60 Years Later, Pearl Harbor's Arizona Haunts Visitors

Toni Stroud
Chicago Tribune

December 11, 2001

People don't talk much at the U.S.S. Arizona memorial site in
Hawaii. When they do, their voices are low and their words are few.

Pearl Harbor has a way of speaking for itself. In less than nine
minutes, the U.S.S. Arizona became the grave of more than a
thousand Americans, December 7, 1941. Sixty years later, the sight of it
still moves visitors to silence, and sometimes tears.

People come from all over the world to pay their respects at the graceful white monument that since 1962 has hovered, dove-like, across the Arizona's sunken deck. Even from a distance, it is recognizable. No one has to ask if that's it.

The harbor is natural and reaches like fat, greedy fingers into Oahu's southern shore. There, just off Hawaii State Highway 99, the National Park Service operates the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial Visitor Center, where people get their free admission ticket, see a half-hour documentary, and board the boat that takes them to the memorial.

It sounds routine, but it isn't. The American losses of December 7 were staggering: 2,388 dead, 1,178 wounded, including civilians; 21 ships sunk or damaged; 323 aircraft destroyed or damaged. And because war takes its toll on both sides, the Japanese also lost that day: 64 men and 5 ships, with 103 aircraft destroyed or damaged.

Until September 11, nothing else compared. Since September 11, comparisons can't be helped. Just as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon quickly came to represent all of the acts that took place on September 11, so Pearl Harbor and the U.S.S. Arizona became the symbols of all that happened on December 7.

Moments of Reverie

The landscaped grounds of the visitor center, at the harbor's shore, overlook the memorial from across the water. The documentary explains the growing political tension between the United States and Japan prior to the attack.

And the museum that takes up a small corner of the visitor center displays models of the Arizona, an aerial torpedo that was dropped from one of the Japanese attack planes, and a few small artifacts recovered from the sunken ship.

All of these things are informative and well presented, but that's not what people come here for. They come for the 15 minutes or more they'll spend at the monument.

It is one of history's cruel tricks that the time of day Imperial Japan determined 60 years ago was best for the attack is also the optimal time for peaceful visitors today: early morning. That is when the tide is lowest, the visibility is highest and the crowds lightest.

Those who make the first tour of the day will be in the monument not so much later than 8:10 a.m., when the Arizona took the 1,760-pound armor-piercing bomb that ignited her forward ammunition magazine and sent her to the bottom.

Her upper decks were removed during the war for salvage. Most of what remains lies under the phosphorescent green waters of Pearl Harbor. She is a shadowy ghost that to this day still weeps rainbows of oil up to the surface.

Here and there, the oil mingles with orchid petals that women have plucked from their leis and scattered into the water. Others leave intact leis at the far end of the monument, where a marble wall bears 1,177 names—the men who, in the name of freedom, died aboard the U.S.S. Arizona.

Another Blow

The acts of September 11 have, in a sense, delivered a second blow to Pearl Harbor. Tourism to Hawaii in general has suffered, of course.

The U.S.S. Arizona Memorial Visitor Center was closed for almost a week immediately after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. When it reopened, there was a security policy so strict that people carrying purses, camera bags, and diaper bags, among other things, would not be granted admission. That policy is still in effect.

Most people take about two hours to go through the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial and its visitor center; in yet another of history's quirks, that's the same amount of time the Japanese attack lasted.

But even wars that begin unexpectedly come to an end in due time. Those who make pilgrimage to the Arizona can take comfort knowing that they visit the shrine under the symbolic protection of another American battleship. Since 1998, Battleship Missouri has been moored protectively near the remains of the Arizona.

For $14 and a couple of more hours invested, people can board the U.S.S. Missouri, examine its guns, walk its passageways, peer into crews' quarters, and even eat hot dogs and pizza in its cafeteria.

They can stand on its teak deck before the very spot where, on September 2, 1945, Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers. And if they look up from that spot, past the Missouri's guns and bow, they can see the dove-like memorial of the U.S.S. Arizona.

Copyright 2001, Chicago Tribune