Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona

Two days ago was the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the event that plunged the United States into World War II. That was a terrible day in our history, but one that would be fully avenged at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

About ten years ago, my wife and I spent a week in Honolulu and visited the Arizona Memorial. Before they take you out in a boat to the memorial, they show you a film about what happened. A real survivor of Pearl Harbor was there to tell us about it. I was surprised to see how many Japanese faces were in the crowd of visitors, but then Hawaii is a favorite vacation spot for modern Japanese citizens.

The memorial itself is fairly simple, a white structure that straddles the sunken hull of the Arizona. Inside there is a marble wall with all the names of the Arizona dead. It is a sobering experience. The dead included brothers and even fathers and sons. Apparently, in 1941, close relatives could be assigned to the same ship. The practice was ended later in the war after the five Sullivan brothers all died together.

When we went outside to the rail, we could see the gray-green shape of the ship below us, visible through the water. There was a large, circular structure where a gun turret once stood, part of it above the water line. Then I saw it, the famous bleeding of the Arizona, the oil drops still seeping from the hull and rising to the surface. They looked like black marbles, perfect spheres of oil floating up from the murk to dissipate in rainbow colors on the surface. After sixty-five years she still bleeds.

Over 1,000 of the Arizona's sailors sleep within her hull. Their ship became their tomb. Today, as the Arizona survivors pass away, many of them are opting to be buried with their comrades. The urns holding their ashes are lowered into the hull as Navy sailors and officers salute them.

I salute them too, all of them, living and dead.