He tried to save as many injured crewmen as he could, but when the sun set on Dec. 7, 1941, he was one of just 335 sailors who did not perish. For a long time, he didn't think he would ever return to Pearl Harbor. He ran to the anti-aircraft battery, his battle station, but there was no ammunition ready. "He told you the story?" "It just didn't appeal to me to bring it up," he says. "After 36 hours, I still hadn't put in a day. But he is proud of his service, of the other sailors on the Arizona. ", "I was," Anderson said. As he prepared to jump off the burning ship, he took the shoes off and set them on the quarterdeck. Doctors and nurses wove among gurneys, administering morphine shots and looking for the victims most in need. The Lexington sailed out of Pearl Harbor not long after. His mother suggested Hills Business College in Oklahoma City. By 1991, the 50th . He acknowledged the wreath. "I was back here on leave before the war started and he was here too," Cook says. He was soon aboard the USS Frazier, which left the shipyard at San Francisco in July 1942. They trade stories. We were going to have a date the next day. Soon, he became one of the earliest TV weathermen and an evening fixture in Roswell homes, or at least those with televisions. "On the day I swore into the Air Force, I was still in my Navy uniform," he said. He still tools around town in the truck, but it's a classic now, so he drives it almost as often to car shows. Haerry held the rope that connected the ships as another crewman swung an ax to cut it. An impressive collection of restaurant menus from 30 years of cross-country searches for used cars. Stratton could not. He had a record, a new song he was trying out. His service on the Arizona also seemed to give him added credibility among the young sailors. He went to work as a junior accountant for a prominent Boston firm. By Michael E. Ruane. The band would cover all expenses for him and Doris. Bruner toured Nagasaki in a Jeep with other Navy officers and chief mates. "Would you like a job?" The Coghlan left San Francisco in September 1942 and sailed toward Pearl Harbor for an assignment. He was active in those groups for many years, serving as president of one devoted to the Arizona. He got to know Alan Ladd, who had starred in a series of war movies. Five years ago, Haerry moved into a nursing home, He stays in a room on the second floor. He grew up in New Jersey and after high school, enrolled at MIT in Boston. DES MOINES, Iowa - A World War II veteran thought to be the oldest survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack died last month at 103. The fireball from the explosion engulfed the six men in the box and trapped them. This time the objective was clear. I wasn't working for nothing.". "Cover the decks, anywhere you can find them up to the top of the masts.". Conter told the admiral he was interested in flight school, but doubted he would earn admission. He was 20 when he escaped the burning wreckage ofthe USS Arizonain Pearl Harbor. 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. Japan wanted the northern Pacific to control its shipping routes and block U.S. attacks from that direction. When he first arrived at Pearl Harbor, Hetrick wasn't even old enough to buy a beer until he found a place where they didn't ask questions if a guy was in a service uniform. The attack was devastating for the Americans, though the Japanese . "If you can stand up and stay up while we change the linen on this bed, we'll see about it.". Photographing survivors of the battleship USS Arizona. Seventy-three years later, he is one of just nine survivors of the attack on the Arizona. ", "You will go to the Arizona and you will take off all the bodies and body parts above the water line," the man said. Answer: Yes- in 1945, after the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese torpedo. The body parts we put in pillow cases. He will tell his story to people he knows well and trusts, but he is 93 and the details are fading from his memory. Hotline & WhatsApp : +971556212280 | Landline : +97143873596 , +97167499398 james reynolds obituary. A pistol sits on top of his television at home. "They were holed up behind sandbags, but they never got hit.". He left home at 5 every morning and took a ferry from Jamestown to the Navy base. Potts was touched. 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 . 