He left home at 5 every morning and took a ferry from Jamestown to the Navy base. By the time they were back, the icicles were forming again and two more guys would go out.". "It was boring," Potts says. "The new ones, they didn't know beans.". Servicemembers stationed in Hawaii took care of the memorial during the 2013 government shutdown: Servicemembers stationed in Hawaii treat Pearl Harbor as a living . He told his story as his son, Ted, recorded it on video. The guns used the same type of control mechanisms Bruner had mastered on the Arizona. After the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the United States opted to construct a naval base in 1899. person grazed by a shark), nor incidents classified by the International Shark Attack File as boat attacks, scavenge, or doubtful. How could he say no? He had settled in New Mexico with his family. They offered to perform at a gathering of Utah survivors. Handout . ", "You will go to the Arizona and you will take off all the bodies and body parts above the water line," the man said. Nobody could debate what that was, no question about it.". "It never gets easy to go back," he says. 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. Hetrick was still just 21 by then, but a seasoned sailor who shared little in common with the 17-year-old kid who left high school and joined the Navy on his parents' signature. It had been shortly after midnight when their ship, the USS Indianapolis, was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine in the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, some 500 miles east of the . The body parts we put in pillow cases. When they sent me my discharge, I just stayed here.". He returns his attention to the cranes and the catapults that flung the seaplanes into flight. Anderson grew up in the Red River Valley of northern Minnesota, the son of a prominent local judge. "The nights up there were already short, so I didn't get much sleep," Cook says. The Hirasaki family suffered some of the worst losses that terrible morning. And in the back corner, a real trophy. What do great white sharks eat in Hawaii? The steeple clock chimed and a statue of an angel wielding a sword emerged from an alcove and knocked Anderson off the steeple. And he has watched with dismay the changes in survival training. "What houses they built!" He owns a chunk of the ship's burned deck, a reminder he keeps in a box with a few other items. The report: Oh, yes, she can cook. The offshore diving business could leave its own kind of scars. Sight-setters and pointers would locate targets visually and determine their distance and range. "I said goodbye and left.". "On the day I swore into the Air Force, I was still in my Navy uniform," he said. Japan wanted the northern Pacific to control its shipping routes and block U.S. attacks from that direction. He worked on board as a mechanic for a torpedo squadron and ended up in charge of the hydraulic shop. Someone had stacked the boxes too high and in the humid environment of the island, the cardboard had grown damp and weak. "We can't forget what happened there that day. The bomb that shattered the Arizona's bow exploded as Cook and the others climbed out of the turret. Wherever he goes on the pickup, people ask him about his experience. 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. "They told me the team was already picked," he said. It never returned, crippled in the Battle of the Coral Sea and scuttled by the Navy to keep the enemy from salvaging her. "I motioned to crane operator what we needed, what tools to send down." The Coghlan approached the Aleutians in October, as winter was pushing fall aside. There are over 470 species of sharks throughout the world. The sky began to darken and the wind grew. The attack was devastating for the Americans, though the Japanese . Langdell was an ensign, an entry-level officer, not yet a year in the Navy. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. Only a few hundred people lived there then. We cut the torpedoes loose.". did sharks attack titanic survivors. "There's the battleships there's the Nevada, the Arizona, the Tennessee, the West Virginia, Maryland, the Oklahoma. "It gets your breath when you first see it," he says. The planes took off and landed on the water; the pilots tied up to buoys near the ship. The job wasn't what he expected in September, when he was discharged from the Navy. 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 . Hetrick recovered. Before the war started, a hospital stay that long would have earned a sailor a discharge, but not anymore. But he didn't want to start his civilian life in the brig, so he left it in Honolulu. Cook has returned to Pearl Harbor three times and he likes the Arizona memorial. But the war was over. "We would go in with a landing party or we furnished artillery for the landing force. The mast and towers near the bow tilted at a sickening angle. On a fall day in 1945, John Anderson teetered on the base of a church steeple 110 feet above the ground. But he could not be prepared for what he found on the charred hulk of the battleship. Or both. 1. Conter was stationed on the Arizona at Pearl Harbor in September 1941, when he turned 20. "It was a big ship with a lot of metal, I'll tell you." According to the History Channel, the Arizona "continues to spill up to 9 quarts of oil into the harbor each day " and visitors often say it is as if the ship were still bleeding. One of the men started yelling. They were married in an Episcopal Church on Van Ness Avenue. From the shore, he helped wounded men from the water, men whose bodies had been torn apart by bombs and bullets and fire. They respected a guy who survived such a horrific attack. He was also interviewing a Japanese pilot named Zenji Abe, a pilot who had taken part in the raid on Pearl Harbor in 1941. "These guys were the first heroes of the war, even though the war hasn't been declared," Ray Jr. says. Anderson smiled. In 1949, the newly created U.S. Air Force was trying to fill it out its ranks with experienced support crews, almost begging for mechanics who knew the aircraft. "But it was a lot better than being shot at.". Potts had not returned to Honolulu in the