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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. Hetrick recovered. Toward the end the war, Langdell was stationed in the Philippines, at a base in Manila. Conter's crews flew missions across the South Pacific: New Guinea, Borneo, New Britain, the coast off Perth, Australia. Updated: Dec 8, 2021 / 05:46 AM CST. "Cover the decks, anywhere you can find them up to the top of the masts.". "I ain't seen 'em since.". As Conter told it, the story wasn't about punching sharks, or skulking in the jungle or chasing shadows to the waiting rescue boat. Conter's doctor has sidelined him for now for health reasons, but he is certain he will return soon. "I wasn't going out there. Cha c sn phm trong gi hng. 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. 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. Finally, the four U.S. destroyers were ordered to mount a torpedo run. "The nights up there were already short, so I didn't get much sleep," Cook says. a director yelled. It identifies Stratton as a survivor of the attack that sank the ship. We got as close as 5,000 yards, which was point-blank for those ships. Langdell lives now in a skilled nursing center. Discipline seems less important than it was in his day. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. One of the first people to do that.". 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. Joe saved six lives and he didn't get crap. About a month later, Japanese suicide bombers sunk the Pringle near Okinawa. They were married in an Episcopal Church on Van Ness Avenue. Pictures of past parades. He wasn't happy where he was, so he loaded up his big 12-cylinder Lincoln Zephyr and headed west. Photographing survivors of the battleship USS Arizona. Anderson would serve another 23 years before finally retiring once more. Three days had passed since Japanese bombers had punched a fiery hole in the Navy's Pacific fleet. 4 gun turret, with the men who died there and survivors who had died since. Kuwait. Other crewmen would roll out the shell, use a mechanical device to ram it in, then load four bags of powder behind it. Sea turtles. He told his story as his son, Ted, recorded it on video. An impressive collection of restaurant menus from 30 years of cross-country searches for used cars. By 1991, the 50th . 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. Langdell was an ensign, an entry-level officer, not yet a year in the Navy. He is one of nine living survivors from the attack on the USS Arizona, the battleship he boarded in 1941 when he was 17. They were trying to replenish submarines or send smaller ships in. He told Ray about the plans to honor Pearl Harbor survivors at the statehouse. He will tell his story to people he knows well and trusts, but he is 93 and the details are fading from his memory. Three days since the war started. "She went to California and I followed her," Lonnie says. Just stay together, hold hands and kick slowly 'cause there'll be sharks around. He acknowledged the wreath. Sentiment ran high against the Japanese, he said, but also against U.S. leaders whose decisions many questioned in the aftermath. They struck up a conversation and, after a brief courtship, married. Libby got the message. Someone had stacked the boxes too high and in the humid environment of the island, the cardboard had grown damp and weak. "Once after we crossed the equator, one of the planes came back," he says. Now, Bruner prepares for his next trip in the Captain's Quarters. The woman helped connect Bruner with other survivors from the Arizona and Pearl Harbor. I'd been told things like that before. There's a little air bubble. Conter told him about the lost orders. But he became restless. 4 Comments. "He saved six people's lives. He is one of nine living survivors of the Arizona and, at 97, he has amassed a lifetime of unforgettable days. "You can't get a guy hungry in three or four days," Conter says. 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. The day after, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared it "a date which will live in infamy," and Congress . The ship carried four 5-inch anti-aircraft guns and six half-inch machine guns, and, initially, five 21-inch torpedo tubes. 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. "He was very military by then, very disciplined.". Potts was working aboard an oil tanker, making short runs out of the harbor to refuel ships anchored off the coast. For an hour or so, the two men talk. OAHU BOMBED BY JAPANESE PLANES", "That's one of the first extras that was put out that day," Potts says. The men stayed afloat until another plane saw the burning wreckage and tossed out a life raft. "It acknowledges to people that I'm a survivor," Joe replies, his voice soft. Stratton climbed to his feet and, biting back the pain, he stood and when his bed was ready, he collapsed back into it. Photos of the ship and other survivors at reunions in Honolulu. They covered the growing seasons: cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, grapes. He brought all of his family: his wife Jeanne, his three sons and their families. "It's just not going to happen. "I had to start training the new recruits on every machine," Bruner said. Before the end of the war, he went to San Diego for gunner's mate school. The Navy captain who lived on Waikiki Beach gave a lot of parties and invited these guys. The Japanese military had established strategic outposts in the Aleutian Islands and had its eye on Alaska. Nicaragua. Haerry accepts the chocolate bars his son has brought him. The sea turned rough, tossing the ship with 40-foot swells, bouncing the vessel like a rubber ball in a washing machine. He felt a tap on his shoulder. 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. "Never heard of it.". Potts had not returned to Honolulu in the decades since he left for San Francisco in 1945. He saw Gene LaRocque, a man he'd served with aboard the Macdonough. "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. But John Anderson, the Navy chief petty officer who called himself Cactus Jack on the air, had a good head start already. Except the cap. 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. The easy stories he'd tell. The Macdonough had collided with another destroyer, the Sicard. He and a buddy had been talking about their future in the Navy. He returned after the war to his home along the railway in eastern Oklahoma. Hetrick was sent to the USS Lexington, an aircraft carrier. Explosions rocked the vessel and fires burned into the evening. The survivors' group that found him was right, he has concluded: The stories of the Arizona should not die with the men who lived them. 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. A pistol sits on top of his television at home. "It just didn't appeal to me to bring it up," he says. While this is a genuine threat to safety, it continues to remain statistically unlikely. He squinted and thought about where he was. We all have to remember that they did not die in vain.". "We'd patrol at night. He was in the studio on Valentine's Day 1955 when a nervous young man walked in. 