I wrote this in reflection of my visit to Pearl Harbor.
Walking into the theater, the park ranger waited for the room to fill up. Sitting on the end of the theater, we watched as the people filed in. It is always interesting to see the old veterans wearing their military service hats. Some of these guys can barely walk but they have an interest in traveling to the final resting place of over 1000 sailors and marines.
At the edge of the theater, the young park ranger shared that we would not see a movie or hear any audio but she would talk to us briefly about where we are today. If you didn’t know, Pearl Harbor is a war grave with working military still in progress. The USS Arizona sits in the shallow waters against the moorings that held her all those years ago.
During this time, as we listened to the ranger, she reminded us over and again, this is not a tourist attraction, it is a grave. The water tomb of these men and we say “men” but mostly children. If we look closely enough to discover who was on the ship as she was attacked. We find groups of brothers, young men under age to serve, fathers and sons.
“We know many of you are on vacation and …. You must understand that this is a sacred area for morning, reflection and contemplation.”
I couldn’t help but cry because, I could just start to feel everything. We hear about the Arizona but other ships were hit, some nearly destroyed and some like the USS Oklahoma literally decimated. No one hears too much about her but her memorial sits on the site as well. All the bodies were removed, recovered and buried or sent to their families. She was sold for scrap in 1947 and sunk at sea while being towed.
As we took to the small boat, we were onboarded by a Petty officer who would take us to our destination. He also reminded us that we were going to a grave site, a “war” grave site and we should act accordingly. It makes me wonder how many people acted inappropriately for them to be forced to tell us every few minutes that we were walking over dead men.
For the 10 minutes we had, overlooking the ship, I started to hear the sounds of surprise. It sounded and felt like “General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations!” I could feel the intensity and fear, it was not a peaceful place. It was a place of heightened awareness, anguish, pain and pressure. I could hear the alarm bells as I walked around the memorial and felt fear. I felt the sense of being trapped and I could see fragments of black and white images along with burning destruction.
The ships in the harbor that were salvaged, were used in some way either in part or full to get back into the fight. The kids that died that day, the young men that died that day, they died as a primer to fuel a war machine. I have more questions now than I did ever before. I also couldn’t understand why we see so much about the Arizona but not a lot of conversation about the other ships.
The other important aspects brought to light concern for the Japanese people. The villain(s) in this story.
Oahu was under Marshall law, the people of the region suffered. Everyone suffered. The American people of Japanese heritage suffered and history was abstracted.
As we walked the path looking at the old ships along with some active ships in service, I couldn’t help but ask “why the Arizona”? As I can see the DDG 70 USS Hopper, it reminded me of when I was active duty and I saw the Arleigh Burke for the first time. She was a beautiful ship, a piece of art with the newest technology, a symbol of greatness.
Now, as we passed the Hopper, she looked old and salty, past her prime and requiring a few more layers of paint and pride. She is moored up literally right across from her sunken grandparents. I observed ships company buzzing about the ship, like bees tending to the hive. How would it be today if incoming aircraft, missiles or drones attacked?
Just the same I suppose and this is where I came to realize that not much has changed. The trouble with echoes is that we can’t always see the source. The trouble with echoes is that we are on the receiving end of them. What we have learned and what we have taken from our learnings in the grand scheme of things is fairly nominal.
December 7th, 1941, the USS Oklahoma was blown to shit and flipped over, she held her crew trapped in a bubble, while burning. She was decimated and so badly damaged that she was not salvageable. Death may have not come fast enough for some of the sailors trapped in fear on a ship that had fully capsized.
I realized that the USS Arizona was more than just death and destruction, she was left in place because of her damage but she also represented opportunity. While there wasn’t social media at the time, they had the same power of human persuasion. They had radio, news and words. The death and destruction was a gateway to hell for many Americans.
As I walked the rest of the way back, I could still feel the echoes of the sailors. I could see the complexity for myself as a sailor. We are multitudes.
Driving off, leaving the base behind, the old ships, the new ships, the war graves, the propaganda, the shame of our treatment of our own American brothers and sisters. It is clear that nothing changes, we haven’t learned from our mistakes. We haven’t truly honored our dead. We must be reminded as we walk into a grave site that it is a grave site. The truth is because we don’t honor our dead. If someone could throw a party on the memorial, I am confident, they’d rent it out and dance the night away.
The image above was taken by an Australian family while visting. If you look closely, it looks like the sad face of a young man. Whether or not the ghosts walk the desk of the ship or remain tied to this place for some reason, the face is a powerful reflection and representation of an echo from our not so distant past.
“The truth is because we don’t honor our dead”.
we’ve essentially legislated the reverence right out of the day. There was a time when Memorial Day was a fixed, immovable date on May 30th, and if it fell on a Tuesday, the world stopped on a Tuesday because the grief was still raw and the duty was clear.
But in 1971, Congress (specifically Robert McClory a Republican from Illinois) traded that sacred pause for the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, specifically designed to create the “3 day weekend” and boost retail sales. We effectively rebranded a day of communal mourning into the “official start of summer” for the sake of the economy. By shifting the focus from the weight of the grave to a vacation, we taught an entire generation that a barbecue is more important than a headstone. It’s a systemic drift where the “vacation day” won out over the “veneration day,” and now we’re left with a culture that would rather dance on the memorial than stand in the silence it requires.