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. I quit. He displayed no pictures, kept no mementos that his family knew about. Bruner keeps mementos of his time on the Arizona in the sitting room. In Hawaiian custom, sharks were cared for by families who fed them and kept their bodies free of barnacles. By then, he'd seen the world, witnessed history before it was history. But he clutches the cap and puts it on as he sits in an easy chair by the window. The telegram, which misspelled Conter's last name, promises further information and asks his family not to divulge Conter's posting. "We were told to watch out for them, these guys were assassins," Anderson said. The Coghlan supported Army landings and Navy bombing runs. They offered to perform at a gathering of Utah survivors. He won't talk much about the escape, or about the men who didn't make it across. In time, he felt no anger toward the Japanese, but he couldn't forget what they did. Discipline seems less important than it was in his day. Salmon. One morning, he was at his desk, catching up on paperwork, when he heard a vehicle screech to a halt outside. When they sent me my discharge, I just stayed here.". One day, some smaller boats sailed past. The shock of jumping into a harbor knowing he couldn't swim. Anderson had finished his first day as a Hollywood stunt man. The Saratoga had returned to Pearl Harbor by the time the Japanese surrendered. He fiddles with the radio. On the same bookshelf sit mementos from his time on the Arizona. Posted on December 7, 2021, 5:08 pm. They moved to Modesto, Calif., where he got a job driving a produce truck in the fruit orchards. They met at a dance at the YWCA on North State Street. He doesn't need to say which Saturday night by now. He motions toward his gnarled ear. "It didn't take me that long. When was the shark attack on the Jersey Shore? Conter's crews flew missions across the South Pacific: New Guinea, Borneo, New Britain, the coast off Perth, Australia. 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. "I ran the decompression chamber on jobs. In May 1942, the Aylwin joined a task force in the Coral Sea with the USS Lexington, one of the Navy's early aircraft carriers. Bruner, who turned 94 in November, is now one of nine living USS Arizona crewmen who survived the ship's sinking. Nightmares invade his sleep when he remembers those final moments. He told his story as his son, Ted, recorded it on video. Toward the end the war, Langdell was stationed in the Philippines, at a base in Manila. Conter served on the San Pablo and Half Moon. "So they knew.". 4 Comments. The United States was a neutral country at the time; the attack led to its formal entry into World War II the next day. Until his partner ran off with all the money. 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. For years, Stratton wore the scars from the Arizona without talking about them much. Did sharks eat Titanic victims? He was also interviewing a Japanese pilot named Zenji Abe, a pilot who had taken part in the raid on Pearl Harbor in 1941. I wanted to know if you could do it for a couple of weeks.". "They played country music because the people here loved that," Anderson says. Hetrick thought about it. Today, Lou and Valerie Conter live in a two-level house at the end of a winding road on a golf course in Grass Valley, a mountain town about 60 miles outside Sacramento. He got the west coast and I got the east coast. Kuwait. As it fell, he was thrown from the ship into the harbor. Bruner's neighbor, who has become a close friend and a source of transportation, picks the fruit to keep it from rotting on the ground. "When I got back home, my doctors here wanted to know about my medical background," Bruner said. ", "It's a brand new destroyer, the Coghlan, DD-606," he said, "built right here in 'Frisco.". Cook asked. He was able to visit the national cemetery at an area called the Punch Bowl. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. Haerry sailed on Navy ships through World War II and again during the Korean conflict. "I would tell them. But he could not be prepared for what he found on the charred hulk of the battleship. He had settled in New Mexico with his family. Finally, the tanker spotted the destroyer. "I decided I'd do whatever they told me to. When he reaches that part of his story, he stops. The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Anderson volunteered for duty on the Macdonough, a destroyer that downed at least one of the Japanese attack planes on Dec. 7. We left and never fired a shot at them.". The tanker towed them to Adak, Alaska, and from there, another ship took the crippled destroyer to San Francisco for repairs. On one mission, Haerry's tender was tied to a larger ship as the crew delivered supplies and completed maintenance tasks. They called the Marines out with rifles to protect the plane and the guys while we hauled it in.". "Three months later, I was in Korea.". As they talked, Ray mentioned that his dad had been aboard the Arizona. "We saved people on commercial ships on the seas, we rescued missionaries in the interior of China, we shot up a bunch of pirates," Anderson said. popeyes vs chicken express; do venmo requests expire They were having trouble reading his prints, she told Stratton. Anderson smiled. She likes the story of how they tied the knot. USS Indianapolis at Mare Island. The Macdonough stayed until September, then sailed back on patrol in the Pacific. Though Conter turned around the first time he ventured toward the sunken Arizona, he has been back since, to see it with other survivors. "It acknowledges to people that I'm a survivor," Joe replies, his voice soft. He has trouble remembering the past. He's not sure he'd have learned that lesson if he hadn't enlisted in