Langdell will return to the Arizona once more. They listened for their names and their service branch. He tried to keep his thoughts on the work in the office. Stratton told her why: He had been aboard the USS Arizona when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941. It is dated Dec. 21, 1941. Handout . Cook was discharged in 1948 in San Diego and stuck around California, where he worked as a metal finisher at Van Nuys manufacturing plant. "We're right-arm rates." The body parts we put in pillow cases. Japanese torpedo bombers hit the Lexington and crippled the big ship. I even had a couple of dates with girls.". 3 gun turret. "If you can stand up and stay up while we change the linen on this bed, we'll see about it.". The pieces the largest is about as long as a bus sit in a salvage yard on the Waipi'o Peninsula on Oahu. The Macdonough pulled picket patrol often, protecting other troops and guarding against kamikaze attacks by Japanese planes. Keeping the memories alive. The next morning, the Arizona was still burning as oil flowed out of her full tanks. Anderson smiled. "He was out to sea nine months out of the year, only home for three months," Ray Jr. says. Potts was touched. "I got the lay a wreath in front of the names of the fallen," he says quietly. Jobs were few, so he set off for Warner, Okla, with the idea of playing football at Connors State Agricultural College. The ship was dead in the water. The Solace dispatched motor boats to the Arizona to rescue wounded sailors and her crew pulled others from the water. As he prepared for his new posting on the Frazier, Langdell decided to make a move. The river wound through dense vegetation, leaving 15 or 20 feet of clearance on each side of the plane. Nicaragua. Now, stateside again, Hetrick reported to a Navy station in San Diego, where he met the woman who would become his wife, Jeanne. 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. The United States declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, the day following the attack on Pearl Harbor. It sits today in the carport outside his home. He could see the planes were flying too low for his guns anyway, but before his crew could figure out their next move, an armor-piercing bomb detonated near the powder magazine beneath the No. With a gun, he could defend himself. Anderson grew up in the Red River Valley of northern Minnesota, the son of a prominent local judge. World War II veterans are a special breed, Lt. Col. Denis Riel said as the men accepted the medals. The owner said, 'give it a name and say who are. These Photos Of The Pearl Harbor Attack Are Still Shocking Decades Later "A day that will live in infamy." By . "They paid me by the day," he said. Hetrick recovered. By the end of the day, had persuaded Anderson to sign up for the Navy Reserve. Japan and China were at war again and America was trying to protect its interests without getting involved in the conflict. He and his wife, Doris, have lived in the same house for 54 years. "I cleaned up my language," he says, admitting he deployed a salty vocabulary, even after leaving active duty. Once he was awakened by a loud noise and a flash and thought his ship was under attack. 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. "Are you in the Navy? 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. As they talked, Ray mentioned that his dad had been aboard the Arizona. 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. With Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, William Lee Scott. However, larger shark species like to eat large marine mammals and large fish species, including dolphins, sea lions, tuna, mackerel, and seals. He was on Ford Island when the Japanese attacked, training for new assignment. The USS Shaw explodes after being hit by bombs during the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in this December 7, 1941 photo. "In the service, if you didn't use nasty words, you weren't a good sailor.". Then we had to go back.". Conter and others in his group boarded a boat to go out to the platform and see his old ship. The man in the boat was from Muskogee, a town about 40 miles east of Morris. "Sometimes they'd get shooting at you and you'd look at the shells and they looked like they were going to hit you. Lonnie had taken up trap shooting and hoped to do a little hunting back home. He was soon flying one of the Navy's Black Cats, a squadron of long-range patrol bombers painted black for night missions. Stories of survival. He acknowledged the wreath. 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. He stayed there for months. The offshore diving business could leave its own kind of scars. Sharks in turn were revered because they . The flare exploded and started a fire, which forced the plane into the water. The cities were in ruins. He displayed no pictures, kept no mementos that his family knew about. "Randy, come and turn on the music box." Pearl Harbor was the site of the unprovoked aerial attack on the United States by Japan on December 7, 1941. One morning, he was at his desk, catching up on paperwork, when he heard a vehicle screech to a halt outside. An avocado tree grows in the backyard. Conter told him about the lost orders. Just stories, the kind buddies tell each other. But he could not be prepared for what he found on the charred hulk of the battleship. Stratton and other men climbed into a small boat that took them ashore. Bruner looked each recruit in the eyes to determine the right job, but he wasn't testing their mettle, not yet. Toward the end the war, Langdell was stationed in the Philippines, at a base in Manila. "I would tell them. 