Cook worked in California, mostly welding jobs, until the union he belonged to called a strike. "This shows where all the ships were," he says, pointing at a map depicting Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. The man in the boat was from Muskogee, a town about 40 miles east of Morris. He agreed to play it on his show. Other crewmen would roll out the shell, use a mechanical device to ram it in, then load four bags of powder behind it. 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. He enrolled, but after a couple of weeks, the noisy streetcars and the police sirens kept him up all night. Answer: Yes- in 1945, after the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese torpedo. "He saved six people's lives. The family sold maple syrup distilled from the trees on their farm. He helped rescue some of his shipmates. He won't talk much about the escape, or about the men who didn't make it across. Three days had passed since Japanese bombers had punched a fiery hole in the Navy's Pacific fleet. He remembers all the details and most of what happened later. When they sent me my discharge, I just stayed here.". 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. "We took all the bodies we could find.". "What's up with this one? 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. Williams was in the Arizona's band. Each of the six men were at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes swarmed the Navy fleet in an ambush that would provoke war. He was thrown into the ocean and waited 57 hours to be rescued while shipmates around him were eaten by sharks. Pearl Harbor | Holocaust Encyclopedia The Coghlan's crew battled just to keep the guns free of ice as they headed toward their next target. "To see the people I knew back in those days," he says. Whether they're a spiny dogfish all the way to great whites, sharks love eating fish. He still tools around town in the truck, but it's a classic now, so he drives it almost as often to car shows. In 1887 the harbor's military history began when the US Navy set up coaling stations in the harbor. Using its sonar equipment, the ship fired depth charges and eventually sank the enemy submarine. 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. "I cleaned up my language," he says, admitting he deployed a salty vocabulary, even after leaving active duty. The river wound through dense vegetation, leaving 15 or 20 feet of clearance on each side of the plane. He doesn't like to talk about the attack. "Are there any officers from the Arizona here?" "The new ones, they didn't know beans.". "On the day I swore into the Air Force, I was still in my Navy uniform," he said. The California was way down here. "We're right-arm rates." 11 Oldest Pearl Harbor Survivors (Updated 2021) December 7, 1941 is a date that everyone in America has committed to memory. But he could not be prepared for what he found on the charred hulk of the battleship. A lot of people agree that what George did was heroic, but the Navy balks at every step, in part because George disobeyed a direct order. He . Why Did Pearl Harbor Happen? 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. elephant tail jewelry did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. They were dead in the water.". Anything you choose is fine. Finally, the Navy gave him a medical discharge. "I told the men, 'If a shark comes close, hit it in the nose with your fist as hard as you can.'". When he reaches that part of his story, he stops. 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. He had chased Japanese soldiers along the coast of China three years before America declared war on Japan. "I'd never seen so many guys with so much guts," he said. He went to work as a junior accountant for a prominent Boston firm. He went out to the floating memorial. They went out for coffee afterward. "You either had a nice place aboard a ship and were high and dry or you didn't have anything," he reasoned. Japan and China were at war again and America was trying to protect its interests without getting involved in the conflict. This list and the accompanying graphics do not include encounters in which a shark does not actually bite a person or board (e.g. In early January, Conter visited his young lady friend again and again, Admiral Calhoun was there. The ship remained anchored outside Pearl Harbor for most of a month as U.S. commanders planned their next move against the Japanese in the South Pacific. USS Arizona: The men who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor He and Libby moved west to Walnut Creek east of San Francisco. Pearl Harbor was a United States Naval base on the island of Oahu, located west of Honolulu. When she says anything, I tell her I'm catching up from the war.". "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. Langdell returned to Pearl Harbor in 1976. If a shark comes too close, hit it in the nose with your fist as hard as you can.". 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. Toward the end the war, Langdell was stationed in the Philippines, at a base in Manila. "I had to start training the new recruits on every machine," Bruner said. The easy stories he'd tell. The men followed orders in a fog of wonderment and confusion. They spoil their granddaughters and can now move on to a new great-granddaughter. High winds could slam one ship into the other and sink one or both of the vessels. "We took off," Bruner said, "firing just as fast as we could. Japanese relieved at no Pearl Harbor apology - DW - 12/28/2016 Bruner started as a painter, trained as a carpenter, then helped start a new sheet-metal department. Bruner was one of them. Or both. Salvage work would begin soon on others. "They gave me 30 minutes to get off the ship and catch a transport to San Diego for training," he said. Conter fought on through World War II, scraped past a lot of close calls, then went to Korea. From Virginia, he went to Utah, to France and then to Albuquerque, where he retired in November 1961. Conter and his buddy waited for new instructions, but heard nothing. Their orders were lost on the Arizonawhen the battleship sankon Dec. 7. "We don't think you'd make it. "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. 