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. 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. The men followed orders in a fog of wonderment and confusion. He put the disc on a turntable and dropped the needle. Stratton hesitated, then confirmed her suspicion. Inside the packets were the captains' new orders, military secrets, classified information that required clearance to handle. OAHU, Hawaii (NEXSTAR) On the day that will live in infamy December 7, 1941 2,403 U.S. personnel were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor. world war ii. Almost three decades later, he was the plant manager, second-in-command. As they walked toward it, Langdell reeled at an odor. A tale of war and romance mixed in with history. "It sounded like someone shooting guns. Cook worked in California, mostly welding jobs, until the union he belonged to called a strike. 1914-1941:The mightiest ship at sea | Dec. 7, 1941: The attack that changed the world| Documentary: 'Witness to Infamy' | 2014: The final toast. If a plane crashed, crocodiles awaited in the river. Some of 'em made it, some of 'em landed on the deck. 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. By the time they were back, the icicles were forming again and two more guys would go out.". "Here's the one that told my mother I was missing in action on the Arizona," he says. He first visited the Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor on the 50thanniversary of the attack and has returned since. 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. The lead-up to the Pearl Harbor attack. "We wouldn't get much fire back and by the time they sounded general quarters, we were on our way," Conter said. 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. The ship accompanied General Douglas MacArthur to the Philippines and was anchored in the harbor off Nagasaki, Japan, when the second atomic bomb exploded. Cook got the buddy's telephone number and tried to call him. The Langdells ended up honeymooning in Monterey and Carmel on the central California coast. On one mission, Haerry's tender was tied to a larger ship as the crew delivered supplies and completed maintenance tasks. Just another site did sharks eat pearl harbor victims Bruner was put in charge of the gun batteries. They still had to climb onto the dock and then into a truck for a short ride to a Navy hospital. USS Indianapolis at Mare Island. He gazes at the picture. He can tell stories about his years with the diving crews, but the truck has evolved into a reminder of another time. He clashed with the station manager of the radio station and finally quit. Admiral Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy came to the conclusion that for the Japanese to be victorious in the pacific, they had to destroy the . 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. He took up golf seriously in Palm Springs and played in the Bob Hope Classic six times, once on a team with crooner Johnny Mathis. The Coghlan approached the Aleutians in October, as winter was pushing fall aside. 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. Nightmares invade his sleep when he remembers those final moments. 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. 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. Stratton told her why: He had been aboard the USS Arizona when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941. Whether they're a spiny dogfish all the way to great whites, sharks love eating fish. He got the west coast and I got the east coast. "We made so many landings," Anderson said. "We had to have two crews, a regular crew and a stand-by crew lined up waiting," Bruner said. Salvage work would begin soon on others. Japan and China were at war again and America was trying to protect its interests without getting involved in the conflict. "It's easier if you come see it," the sailor said. 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. The ship was moored in the shallows of Pearl Harbor's . "I left them there and hoped to get them back," he says. The face plate is glass and around the bottom are screws that would secure it to the diving suit. They would serve together for a little over a year. Helpless, I watched your bomb sink the Arizona in nine minutes.". I think that's what kept me living to this day.". The first couple of trips back to Hawaii were difficult. The Tennessee took hits in the attack, but two of the armor piercing bombs, the kind that sunk the Arizona, failed to detonate. Survivors' groups wanted to find all of them so their stories would not be lost. After he returned from Korea, Haerry was promoted to master chief petty officer, signifying his experience and level of service. This time the objective was clear. Many places around the world are named for a stand-out feature, and Pearl Harbor is no different. But Hetrick couldn't find work, so inside of six months, he signed up for the Navy Reserve. It sits today in the carport outside his home. "In the Army you were crawling around in the mud and everything else and I didn't want to do that.". A framed painting of the Arizona, the repair ship Vestal next to it. As a tender, he stayed on the surface, monitoring the divers working on rigs, piers, pipelines, any piece of seaside or seagoing equipment. She likes the story of how they tied the knot. He said, 'whatever I can get out of you.' "I canned 500 quarts of fruit one year," Marietta says. Anything you choose is fine. Lonnie Cook was born in this rural town south of Tulsa, not long after it was founded as a stop on the Ozark and Cherokee Central Railway. Before the attack, many Americans were reluctant to become involved in the war in Europe. Oceanic whitetip sharks killed many of the surviving crew in the biggest attack on humans ever recorded Credit: Getty - Contributor. He was thrown into the ocean and waited 57 hours to be rescued while shipmates around him were eaten by sharks. He asked his brother, Ted, to visit Libby and see if she could cook. "I'm a painter," he said. He stayed aboard the Solace about a month. I don't think sharks go that far. That's why the FBI was nosing around me, Potts thought. 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. 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. And he still likes to talk about that other young fellow from Oklahoma, the one who didn't make it home. "It's where the war started.". He went out to the floating memorial. Servicemembers stationed in Hawaii took care of the memorial during the 2013 government shutdown: Servicemembers stationed in Hawaii treat Pearl Harbor as a living . "In the service, if you didn't use nasty words, you weren't a good sailor.". -Ryan Dutcher. 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.