decades since he left for San Francisco in 1945. He had turned down a promotion to ensign, preferring the camaraderie of the enlisted ranks. medge. The Stratton men have taken up a more personal cause. "It hadn't really sunk in what had happened.". She was attending an art academy to learn dress designing. Military Casualties. His dad operated a livery stable and a small dairy and later earned money as an auctioneer. In time, he felt no anger toward the Japanese, but he couldn't forget what they did. Or got fired. Over the next year, Anderson would sail across the South Pacific, joining other ships in the American assault on the Marshall Islands, Parry Island and the Palau Islands. "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. elephant tail jewelry did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. Now, stateside again, Hetrick reported to a Navy station in San Diego, where he met the woman who would become his wife, Jeanne. He endured what he did, he says, because that was his job. "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. A sign over the arched door marks the room as "Captain's Quarters.". Haerry ran away from home to join the Navy. "I'd do it a hundred times more," he says. He had stopped at Pearl Harbor more than a decade earlier, on his way to a posting in Korea. About a month later, Japanese suicide bombers sunk the Pringle near Okinawa. "You can't get a guy hungry in three or four days," Conter says. Three days earlier, their 20-year-old son became the first Suffolk County casualty in World War II. He squinted and thought about where he was. That caught the lieutenant colonel's interest. All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. Whale sharks are found in warm waters in the Pacific . He's not so fond of the crowds around Honolulu and doesn't plan to go back. 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. 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. At his request, he was assigned to the officer candidate school in Newport, R.I. "We made friends. He clashed with the station manager of the radio station and finally quit. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. "The Japanese were only a mile away. In 1887 the harbor's military history began when the US Navy set up coaling stations in the harbor. After high school, Langdell enrolled at Boston University, working nights to pay for his classes, and in 1938, he earned a degree in business administration. One, Joe Langdell, lives about 40 miles away in Yuba City. He stood strong and tall right in front of this general. John was sent from training camp in Illinois to Bremerton, Wash. Using its sonar equipment, the ship fired depth charges and eventually sank the enemy submarine. 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. There, he lost his twin brother, "It was a bloody catastrophe, a bloody mess," he says. His oldest son had joined the Navy and his first posting was aboard the USS Ouellet, a frigate. Browse 2,614 pearl harbor attack stock photos and images available, or search for world war ii or pearl harbor 1941 to find more great stock photos and pictures. Now, Bruner prepares for his next trip in the Captain's Quarters. He fought with other sailors in the Battle of Midway and watched the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. On the Arizona, he worked on the deck crew. No sharks did not eat Titanic passengers. Cook was the gun captain on the Pringle at the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. "Knock it off. 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. -Ryan Dutcher. He got the west coast and I got the east coast. 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. 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. In 1967, Conter retired from the Navy. "It was like a hard jolt.". He was the opening act for country superstar Hank Snow that night at the North High School auditorium. A sailor on the repair ship Vestal, tied up nearby, spotted them and threw them a line. A year later, he felt better, so he re-enlisted. He needed a truck to carry equipment back and forth, so he scouted out a car lot and bought a 1965 Chevrolet pickup. "We're right-arm rates." He survived, but was burned badly over two-thirds of his body. 2023 www.azcentral.com. "That lumber was so damn green then, we used to kid we had to shoot the squirrels out of it.". "Randy, come and turn on the music box." "It's where the war started.". Finally, after a few weeks on the tanker, Potts was handed a new assignment. Haerry had made two runs to shore on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. When they said, 'grab your sea bags and let's go,' I did.". Nobody was expecting anything like that.". He will answer questions about that December day when he escaped the burning wreckage of the Arizona, reciting as many of the details as he can remember. When he left Morris the first time in 1939 after high school, Cook wasn't sure where he'd end up. Hetrick still likes to talk about the new shoes he bought the day before the attack in Honolulu. As the ships turned around, a squadron of enemy bombers appeared. The easy stories he'd tell. Potts returned to Illinois in late 1945 to await his formal discharge, hanging out in Chicago. At dawn on December 7, 1941, more than half of the United States Pacific Fleet, approximately 150 vessels and service craft, lay at anchor or alongside piers in Pearl Harbor. 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. The sea turned rough, tossing the ship with 40-foot swells, bouncing the vessel like a rubber ball in a washing machine. The next night, an American PT boat retrieved all 10 men. "In three days, we rescued 219 coast watchers without losing anybody," Conter said. amc gremlin for sale washington state did sharks attack titanic survivors. @webtv.net wrote in message. "I had to help my father out of his seat. Too many strategic decisions come down from Washington instead of from the commanders on the ground. "What are you looking at?" His service on the Arizona also seemed to give him added credibility among the young sailors. The story follows two lifelong friends and a beautiful nurse who are caught up in the horror of an infamous Sunday morning in 1941.