The USS Arizona Memorial

The Pan Am 747 seemed suspended under the starlight. Almost motionless. Then it banked on the final leg of Flight 811, and the lights of Honolulu appeared in the windows. The time was midnight, but my mind and body insisted it was 3 a.m., Mountain Standard. I have difficulty sleeping on airplanes, and until this moment, I felt subdued.

Westerly, the metropolitan brightness faded into small-town dimness shy of details. For more than 30 years I have frequently perused maps of the Hawaiian Islands. I knew Ford Island and that it reclined in Pearl Harbor. And within Pearl Harbor, alongside Ford Island, was my ultimate destination: The USS Arizona.

The next day, I was standing in line at Pearl Harbor's Halawa Gate. I arrived about 9 a.m., but already more than 200 pilgrims waited for the Navy launches to take them to the Memorial. Patiently. No pushing. Talk was in lower tones.

Forty-five minutes passed before my section of the long line boarded one of the boats. A man in his early twenties was at the helm, in control. A WAVE, even younger, crewed; helped tie up the boat; stood at the ready.

The diesel engine chugged us out into the harbor. Palm trees bowed in the trade winds and nimbostratus clouds were building across the volcanic highlands. From my bench seat in the stern I looked back across my right shoulder, eyeing the sky between the Waianae and the Koolau ranges. In 1941 many of the 190 Japanese warplanes that attacked Pearl Harbor came down this chute, bent on U.S. warship targets.

The USS Arizona Memorial looked like a white bird on the water, wings outspread. The launch U-turned and slipped to the dock alongside. The pretty crew-person made the boat fast.

The Japanese air raid started at 7:55 a.m., and, it is believed, 5 bombs hit the USS Arizona between 8:15 and 8:20. For awhile stories conflicted. Some observers thought a 2000-pound bomb had dropped into her smokestack. Later, the armor grating inside the big tube was found undamaged. