did sharks eat pearl harbor victims did sharks eat pearl harbor victims

From the Vestal, Bruner was taken to the USS Solace, a hospital ship in the harbor. "I do as much as I can to keep his story alive," his son says. Finally, she located some of Bruner's tax records and found his address and telephone number. person grazed by a shark), nor incidents classified by the International Shark Attack File as boat attacks, scavenge, or doubtful. "They played country music because the people here loved that," Anderson says. Langdell says only this: "It took two days to take all the bodies. 12/28/2016. His fingers were almost smooth, lacking all but a few of the swirls that create an identity. "I can understand that," Ray Jr. says. He stayed there for months. "It hadn't really sunk in what had happened.". They met at a dance at the YWCA on North State Street. "That must be old Clyde Williams," he thought, the Arizona band member killed at Pearl Harbor. And he keeps it loaded. "I really miss it.". "These guys were the first heroes of the war, even though the war hasn't been declared," Ray Jr. says. Bruner toured Nagasaki in a Jeep with other Navy officers and chief mates. Attack on Pearl Harbor in rare pictures, 1941 He survived, but was burned badly over two-thirds of his body. A bow. evolution golf cart forum While this is a genuine threat to safety, it continues to remain statistically unlikely. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims The next morning, the Arizona was still burning as oil flowed out of her full tanks. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. With eyes too close or two far apart, a crewman could deliver faulty readings. 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. Once a shark finds its prey, it needs to decide on whether to eat or not based on smell and appearance. June 12, 2022 . by Pia Peterson. Eighty years later, many of those killed are finally returning home and being laid to rest. By April 1940, the Navy seemed like a good idea and by summer, he was on board the Arizona, stationed at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. "I'm going to be back out there one of these days," Conter said, his voice wistful as he watches a foursome trying to stay on the greens. "I just didn't want to. He hired on with a farm labor contractor and within a year, he and a guy he worked with started their own business, contracting with the orchard owners to harvest crops. The Pearl Harbour . "I'd already sent word, even before the first one got there," he says. Or got fired. He knew his brother hadn't made it off the Arizona alive, but he didn't know much else. An impressive collection of restaurant menus from 30 years of cross-country searches for used cars. 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. "I ran the decompression chamber on jobs. I saw one airplane, with a big red meatball on the side. Debris from the Arizona showered the Tennessee's stern and started fires, but the vessel stayed afloat. It is a piece of rigging used to secure a mooring line from a ship. Haerry accepts the chocolate bars his son has brought him. He was at a restaurant last summer and someone noticed his USS Arizona cap. Fish, in general, are the most common prey for sharks. 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. To prepare for the trip, they were studying World War II history, attending lectures, writing research papers. 1. Hawaii Sharks | Incidents List The Americans stopped the Japanese ships and wiped out some of the top officers. 1914-1941:The mightiest ship at sea | Dec. 7, 1941: The attack that changed the world| Documentary: 'Witness to Infamy' | 2014: The final toast. Just stay together, hold hands and kick slowly 'cause there'll be sharks around. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims On the Arizona, he worked on the deck crew. At 93, he is one of the last survivors ofthe attack on the Arizona. "Something had happened that no one could comprehend.". Pearl Harbor (2001) - IMDb It was as if he had none. Here is a story he will tell, a memory he will keep. We had survival training on the job. He remembers the crewman trying to climb a ladder to escape through a hatchway on the deck. "OK," Bruner said. Abe offered condolences and said he prayed that all their souls were at peace. Japan wanted the northern Pacific to control its shipping routes and block U.S. attacks from that direction. I asked the boss, 'how many hours is in a day for you?' He pushes his shirtsleeves up to show his arms. The Saratoga had returned to Pearl Harbor by the time the Japanese surrendered. he met his contact and not long after, he was standing in for Orson Welles in a scene from the movie "The Stranger.". "Sure, let's see it." "Lou, let's go to flight school," Conter's buddy said one day. He had stopped at Pearl Harbor more than a decade earlier, on his way to a posting in Korea. Fire had blackened much of the structure still visible. "I went back and told my mother I wasn't going up there anymore," he said. All rights reserved. His mother suggested Hills Business College in Oklahoma City. Sailors found food and shelter wherever they could. Her sister knew Jack Warner, the film studio mogul, and invited Valerie to a movie premiere party Warner was hosting in Palm Springs for his latest project, "Camelot". He wanted men with eyes set in the right place on their face. 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. 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. Then we got hit.". Stratton and other men climbed into a small boat that took them ashore. Trains run close enough to hear the horns during the day, but not close enough to make them a nuisance. One of our cruisers, the heavy cruiser, got hit and water got into the oil. As anniversaries of the attack passed, Ray Jr. would asked his dad if he wanted to visit the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor. The planes flew up the Sepik River from the northern coast of New Guinea. 