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he met his contact and not long after, he was standing in for Orson Welles in a scene from the movie "The Stranger.". 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. His dad operated a livery stable and a small dairy and later earned money as an auctioneer. five letter words with l; jaiswal surname caste; pros and cons of herzberg theory; sechrest funeral home obituaries; curious george stuffed animal 1975; cornerstone staffing application 0 Conter helped establish training bases in Florida and California and in 1965, he returned to Pearl Harbor to write training materials for troops headed to Vietnam. 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. 5 Jun. Stratton climbed to his feet and, biting back the pain, he stood and when his bed was ready, he collapsed back into it. A smile spreads across his face as Dean Martin's voice fills the cab. sinastria di coppia karmica calcolo; quincy homeless shelter; plastic bags for cleaning oven racks; claudia procula death; farm jobs in vermont with housing "Would you like to listen to it?" And he still likes to talk about that other young fellow from Oklahoma, the one who didn't make it home. That's why the FBI was nosing around me, Potts thought. He was eating breakfast when he heard the first pops of the attack planes strafing Battleship Row. Cook and the other men stayed below deck until the smoke from a fire forced them to leave. He went out to the floating memorial. He looks forward to his time with the guys from his years in the Navy. The man in the boat was from Muskogee, a town about 40 miles east of Morris. Almost imperceptibly, he sways. You can't leave the Navy.". USS Indianapolis at Mare Island. They were married in an Episcopal Church on Van Ness Avenue. On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Cook was changing clothes at his locker, savoring the thought of a day in Honolulu with the $60 he'd won in a craps game the night before. One day, he stopped for coffee at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood. The shock of jumping into a harbor knowing he couldn't swim. The Navy wanted to keep him in Idaho, working with new recruits at a boot camp, but he pushed for a seagoing assignment and wound up on the destroyer USS Stack as a gunner's mate. Some of 'em made it, some of 'em landed on the deck. "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. 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 . The exhausted crew dragged ashore an hour later and hid in the jungle, fearful they would be captured by Japanese soldiers. But one day and one place in Cook's 94 years seem to embody all the rest, the day in December 1941 when the young sailor from Oklahoma escaped the ship that sent America to war. Nope. "We won't get in," Conter said. The Coghlan supported Army landings and Navy bombing runs. Undertaker explains why many Pearl Harbor victims were left - mirror 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. "We don't think you'd make it. A few years later, a new station owner showed Anderson his plans to start a TV station. 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. 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. The sky began to darken and the wind grew. "That must be old Clyde Williams," he thought, the Arizona band member killed at Pearl Harbor. "They played country music because the people here loved that," Anderson says. He spent long months on a tender, a vessel that carries equipment, parts and other supplies for ships at sea. "I didn't have any speaking parts, but I was working for the studio and they paid me.". 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. We got as close as 5,000 yards, which was point-blank for those ships. Bruner was put in charge of the gun batteries. Conter and others in his group boarded a boat to go out to the platform and see his old ship. By 1941, he worked the cranes on the ship, a job that entailed retrieving the Arizona's small seaplanes after they landed on the water. Although he is 97, he decided he couldn't miss a final reunion this year and he bought his tickets early. One of the survivors would receive the Rhode Island Cross. he said. The Navy occasionally cuts away small bits of the wreckage for memorials. He didn't know what to tell them. 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. "Sometimes, we'd come back, eat, then sleep on the beach.". "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. Bruner laughs as he remembers the conversation. It wasn't, but the flash was a reminder, as if he needed anything more. Abe offered condolences and said he prayed that all their souls were at peace. Someone from the bureau had been asking questions. "They gave me 30 minutes to get off the ship and catch a transport to San Diego for training," he said. He remembers when the order was given to abandon ship. did sharks attack titanic survivors. He won't talk much about the escape, or about the men who didn't make it across. The men helped one another, holding up anyone who weakened. He brought all of his family: his wife Jeanne, his three sons and their families. We had survival training on the job. He jumped into the harbor, even though he had never passed his swimming test. The trophy sits on a small white base that raises it above other items on a shelf. ", "You will go to the Arizona and you will take off all the bodies and body parts above the water line," the man said. He fiddles with the radio. "Knock it off. "We got into San Francisco," he says, "and they never even opened my bags. He was smart enough to excel, but started cutting classes not long after the start of his first semester. The planes could fly at low altitudes, then buzz upward for a bombing run, confounding enemy gunners trying to calculate speed and distance. They had voted. Anderson's road to the radio booth started in Hollywood, with a screen test at a studio where he had worked. Photographs. He fought cold and hunger on a ship nearly dead in the ocean off Alaska. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. It was carrying parts of the Little Boy atomic bomb as a top secret mission and the Navy learned about its sinking four days after ot was torpedoed. In 1971, Stratton was working long hours with a diving outfit on a nuclear power plant project not far from Santa Barbara. Calhoun quizzed Conter about his posting, his job on the ship. As he recounts the experience, he rubs his hands together, then holds them out, turning them over. As he prepared to jump off the burning ship, he took the shoes off and set them on the quarterdeck. He and his wife, Doris, have lived in the same house for 54 years. Potts had not returned to Honolulu in the decades since he left for San Francisco in 1945. The burn ward filled with the injured. Golfers play through 50 yards from Conter's driveway. A stunt coordinator helped pull Anderson from the pile of cigarette crates that had broken his fall. Be immersed in the details of the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor and . "When I got back home, my doctors here wanted to know about my medical background," Bruner said. Calhoun told Conter to put in for the assignment. Bruner lives alone, in a post-war neighborhood in the far northern edges of Orange County. These Photos Of The Pearl Harbor Attack Are Still Shocking Decades Later "A day that will live in infamy." By . I even had a couple of dates with girls.". "The kids coming up now have never heard of it," he says, his voice tinged with sadness and dismay. This list and the accompanying graphics do not include encounters in which a shark does not actually bite a person or board (e.g. 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 Saratoga had returned to Pearl Harbor by the time the Japanese surrendered. The primer went in last, before the end of the gun was sealed shut. Potts picked up the Colt 45 he'd found on Ford Island on Dec. 7, 1941. He had held on to it through the war. By the end of the day, had persuaded Anderson to sign up for the Navy Reserve. 2023 www.azcentral.com. At 93, he is one of the last survivors ofthe attack on the Arizona. He has met many of his old friends and shipmates. Sailors found food and shelter wherever they could. The parties sometimes dragged into the early morning hours. All but one of the Pacific fleet's battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. "In the Army you were crawling around in the mud and everything else and I didn't want to do that.". "Lou, let's go to flight school," Conter's buddy said one day. "I left them there and hoped to get them back," he says. I couldn't.". Seabirds. Anderson would serve another 23 years before finally retiring once more. He needed a truck to carry equipment back and forth, so he scouted out a car lot and bought a 1965 Chevrolet pickup. He worked his way up to crew chief on a squadron of B-26 bombers, After 18 months overseas, he returned to Langley Field in Virginia. Most sharks are carnivores, meaning their diets consist of live prey, including fish, crustaceans, and mollusks. "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.". He was cut loose in San Francisco and returned to Los Angeles, where he had married a girl back in late 1942. A platform marked the wreckage of the USS Arizona. We carefully wrapped them in sheets. 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. "It never gets easy to go back," he says. Langdell says only this: "It took two days to take all the bodies. The studios needed tough men who could handle dangerous situations. did sharks eat pearl harbor victims By winter, temperatures plunged below zero. McBride reached the last man, Raymond Haerry, a 20-year-old coxswain on the day of the assault. Posted by ; royal canin yorkie dog food reviews; parkland psychiatric hospital dallas, tx . We hauled it all back in.". Conter told him about the lost orders. Yes, a lot of brave men died. Posted on December 7, 2021, 5:08 pm. His mother suggested Hills Business College in Oklahoma City. Similarly, the . Three days had passed since Japanese bombers had punched a fiery hole in the Navy's Pacific fleet. Today, the population can almost reach 1,500 when everyone is home. He wrote a training manual whose precepts the Navy still follows. He keeps a folder of newspaper clippings, magazine stories and copies of a telegram. In the years after, he became active in survivors' groups and started going back to Pearl Harbor more often. I still get to the point when I'm talking about it, first thing you know, I go to bed at night, wake up and can't sleep for a week.". "He's there for me. Many have since died. He got to know Alan Ladd, who had starred in a series of war movies. Cook made it off alive. The buddy wasn't home, but his son-in-law answered. Before the end of the war, he went to San Diego for gunner's mate school. That didn't last long and he headed back to Morris, where he met Marietta. By the time they were back, the icicles were forming again and two more guys would go out.". Hawaii Sharks | Incidents List 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. Bass. 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. He was thrown into the ocean and waited 57 hours to be rescued while shipmates around him were eaten by sharks. And it holds deep meaning for Potts, even though he did nothing to win it. "I'd already sent word, even before the first one got there," he says. Updated: Dec 8, 2021 / 05:46 AM CST. He joined the USS Arizona Reunion Association and stays in touch with a few of the remaining survivors. "They were holed up behind sandbags, but they never got hit.". did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. "Remember Pearl Harbor!" became a rallying cry for the U.S. during World War II. "You either had a nice place aboard a ship and were high and dry or you didn't have anything," he reasoned. dwayne johnson rock foundation contact. His own battle station was beneath the gun turret shattered by the last bomb to hit the Arizona. He tried to save as many injured crewmen as he could, but when the sun set on Dec. 7, 1941, he was one of just 335 sailors who did not perish. "I was on a date on that Saturday night with a gal I'd been running around with," he says. 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. And there's a trophy in the corner the paneled room that means as much as anything else there. After his second discharge, he knocked around Nebraska again, working in his dad's tavern, then on a beer truck, but he grew bored. He and a buddy had been talking about their future in the Navy. Bruner and the Coghlan returned to Honolulu and finished out the war in the South Pacific. He did not reach a hospital for several days, but doctors still saved his hand. Haerry felt the entire ship life out of the water. popeyes vs chicken express; do venmo requests expire To prepare for the trip, they were studying World War II history, attending lectures, writing research papers. Why Did Pearl Harbor Happen? I had one pair of dungarees and that was it, that and a towel and shaving gear.". When they said, 'grab your sea bags and let's go,' I did.". 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. evolution golf cart forum When he returned home, he got another call from the band director. He sits in his wheelchair as his son recites the narrative, keeping his father's story alive. In World War II, he fought at Guadalcanal, in the battle of the Coral Sea, at Okinawa and Iwo Jima. 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. The song, "Hound Dog" and the singer, Elvis Presley, both went over pretty well, the way Cactus Jack remembers it. Hetrick slept on the battleship USS Tennessee, which had been moored just ahead of the Arizona along Ford Island. Anderson smiled. By 1991, the 50th . He had turned 90 and was starting over again. Joe saved six lives and he didn't get crap. They spoil their granddaughters and can now move on to a new great-granddaughter. The marching band had been invited to fly to Pearl Harbor and perform at activities commemorating the 70thanniversary of the attack. Langdell lives now in a skilled nursing center. No sharks did not eat Titanic passengers. 30 Chilling Photos From The Attack On Pearl Harbor - BuzzFeed Soon, he became one of the earliest TV weathermen and an evening fixture in Roswell homes, or at least those with televisions. The fellow he was talking with recognized Anderson's voice and they realized they had served together on the Yangtze Patrol before Pearl Harbor. Bruner was burned over more than two-thirds of his body. 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. Their backs are gray, blue, or brown in color and covered with regularly arranged light spots. Doctors and nurses wove among gurneys, administering morphine shots and looking for the victims most in need. "You I know.") Two deer racks (his wife shot one, his son the other). Clayton Schenkelberg, who was born in 1917 in Iowa and joined the U.S. Navy in 1937, died in a senior care facility April 14 in San Diego. Lonnie had taken up trap shooting and hoped to do a little hunting back home. He weighed 92 pounds by the time he was sent to rehabilitation in Corona, Calif. He returned after the war to his home along the railway in eastern Oklahoma. "You know, you can see where I came out of, the hatchway. They wouldn't send her over so I didn't re-enlist.". On the same bookshelf sit mementos from his time on the Arizona. The Navy began assigning sailors to new postings. Song's got some zip to it, he said. Cook got the buddy's telephone number and tried to call him. He was also interviewing a Japanese pilot named Zenji Abe, a pilot who had taken part in the raid on Pearl Harbor in 1941. It fit in that location. When Anderson said he was, his old friend was incredulous. His new employer manufactured industrial refrigeration units. As far he was concerned he was saving lives.". In 2006, Langdell walked along the steep shoreline of Ford Island, the Arizona memorial in the background. Joe proposed and Libby accepted. When they sent me my discharge, I just stayed here.". He would answer questions, but in short bursts of description, with no emotion. "They said what a wonderful place it was to live, with jobs and everything, so I bought a little place up in Spanish Fork," he says, "I'm still looking for that easy money.". Hetrick, who is 91, has outlived most of the men he knew on the Saratoga. He decided to head back to the water. Yes, some of them were his friends. He would draw out snippets and stash them away, collecting them until he would weave the barest narrative. "We took off," Bruner said, "firing just as fast as we could. The first couple of trips back to Hawaii were difficult. Pearl Harbor: Directed by Michael Bay. "I'd do it a hundred times more," he says. At 100, he is the oldest. After so many years of travel, the Cooks have settled into a more tranquil pace. Did he know anything about meteorology? They trade stories. He wants to secure a proper medal for Joe George, the sailor from the Vestal who helped rescue the six men from the gunner's control tower. "We'd leave at 5:30 in the evening and stay out 12 or 14 hours, then return in the morning," Conter said. So he did. How could he say no? "There's the battleships there's the Nevada, the Arizona, the Tennessee, the West Virginia, Maryland, the Oklahoma. 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. In the documentary, "The Life and Death of a Lady," Langdell and Abe speak, side by side on the memorial. He was able to visit the national cemetery at an area called the Punch Bowl. "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.