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. BuzzFeed News Photo Editor. "They were holed up behind sandbags, but they never got hit.". He missed enough of his classes that he was finally asked to leave. He stayed aboard the Solace about a month. "He'd always have to be prompted.". He did not reach a hospital for several days, but doctors still saved his hand. She tracked him to the Los Angeles area, then started a phone search. A sign over the arched door marks the room as "Captain's Quarters.". "After 36 hours, I still hadn't put in a day. 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. "Remember Pearl Harbor!" became a rallying cry for the U.S. during World War II. Potts was working aboard an oil tanker, making short runs out of the harbor to refuel ships anchored off the coast. Photographs hang on the walls of his room. 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. Sometimes we never landed, but we kept the line, always watching out for kamikazes.". He joined the Navy because it seemed like a better environment. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. "It ain't worth a damn if it ain't loaded," he says. He settled in Palm Springs and built a career as a real estate developer, buying up land for commercial and residential projects. "We lit into them, started firing on them," Bruner said. The woman helped connect Bruner with other survivors from the Arizona and Pearl Harbor. He would draw out snippets and stash them away, collecting them until he would weave the barest narrative. Someone from the bureau had been asking questions. A year later, he felt better, so he re-enlisted. In 2006, Hetrick returned to Pearl Harbor for the 65thanniversary of the Japanese attack. "He wanted the east coast, I wanted the west coast. Enemy patrol planes spotted the ships and the raid was canceled. "Once after we crossed the equator, one of the planes came back," he says. "There's the battleships there's the Nevada, the Arizona, the Tennessee, the West Virginia, Maryland, the Oklahoma. I'd been told things like that before. Nobody could debate what that was, no question about it.". "What houses they built!" The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor began just before 8 a.m. local time Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. Whale sharks can grow to 65 feet in length and weigh up to 75,000 pounds. He stopped in the small town of Payson, Utah. The ship steamed toward the Asiatic Pacific and soon Anderson was chasing Japanese forces again, only this time the United States was at war. "Would you like a job?" As they walked toward it, Langdell reeled at an odor. With Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, William Lee Scott. "I was always wanting to learn more when I was younger," says Hetrick's younger son, Robert, who lives not far from his dad in Las Vegas. Kitchen patrol. 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. Abe's Pearl Harbor speech has been well received in Japan, where most people expressed the opinion that it struck the right balance of regret that the Pacific war occurred, but offered . I guess he'd do anything he could for me. "I ain't seen 'em since.". He was soon aboard the USS Frazier, which left the shipyard at San Francisco in July 1942. The Saratoga was attacked by six Japanese suicide bombers within about 24 hours. Sometimes, Japanese pilots attended memorial ceremonies and some of the other survivors would shake their hands. He first visited the Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor on the 50thanniversary of the attack and has returned since. He would work in the port director's office, delivering sealed packets to the captains of Navy ships. Except the cap. The Pearl Harbour . 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. He tries to abbreviate it: "We went to California and got married.". Dec 12 2014. Discipline seems less important than it was in his day. USS Indianapolis was a Portland class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy. The offshore diving business could leave its own kind of scars. Farther down the paneled wall hangs a painting of the USS Arizona, the battleship Navy recruit Potts boarded in December 1939. For a long time, Haerry never talked about his experiences at Pearl Harbor. By the end of the day, had persuaded Anderson to sign up for the Navy Reserve. On the morning of May 8, the fighting intensified as American aircraft tried to turn back the enemy planes. popeyes vs chicken express; do venmo requests expire Ted asks. 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. He kept the truck, held on to it through repairs, engine overhauls, new paint jobs. Stratton grew up in the tiny prairie town of Red Cloud, Neb., about as far away from an ocean as any place in the country. He put the disc on a turntable and dropped the needle. @webtv.net wrote in message. Hetrick shrugs, trying to get comfortable in the recliner. He had held on to it through the war. Salmon. 10 Things They're Still Not Telling You About Pearl Harbor No one knew much about Bruner's years in the Navy, not the early years anyway. "Sometimes, we'd come back, eat, then sleep on the beach.". Russell Penny, killed at Pearl Harbor, was Suffolk's first WWII He was 20 when he escaped the burning wreckage ofthe USS Arizonain Pearl Harbor. He asked what the fellow did. Nope. He survived, but was burned badly over two-thirds of his body. When he dies, his remains will be interred under the No. He has trouble remembering the past. He liked teaching and liked the chance to instill discipline. 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. Cook made it off alive. 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. 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.