In the waters off Honolulu, he confronted his memories. Before the trip, Langdell hadn't talked much about his years in the war, about his time on the Arizona. So you see how that works."). 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. Did he know anything about meteorology? It's in good shape for a paper.". Conter served on the San Pablo and Half Moon. Minutes later, the Japanese attacked and the Arizona was on fire, sinking beneath the surface. Hetrick, who is 91, has outlived most of the men he knew on the Saratoga. He stayed there for months. Pearl Harbor was the site of the unprovoked aerial attack on the United States by Japan on December 7, 1941. mailchimp archive contacts Controle dos clientes e convnios; fatal car accident loveland colorado Abertura e fechamento de caixa, Sangria e despesas; As each name was read, Rhode Island National Guard Maj. Gen. Kevin McBride presented the man with the Rhode Island Star, one of the state's highest military honors. You're the bravest man I ever know. "Iremember hearing explosions at first," he says. One of the survivors would receive the Rhode Island Cross. 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. On the same bookshelf sit mementos from his time on the Arizona. That's why the FBI was nosing around me, Potts thought. is clu gulager still alive did sharks attack titanic survivors. The ship was to turn around and steam toward Alaska. Cha c sn phm trong gi hng. "He remembers body parts in the water, charred burned bodies that he swam by," his son Ray, Jr., says. He missed enough of his classes that he was finally asked to leave. Maybe next time. "I had to help my father out of his seat. "I knew everything that was going on.". Joe proposed and Libby accepted. 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. Potts was based out of the port director's office there were two, one at the harbor, one on the ninth floor of the Aloha Tower in downtown Honolulu but he logged most of his hours at the controls of the motor boat, a Jeep or a station wagon. He squeezes past the pool table, past the photos and the maps and the medals. Similarly, the . 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. When he returned home, he got another call from the band director. He built a reputation as a guy who could bring in the harvest on time. Anderson would serve another 23 years before finally retiring once more. "I had to start training the new recruits on every machine," Bruner said. The two men not only met, they took a boat to the USS Arizona memorial and laid a wreath in front of the wall with the names of the crewmen who died on the ship. One day in May, crewmen spotted two periscopes in the water and the Frazier opened fire. "I came back to the pier one morning and my name was on the list to do KP work," he says. Conter was stationed on the Arizona at Pearl Harbor in September 1941, when he turned 20. Golfers play through 50 yards from Conter's driveway. The Macdonough stayed until September, then sailed back on patrol in the Pacific. A few years later, a new station owner showed Anderson his plans to start a TV station. How could he say no? 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. The Navy loaded 5,000 bunks on board, along with a row of portable latrines, and the Saratoga sailed to San Francisco, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge with toilet paper streamers and thousands of sailors who needed something to do. "Lots of big band songs," Randy says, as the first bars of a brass line pour from the speakers. "I wasn't going out there. He will tell his story to people he knows well and trusts, but he is 93 and the details are fading from his memory. But he doesn't tell his story anymore, not on his own. Photographs hang on the walls of his room. He points out the cranes and the locations along the ship where he would tie up the motor boats he piloted to fetch supplies and ferry sailors to and from shore. I couldn't.". "It's hard to explain." He then spent 14 months recovering in Great . @webtv.net wrote in message. December 7, 1941: Pearl Harbor Casualties. It turned out little was the right word. At Kulangsu, an international settlement on an island off the southern Chinese coast, Anderson's unit ran into the French Foreign Legion, who had been cornered by Japanese soldiers on a high ridge. As they walked toward it, Langdell reeled at an odor. 12/28/2016. 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. But there are moments when he knows what he did meant something. He remembers the crewman trying to climb a ladder to escape through a hatchway on the deck. 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. Many have since died. "I decided I'd do whatever they told me to. There was a tradition at the end of training that the graduates would give the chief a silver dollar. 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. Repair crews were already at work on the battleships that had survived. "That lumber was so damn green then, we used to kid we had to shoot the squirrels out of it.". She nods and smiles. He clashed with the station manager of the radio station and finally quit. 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. "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. He returned after the war to his home along the railway in eastern Oklahoma. He joined the Navy because it seemed like a better environment. Conter told him about the lost orders. 2023 www.azcentral.com. on the Arizonawhen the battleship sankon Dec. 7. the final survivor to be interred in the ship. ", "You will go to the Arizona and you will take off all the bodies and body parts above the water line," the man said. When they said, 'grab your sea bags and let's go,' I did.". "We made friends. He keeps it with him when he travels. Finally, the tanker spotted the destroyer. Today, he is one of nine remaining survivors from the mighty battleship. They catch up. They were trying to replenish submarines or send smaller ships in. It fit in that location. Whether they're a spiny dogfish all the way to great whites, sharks love eating fish. They trade stories. Why Did Pearl Harbor Happen? One, Joe Langdell, lives about 40 miles away in Yuba City. 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. Langdell returned to Pearl Harbor in 1976. What do great white sharks eat in Hawaii? Potts was working aboard an oil tanker, making short runs out of the harbor to refuel ships anchored off the coast. Today, he tries to pass on what he knows to students of history. Before the war started, a hospital stay that long would have earned a sailor a discharge, but not anymore. 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. The bomb that shattered the Arizona's bow exploded as Cook and the others climbed out of the turret. 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. In 2006, one of his sons offered to take Potts to Hawaii for the 65thanniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. "I was back here on leave before the war started and he was here too," Cook says. 