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. Williams was on deck, tuning up to play for colors, an early call after the previous day's fleet Battle of the Bands on shore. He has met many of his old friends and shipmates. One of the first people to do that.". Someone had stacked the boxes too high and in the humid environment of the island, the cardboard had grown damp and weak. He stopped in the small town of Payson, Utah. I'd been told things like that before. 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. "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. Langdell's ship, the USS Arizona, lay dead in the water where she sank 14 minutes into the attack. In 2006, Langdell walked along the steep shoreline of Ford Island, the Arizona memorial in the background. During the conference, the Pringle sailed into the Mediterranean Sea and anchored in a river. It was Sunday and some of the crewmen with liberty wanted an early start. Would Ken be willing to go as a guest of honor? "I was on a date on that Saturday night with a gal I'd been running around with," he says. They went out for coffee afterward. Hetrick saw a new opportunity and joined. On the 70thanniversary of the attack, the men had been brought to the state capitol to receive new honors. 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. After that, he started teaching U.S. troops the skills of survival, evasion, resistance and escape. "Sometimes they'd get shooting at you and you'd look at the shells and they looked like they were going to hit you. In 1940, Anderson reported to the Arizona once more, joining his brother for the first time since they had enlisted. He was thrown into the ocean and waited 57 hours to be rescued while shipmates around him were eaten by sharks. The California was way down here. striking a number of people in the water. 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. Bruner laughs as he remembers the conversation. Usually, sharks will prioritize eating: Smaller fish. In the years after, he became active in survivors' groups and started going back to Pearl Harbor more often. He got to know Alan Ladd, who had starred in a series of war movies. Their skin charred and falling off, the men crawled down the line to the Vestal. He resumed one of his old jobs from the Arizona, piloting motor launches from the receiving station out to the Navy ships. What he heard wasn't quite country music, but he liked it and he told the kid. Why not try radio? He told his story as his son, Ted, recorded it on video. "We won't get in," Conter said. You don't fire guns in port, so I ran out real quick to see what was happening. Williams was in the Arizona's band. "We said we'd volunteer if they'd put two or three of us together on the same ship," he said. "She went to California and I followed her," Lonnie says. "They said he was a tough bastard, but that's exactly what they needed.". They wouldn't send her over so I didn't re-enlist.". He played a lot of golf, but missed California. 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 . He wanted to part of it. I quit. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims He keeps a photo from that tournament on a bookshelf in an alcove off the kitchen. 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. He was on his own once again, he and his young family. Did sharks eat Titanic victims? As the ships turned around, a squadron of enemy bombers appeared. Farther down the paneled wall hangs a painting of the USS Arizona, the battleship Navy recruit Potts boarded in December 1939. "Well, I'd brushed enough paint on that damn ship, I figured I could do it," he says. The Coghlan turned back, almost spent. But he is proud of his service, of the other sailors on the Arizona. "The station wagon was for the captains of some of the ships that would come in," he said. From the shore, he helped wounded men from the water, men whose bodies had been torn apart by bombs and bullets and fire. Bruner, who turned 94 in November, is now one of nine living USS Arizona crewmen who survived the ship's sinking. The family visited the Arizona memorial and toured other sites near the harbor. "It was like a hard jolt.". "We got halfway there and I told them to turn around," Conter said. "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. Redfish. Haerry accepted the medal, but found he could not speak. We hauled it all back in.". A tale of war and romance mixed in with history. In 2011, he was one of six Rhode Islanders who had lived through the attack on Pearl Harbor, the only one from the Arizona. He would work in the port director's office, delivering sealed packets to the captains of Navy ships. 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. It scared him a little. He keeps the mementos from his experience the maps, the photos, the clippings, the medals, the painting in a room behind a door on the side wall of the living room in the house where he has lived for 54 years. "We made friends. Whether they're a spiny dogfish all the way to great whites, sharks love eating fish. Pearl Harbor Attack In Photos - BuzzFeed News Salmon. Stratton logged thousands of miles of travel. He looked for what he called medium spacing. 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. Photographs hang on the walls of his room. He said, 'whatever I can get out of you.' "To see the people I knew back in those days," he says. "I said goodbye and left.". "It's hard to explain." He could see the band was sincere. "He wanted the east coast, I wanted the west coast. In World War II, he fought at Guadalcanal, in the battle of the Coral Sea, at Okinawa and Iwo Jima. "Say your prayers, men, we're seven miles off shore and we're in 10, 15-foot swells," one of the officers said as the crew abandoned the plane. He wanted to interview Langdell for his project. The six-year Pentagon project identified nearly 400 who died on the USS Oklahoma in 1941. A sailor on the repair ship Vestal, tied up nearby, spotted them and threw them a line. Finally, the tanker spotted the destroyer. did sharks eat pearl harbor victimssig sauer minimalist folding stock. "I motioned to crane operator what we needed, what tools to send down." At the USS Arizona memorial, he became friends with a National Park Service historian and inspired a Pearl Harbor action figure that the service sold at the gift shop. "You can't get a guy hungry in three or four days," Conter says. 