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. A few days later, the drove through the crumbling streets of Hiroshima. You have a great voice, he was told. He squeezes past the pool table, past the photos and the maps and the medals. I said, 'You send her over, I'll re-enlist.' 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. He doesn't need to say which Saturday night by now. 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. As he talks about Pearl Harbor again, other memories surface. The countries of Japan and The United States had been at odds for several decades before the attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. He catalogs the scars and their origin. 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. The license plate reads USS ARIZ. A mural on a white bed cover depicts the USS Arizona and the memorial that floats above it in Pearl Harbor. It wasn't, but the flash was a reminder, as if he needed anything more. The Saratoga sailed across the South Pacific, to Guam, the Philippines, around New Guinea. Joe Langdell found a table in the wardroom of one of the ships moored in Pearl Harbor and sat down with his breakfast. The day when they assigned him and a crew of divers to a motor launch and sent them to the Arizona to remove bodies of dead sailors. The Saratoga had returned to Pearl Harbor by the time the Japanese surrendered. He joined the Navy because it seemed like a better environment. In Alaska, he helped set up platforms that could keep up with tides that rose and fell as much as 32 feet. 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. Not long after he returned to Pearl Harbor near the end of the war, Anderson searched out some of the battle reports from Dec. 7, 1941. "These captains of the ships, when they left the states, they had no idea where they were going, just that they're going via Pearl Harbor," Potts said. We were going to have a date the next day. Potts says, shaking his head. 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. As a youngster, Anderson heard stories about the Navy from his uncle, a man named Ray Stokes. The men, their charred skin peeling away, climbed hand-over-hand across the line to safety. No one seemed to be in charge on Ford Island, where Cook had spent the night. "We'd patrol at night. When was the shark attack on the Jersey Shore? The ships encountered a Japanese fleet, two big cruisers, six destroyers, some troop ships, and engaged. "It's where the war started.". At this one, he was looking around the room and he saw a picture of a sailor way back in the back, in a setting arranged like a memorial. He can tell stories about his years with the diving crews, but the truck has evolved into a reminder of another time. And in the back corner, a real trophy. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. Too many strategic decisions come down from Washington instead of from the commanders on the ground. He was at a restaurant last summer and someone noticed his USS Arizona cap. With a total of 1,195 men aboard, about 300 went down with the ship. Stratton falls easily into the memories of his years on diving boats. His dad has never sought recognition for his service on the Arizona and barely talks about the day of the attack. Bruner was put in charge of the gun batteries. Cook has returned to Pearl Harbor three times and he likes the Arizona memorial. "Well, I'd brushed enough paint on that damn ship, I figured I could do it," he says. He worked on board as a mechanic for a torpedo squadron and ended up in charge of the hydraulic shop. After an initial run-in with the guard at the gate ("Three weeks ago, I was shooting at people and killing them and I didn't even know who they were," he growled at the guard. The Coghlan left San Francisco in September 1942 and sailed toward Pearl Harbor for an assignment. The family sold maple syrup distilled from the trees on their farm. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. Jack shrugged. Lonnie finally retired from welding in 1982 and in 1994, the Cooks moved back to Morris. I heard the general say, 'You're a remarkable guy.' Cook made it off alive. The fellow told him to report to the front gate of Sam Goldwyn's studio in Hollywood on Monday morning. "You know, you can see where I came out of, the hatchway. Today, he tries to pass on what he knows to students of history. "I wasn't going out there. Williams was in the Arizona's band. (See Pearl Harbor Attack.) "Lou, let's go to flight school," Conter's buddy said one day. Squid. 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 guns hit the periscope. He called back a few days later. It turned out little was the right word. This time the objective was clear. But Hetrick couldn't find work, so inside of six months, he signed up for the Navy Reserve. In the spring of 1943, the Macdonough headed north toward the Aleutian Islands, where Japan was trying to establish strategic strongholds that could control shipping lanes and thwart allied attacks on the Japanese islands. He enrolled, but after a couple of weeks, the noisy streetcars and the police sirens kept him up all night. He stepped off the deck into a motor launch as the ship was sinking. Tall pines tower over the house. ", "You will go to the Arizona and you will take off all the bodies and body parts above the water line," the man said. This all changed when the United States declared war on Japan, bringing the country into World War II. Of the 1,196 men aboard, 900 made it into the water alive. "I can understand that," Ray Jr. says. "The nights up there were already short, so I didn't get much sleep," Cook says. "The new ones, they didn't know beans.". Occasionally, they would close the store and hook a 33-foot trailer to a pick-up truck. 