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. Hetrick thought about it. Naming Pearl Harbor. By early 1941, Langdell was one of the "90-day wonders" and drew his first assignment: The USS Arizona. His ships steamed across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal to Africa. He told his story as his son, Ted, recorded it on video. And the ships needed experienced sailors. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. It was one of the biggest rescues in World War II, but no one knew about it because everything was top secret in those days.". The tanker towed them to Adak, Alaska, and from there, another ship took the crippled destroyer to San Francisco for repairs. Abe offered condolences and said he prayed that all their souls were at peace. Finally, the four U.S. destroyers were ordered to mount a torpedo run. "If you can stand up and stay up while we change the linen on this bed, we'll see about it.". "He called me one night and said if you won't let me come to California, I found a lady who's got a new black Buick and I'm going to move to Texas.". "These guys were the first heroes of the war, even though the war hasn't been declared," Ray Jr. says. The steeple clock chimed and a statue of an angel wielding a sword emerged from an alcove and knocked Anderson off the steeple. One morning, he was at his desk, catching up on paperwork, when he heard a vehicle screech to a halt outside. "That must be old Clyde Williams," he thought, the Arizona band member killed at Pearl Harbor. 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 was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in February 1954, the rank he held until he retired. A few incidents were possible shark bites, but shark involvement was not [] The Solace dispatched motor boats to the Arizona to rescue wounded sailors and her crew pulled others from the water. For some reason I had always thought that the titanic had gone down way farther North. In World War II, he fought at Guadalcanal, in the battle of the Coral Sea, at Okinawa and Iwo Jima. He looks forward to his time with the guys from his years in the Navy. Civilian Casualties. world war ii. "We can't forget what happened there that day. They had voted. "Sometimes they'd get shooting at you and you'd look at the shells and they looked like they were going to hit you. The Tennessee took hits in the attack, but two of the armor piercing bombs, the kind that sunk the Arizona, failed to detonate. Peeling potatoes. He wrote a training manual whose precepts the Navy still follows. The ship accompanied General Douglas MacArthur to the Philippines and was anchored in the harbor off Nagasaki, Japan, when the second atomic bomb exploded. "Through all that, I never did lose consciousness," he says. "That's what I'm catching up now. In the chaotic days following the Dec. 7 ambush, the Navy wasn't letting ships into the harbor, fearful the Japanese might send in more bombers. Survivors' groups wanted to find all of them so their stories would not be lost. And it holds deep meaning for Potts, even though he did nothing to win it. "Would you like a job?" As soon as he turned 18, he enlisted in the Navy. The woman helped connect Bruner with other survivors from the Arizona and Pearl Harbor. 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. He was assigned briefly to the Arizona, then to the Saratoga, an aircraft carrier, then, as the Navy tinkered once more with its troop alignment, back to the Arizona. He remembers when the order was given to abandon ship. Crippled ships still floated around the mooring posts along Ford Island. Everything was taken ashore and properly taken care of.". 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. The Americans stopped the Japanese ships and wiped out some of the top officers. That didn't last long and he headed back to Morris, where he met Marietta. You don't fire guns in port, so I ran out real quick to see what was happening. Only a few hundred people lived there then. The six men stared straight ahead, almost as if they were back in line, at attention. Keeping the memories alive. Amidst the rush to war following the attack, there was also the painstaking effort to recover those who had been sunk with ships like the USS Oklahoma and the USS Arizona. As a tender, he stayed on the surface, monitoring the divers working on rigs, piers, pipelines, any piece of seaside or seagoing equipment. Fire had blackened much of the structure still visible. '", "Some things," he says, "you don't know about what they'll mean until years later.". The ships encountered a Japanese fleet, two big cruisers, six destroyers, some troop ships, and engaged. This time the objective was clear. On the 70thanniversary of the attack, the men had been brought to the state capitol to receive new honors. He stood strong and tall right in front of this general. Once a week, they motor on into Tulsa, where Marietta takes a china painting class and Lonnie wanders the aisles of sporting-goods stores. "Talk about treating you like royalty," he says. There, he lost his twin brother, "It was a bloody catastrophe, a bloody mess," he says. "The station wagon was for the captains of some of the ships that would come in," he said. "I'm a painter," he said. "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.". Whale Shark (Rhincodon typus) The whale shark is the largest shark species, and also the biggest fish species in the world. It is a piece of rigging used to secure a mooring line from a ship. Posted on . If the shark feels like a dead fish isn't worth its time, it will leave without wasting more energy. He saw action across the South Pacific, patrolled areas where suicide bombers were attacking American destroyers. He watched the band perform and stood as a survivor of the Arizona, one of the sailors who lived. One day, a Navy officer came on board and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer for an assignment in the aviation section. "I motioned to crane operator what we needed, what tools to send down." He was treated there for four months. He sits in his wheelchair as his son recites the narrative, keeping his father's story alive. "He saved six people's lives. He felt a tap on his shoulder. 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. Cook enlisted in the Navy in 1940 and was assigned to the USS Arizona, one of the largest battleships in the fleet with a crew that, at full complement, numbered more than 1,500. He wasn't happy where he was, so he loaded up his big 12-cylinder Lincoln Zephyr and headed west. He started on a small station, playing organ music. Five years later, in 2011, he got a call from the band director at Timpview High School in Provo. He finished his training and was discharged in December 1945. There are a few personal photos on the table, but nothing from his years in the Navy. No one knew much about Bruner's years in the Navy, not the early years anyway. His job was to put the primer in the big 14-inch gun. The river wound through dense vegetation, leaving 15 or 20 feet of clearance on each side of the plane. When was the shark attack on the Jersey Shore? A month after the Coral Sea battle, Cook's ship was part of the American forces in the critical Battle of Midway. Stratton logged thousands of miles of travel.

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