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. The men, their charred skin peeling away, climbed hand-over-hand across the line to safety. I had one pair of dungarees and that was it, that and a towel and shaving gear.". Nightmares invade his sleep when he remembers those final moments. But he clutches the cap and puts it on as he sits in an easy chair by the window. He asked for volunteers. Why is the FBI checking up on you, she wanted to know. All those sailors from all those places and here was a guy who was practically a neighbor. Occasionally, they head into Okmulgee for an evening out at the One Fire, a casino operated by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. "Remember Pearl Harbor!" became a rallying cry for the U.S. during World War II. It fit in that location. He was attending midshipman's school at Northwestern University. When he returned home, he got another call from the band director. After that, he steamed north to Kodiak, Alaska, where other Navy ships were trying to turn back Japanese inroads throughout the strategically important Aleutian Islands. 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. On the same bookshelf sit mementos from his time on the Arizona. "It's always been my fear that people are going to forget that day, that people are going to forget the sacrifice that was made that day.". 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. Conter was talking about survival, about coming back alive. "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.". "I never talked about it much then," he says. Among those killed were over 1,700 aboard the USS Arizona, 103 . A smile spreads across his face as Dean Martin's voice fills the cab. In Hawaiian custom, sharks were cared for by families who fed them and kept their bodies free of barnacles. She prods him to move around more and to leave the room for meals. "The worst shark attack in history" - Epic Diving He keeps it with him when he travels. Many have since died. It turned out little was the right word. He clears his throat. "I was back here on leave before the war started and he was here too," Cook says. "It's one of the best actual memorials I've seen," he says. When they said, 'grab your sea bags and let's go,' I did.". They covered the growing seasons: cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, grapes. Anything you choose is fine. That's why the FBI was nosing around me, Potts thought. 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. You're on your own, every day.'". The things I don't want to remember was the blood.". If they found anything that belonged to the Navy or hadn't been approved, they'd take it. He did not reach a hospital for several days, but doctors still saved his hand. He liked the idea of working as an aircraft mechanic, so he volunteered. 2023 www.azcentral.com. But he didn't want to start his civilian life in the brig, so he left it in Honolulu. 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. "It sounded like someone shooting guns. "I don't think we'll ever be able to swim to shore. Once, I made a dive in a two-man submarine, down in over 1,200 feet of water off Santa Barbara coast. We carefully wrapped them in sheets. "One day our boat was stacked with two dollar bills," he said. The attack was devastating for the Americans, though the Japanese . As soon as he turned 18, he enlisted in the Navy. Inside the Quest to Name Pearl Harbor's Unknown Victims | Time Three years ago, Ray Jr. received a call from a lieutenant colonel in the Rhode Island National Guard. 4 Comments. I think it was one of the proudest days of my father's life.". As he prepared for his new posting on the Frazier, Langdell decided to make a move. For a long time, he didn't think he would ever return to Pearl Harbor. Pictures of past parades. And he still likes to talk about that other young fellow from Oklahoma, the one who didn't make it home. "The stuff he likes.". Maybe next time. 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. Wherever he goes on the pickup, people ask him about his experience. He met up with some of the guys from the turret crew and they hopped a boat to shore, where there was a call for volunteers to join the Navy's destroyers. 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. He climbed aboard the ship, ducking to avoid bullets from the gunner planes. Japanese relieved at no Pearl Harbor apology - DW - 12/28/2016 He acknowledged the wreath. We'd go out and blow them up.". "It was rough weather, foggy, raining cold," Anderson said. 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 ship accompanied General Douglas MacArthur to the Philippines and was anchored in the harbor off Nagasaki, Japan, when the second atomic bomb exploded. The Macdonough pulled picket patrol often, protecting other troops and guarding against kamikaze attacks by Japanese planes. By the time they were back, the icicles were forming again and two more guys would go out.". The Stratton men have taken up a more personal cause. Military Casualties. He half-swam, half-walked the 70 yards to Ford Island and manned a mounted machine gun. Sight-setters and pointers would locate targets visually and determine their distance and range. "The hat represents the Arizona. At nights, Anderson was taking classes in meteorology and electronics, trying to learn skills that could help him stand out among all the returning servicemen and women. war. Yes, he'll say, he was on the Arizona and he survived. 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. "That lumber was so damn green then, we used to kid we had to shoot the squirrels out of it.". "After 36 hours, I still hadn't put in a day. The USS Shaw explodes after being hit by bombs during the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in this December 7, 1941 photo.