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. After the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the United States opted to construct a naval base in 1899. elephant tail jewelry did sharks eat pearl harbor victims. They are the marks of a survivor, 73 years on. One of our cruisers, the heavy cruiser, got hit and water got into the oil. Since the 1920s . Schenkelberg was no stranger to hardships . He looked for what he called medium spacing. 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. But he is proud of his service, of the other sailors on the Arizona. He spent the rest of the day retrieving bodies from the harbor. "I bought it at the receiving station in Pearl Harbor. He started chatting up a regular customer, a contractor, and got a job building houses. medge. His mother had moved to Decatur, Ill., by then, so he followed and took a job at a hardware store. The Coghlan turned back, almost spent. Sight-setters and pointers would locate targets visually and determine their distance and range. As he recounts the experience, he rubs his hands together, then holds them out, turning them over. 12/28/2016. At 93, he is one of the last survivors ofthe attack on the Arizona. The Navy censors would never allow such information in a letter. He was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in February 1954, the rank he held until he retired. 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. Cook is invited to such events occasionally and sometimes introduced as an Arizona survivor. Haerry sailed on Navy ships through World War II and again during the Korean conflict. "He told you the story?" John was sent from training camp in Illinois to Bremerton, Wash. He knew he was near release the day an officer came by and launched into a pep talk about the war and the Navy's role in it. Aviators most often arose from left-arm rates. He's not so fond of the crowds around Honolulu and doesn't plan to go back. Oceanic whitetip sharks killed many of the surviving crew in the biggest attack on humans ever recorded Credit: Getty - Contributor. 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. As the ships turned around, a squadron of enemy bombers appeared. "Cut!" He introduced him to other officers. "When we got up into the Aleutians, we started banging on the Japanese that had already landed," Bruner said. Anderson went aboard the USS Edsall, a destroyer that supported various military action at sea and ashore. They bought a small ranch and, while Lonnie continued to work welding jobs, they grew walnuts, almonds, peaches, apples, nectarines, cherries and grapes. I think that's what kept me living to this day.". Other crewmen would roll out the shell, use a mechanical device to ram it in, then load four bags of powder behind it. "We won't get in," Conter said. Donald Stratton completed the paperwork for a concealed weapons permit at the El Paso County Sheriff's Office and approached the counter to submit fingerprints. ", "It's a brand new destroyer, the Coghlan, DD-606," he said, "built right here in 'Frisco.". 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. He stayed on the 17thfloor of a hotel on Waikiki Beach. Finally, the Navy gave him a medical discharge. He has met many of his old friends and shipmates. When she says anything, I tell her I'm catching up from the war.". amc gremlin for sale washington state did sharks attack titanic survivors. She was attending an art academy to learn dress designing. He made bargemaster on a huge drilling rig, but yearned for something more interesting, so he got a job as a tender with a commercial deep sea diving business. The next night, an American PT boat retrieved all 10 men. One of the men started yelling. As a tender, he stayed on the surface, monitoring the divers working on rigs, piers, pipelines, any piece of seaside or seagoing equipment. When he left Morris the first time in 1939 after high school, Cook wasn't sure where he'd end up. "We took off," Bruner said, "firing just as fast as we could. Cook was a gunner's mate on the Arizona. "Listen, all those men down there on that ship, a thousand of them, they wouldn't do it and I don't think they'd want me to do it," he says. 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. 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. When he first arrived at Pearl Harbor, Hetrick wasn't even old enough to buy a beer until he found a place where they didn't ask questions if a guy was in a service uniform. Yes, a lot of brave men died. Years later, at a reunion in Tucson, Cook learned that one of his buddies from the Arizona had been sent to the Lexington and was in the Coral Sea when the carrier was attacked. They would be married in San Francisco, before the Frazier set sail. poil bulbe noir ou blanc; juego de ollas royal prestige 7 piezas; ano ang kahalagahan ng agrikultura sa industriya; nashville hotels with ev charging Pearl Harbor centres on a cloverleaf-shaped, artificially . Hetrick slept on the battleship USS Tennessee, which had been moored just ahead of the Arizona along Ford Island. What they didn't count on was the side-street parking. 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. He will meet three other survivors in Hawaii for their last reunion. he said. Doctors treated him and he recovered, but the his fingers never healed properly. His service on the Arizona also seemed to give him added credibility among the young sailors. And he has watched with dismay the changes in survival training.