the Navy. He gave Anderson the name of a contact there. Finally, the Navy gave him a medical discharge. Langdell knew Libby was friends with a skater in the Ice Follies, which was summering in San Francisco. The steeple clock chimed and a statue of an angel wielding a sword emerged from an alcove and knocked Anderson off the steeple. Stratton falls easily into the memories of his years on diving boats. "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. "I've gotten letters from some of the officer candidates who had my father as an instructor," Ray Jr. says. "We lit into them, started firing on them," Bruner said. In 1967, Conter retired from the Navy. The Japanese military had established strategic outposts in the Aleutian Islands and had its eye on Alaska. There, he lost his twin brother, "It was a bloody catastrophe, a bloody mess," he says. "We'd send two guys out to knock the icicles off the guns, then they'd high-tail it back 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. He survived, but was burned badly over two-thirds of his body. A framed painting of the Arizona, the repair ship Vestal next to it. After the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the United States opted to construct a naval base in 1899. It never returned, crippled in the Battle of the Coral Sea and scuttled by the Navy to keep the enemy from salvaging her. "That's what I'm catching up now. Many veterans who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor have met over the years and become friends, particularly at the annual Dec. 7 gatherings at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. Some even extend their consumption to seabirds. Calhoun quizzed Conter about his posting, his job on the ship. He likes chocolate and is disappointed if Ray Jr. forgets it. At this one, he was looking around the room and he saw a picture of a sailor way back in the back, in a setting arranged like a memorial. "Sometimes, we'd come back, eat, then sleep on the beach.". "To go through that to me is incomprehensible. Many places around the world are named for a stand-out feature, and Pearl Harbor is no different. For 30 years, Lauren Bruner punched a clock at a manufacturing plant south of Los Angeles, a World War II veteran in a landscape crawling with them. I saw one airplane, with a big red meatball on the side. Pearl Harbor was the most important American . The new shoes he left on the deck of the sinking ship, the ones he intended to retrieve later. Cook was discharged in 1948 in San Diego and stuck around California, where he worked as a metal finisher at Van Nuys manufacturing plant. The Tennessee took hits in the attack, but two of the armor piercing bombs, the kind that sunk the Arizona, failed to detonate. Were there sharks Pearl Harbor? Haerry ran away from home to join the Navy. Pearl Harbor was a United States Naval base on the island of Oahu, located west of Honolulu. "Randy, come and turn on the music box." That caught the lieutenant colonel's interest. 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. The planes could fly at low altitudes, then buzz upward for a bombing run, confounding enemy gunners trying to calculate speed and distance. 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. Lonnie and Marietta Cook met in Morris after the war, but the road to their home here today winds thousands of miles across the country. Hetrick still likes to talk about the new shoes he bought the day before the attack in Honolulu. Only a few hundred people lived there then. The buddy wasn't home, but his son-in-law answered. "I'm planning to marry your wife's sister, but I've got to have somebody take my place at work. The ship was moored in the shallows of Pearl Harbor's . Now, Bruner prepares for his next trip in the Captain's Quarters. Hetrick slept on the battleship USS Tennessee, which had been moored just ahead of the Arizona along Ford Island. He and a buddy would sneak off campus and hop freight trains to see how far they could get. Las Vegas seems to like Hetrick. "We'd patrol at night. "Here we are, we can't see the enemy. He wanted to part of it. A total of 2,403 Americans died in the tragic attack 80 years ago and for many families there was never closure as bodies remained unidentified or left amongst the wreckage. Since the 1920s . After he returned from Korea, Haerry was promoted to master chief petty officer, signifying his experience and level of service. Coast watchers were military intelligence operatives who gathered information about enemy activities on islands across the South Pacific. One day, he stopped for coffee at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood. "Can you tell me what ship did he go on after the Arizona?" He stayed there for months. As the boat heaved, the man with the ax missed and hit Haerry's hand, nearly severing it from his wrist. Bruner and the Coghlan returned to Honolulu and finished out the war in the South Pacific. This all changed when the United States declared war on Japan, bringing the country into World War II. "OK," Bruner said. Jack shrugged. Anderson went aboard the USS Edsall, a destroyer that supported various military action at sea and ashore. Posted on . Hetrick was on board during battles at Midway and Wake Island and for the U.S. invasion of Iwo Jima early in 1945. 