyes set in the right place on their face. Ken Potts eases around the side of the pool table, waving toward items like a museum tour guide in a back room. The crew unloaded anything they could do without, to keep the damaged hull above the water line. The bomb that shattered the Arizona's bow exploded as Cook and the others climbed out of the turret. ", "Fine," the worker said. Minutes later, the Japanese attacked and the Arizona was on fire, sinking beneath the surface. "He's there anytime I call him," Hetrick says. Conter helped establish training bases in Florida and California and in 1965, he returned to Pearl Harbor to write training materials for troops headed to Vietnam. Hetrick saw a new opportunity and joined. He enrolled, but after a couple of weeks, the noisy streetcars and the police sirens kept him up all night. He would draw out snippets and stash them away, collecting them until he would weave the barest narrative. ", "Baloney," Conter replied. It never returned, crippled in the Battle of the Coral Sea and scuttled by the Navy to keep the enemy from salvaging her. That caught the lieutenant colonel's interest. He describes the store of booze they pulled out of safe and the money. You need the exercise. "I had to start training the new recruits on every machine," Bruner said. He and Evelyn had their first son, Ray, Jr., in 1947. The offshore diving business could leave its own kind of scars. Conter and others in his group boarded a boat to go out to the platform and see his old ship. "They agreed.". By then, he'd seen the world, witnessed history before it was history. For a long time, he didn't think he would ever return to Pearl Harbor. "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. It sits today in the carport outside his home. We can't see our own ships. His dad has never sought recognition for his service on the Arizona and barely talks about the day of the attack. 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. The river wound through dense vegetation, leaving 15 or 20 feet of clearance on each side of the plane. He clashed with the station manager of the radio station and finally quit. Finally, after a few weeks on the tanker, Potts was handed a new assignment. Just stay together, hold hands and kick slowly 'cause there'll be sharks around. We got into a run-and-gun battle. The report said most of the guys in the anti-aircraft batteries, where Jake fought, were shot down early in the assault. 11 Oldest Pearl Harbor Survivors (Updated 2021) December 7, 1941 is a date that everyone in America has committed to memory. He had turned 90 and was starting over again. a director yelled. He would sail to San Francisco on one of the cruise ships refitted to move troops, the Lurline, or maybe the Matsonia. Some common species of fish sharks hunt include: Tuna. We can't let it happen again.". No sharks did not eat Titanic passengers. The ones after that were, too. "It's just not going to happen. Dec 12 2014. 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. "They played country music because the people here loved that," Anderson says. The ship carried four 5-inch anti-aircraft guns and six half-inch machine guns, and, initially, five 21-inch torpedo tubes. Pearl Harbor: Directed by Michael Bay. 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. Their ordeal . "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.". In January, another ship took him to San Francisco to the Navy hospital on Treasure Island. Yet in a place where you couldn't cross the street without running into a war vet, Bruner was not just another ex-sailor who made it home. 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 . He squeezes past the pool table, past the photos and the maps and the medals. I quit. "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. In 2006, Hetrick returned to Pearl Harbor for the 65thanniversary of the Japanese attack. The family sold maple syrup distilled from the trees on their farm. All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. Military Casualties. Five years later, in 2011, he got a call from the band director at Timpview High School in Provo. Pearl Harbor was a United States Naval base on the island of Oahu, located west of Honolulu. It was constructed to comply with the 1922 Washington Naval . person grazed by a shark), nor incidents classified by the International Shark Attack File as boat attacks, scavenge, or doubtful. His dad operated a livery stable and a small dairy and later earned money as an auctioneer. Anderson grew up in the Red River Valley of northern Minnesota, the son of a prominent local judge. The Edsall sailed farther north, then headed to the Philippines, where they played baseball with a group of indigenous Moros, who had fought the United States more than 20 years earlier. "Why do you like the hat, dad?" In the waters off Honolulu, he confronted his memories. He wanted to interview Langdell for his project. He stayed aboard the Solace about a month. "I appreciate your thoughtfulness. "I knew everything that was going on.". "Sometimes they'd get shooting at you and you'd look at the shells and they looked like they were going to hit you. With a gun, he could defend himself. Bruner was one of them. Conter told the admiral he was interested in flight school, but doubted he would earn admission. The ship accompanied General Douglas MacArthur to the Philippines and was anchored in the harbor off Nagasaki, Japan, when the second atomic bomb exploded. Hetrick shrugs, trying to get comfortable in the recliner. It turned out little was the right word. 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. She likes the story of how they tied the knot. For Hetrick, the section of mooring line links him to those final moments of the Arizona. He called back a few days later. With Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, William Lee Scott. Cook worked in California, mostly welding jobs, until the union he belonged to called a strike. 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. Cook was a gunner's mate on the Arizona. "That's what I'm catching up now. "We took all the bodies we could find.". In 2006, Langdell walked along the steep shoreline of Ford Island, the Arizona memorial in the background. 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.