9. . Joe had met Elizabeth McGauhy in Chicago half a decade earlier. World War II veterans are a special breed, Lt. Col. Denis Riel said as the men accepted the medals. That was the way it was.". "We picked up a couple of girls and made the rounds. 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. Usually, sharks will prioritize eating: Smaller fish. He said he wanted Anderson to join the on-air staff. I had to take them to the parties and sit there until it was over.". "We had 10 or 12 sharks around us all the time," Conter says. What do great white sharks eat in Hawaii? Nobody was expecting anything like that.". He wants to secure a proper medal for Joe George, the sailor from the Vestal who helped rescue the six men from the gunner's control tower. Late in the year, after an overhaul in San Francisco, the Coghlan returned to patrol duty off the Aleutians with a half dozen other U.S. vessels. This day, which marks the attack on Pearl Harbor, has come to be known as the "Day of Infamy" (derived from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech the day after the attack). "To see the people I knew back in those days," he says. "I'm a painter," he said. "We didn't hear much from the outside at first," Hetrick said. He . He doesn't want to answer questions about his war service, shrugging them off or insisting he can't remember the details anymore. "Some of the ships I was on had guys who liked to play the guitar, so I knew something about it. Before the war started, a hospital stay that long would have earned a sailor a discharge, but not anymore. "These guys were the first heroes of the war, even though the war hasn't been declared," Ray Jr. says. Similarly, the . amc gremlin for sale washington state did sharks attack titanic survivors. The nurse who checks in on him regularly likes Haerry. He was eating breakfast when he heard the first pops of the attack planes strafing Battleship Row. When the fourth bomb detonated in the powder magazine, anyone left was blown over the side. a director yelled. (See Pearl Harbor Attack.) 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. But John Anderson, the Navy chief petty officer who called himself Cactus Jack on the air, had a good head start already. "A brush painter.". 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. He keeps it with him when he travels. "That's what I want to remember. "He should have the Navy Cross," Stratton says. He looked for what he called medium spacing. He joined the USS Arizona Reunion Association and stays in touch with a few of the remaining survivors. Once a month or so, Clarendon Hetrick's phone rings with a call from Utah. All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. He finished his stint in the Navy in Shanghai, working shore patrol the way he did back in Honolulu. They struck up a conversation and, after a brief courtship, married. "Once after we crossed the equator, one of the planes came back," he says. He and Evelyn had their first son, Ray, Jr., in 1947. And the ships needed experienced sailors. Some of 'em made it, some of 'em landed on the deck. Almost imperceptibly, he sways. ("Two of us with the same rank were up for the same kind of job," he said. Someone from the bureau had been asking questions. Langdell arrived at Pearl Harbor along a different path than many of the young sailors, who signed up for the service because they were unable to find work as civilians. He returned after the war to his home along the railway in eastern Oklahoma. Or got fired. It took Ray Jr. years, decades to piece together his father's story. "I cleaned up my language," he says, admitting he deployed a salty vocabulary, even after leaving active duty. 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. "Are you in the Navy? "It ain't worth a damn if it ain't loaded," he says. "He's there anytime I call him," Hetrick says. We cut the torpedoes loose.". ", "Baloney," Conter replied. The Coghlan turned back, almost spent. He finally received his orders to return to the states. Alcohol. It is dated Dec. 21, 1941. 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, Kaahuphau and her brother Kahiuk. He then spent 14 months recovering in Great . "We got halfway there and I told them to turn around," Conter said. He agreed to play it on his show. Sometimes we never landed, but we kept the line, always watching out for kamikazes.". And he still likes to talk about that other young fellow from Oklahoma, the one who didn't make it home. Doctors treated him and he recovered, but the his fingers never healed properly. They stayed composed as their stories were told, stories of bravery, of quick thinking. So he did. As anniversaries of the attack passed, Ray Jr. would asked his dad if he wanted to visit the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor.

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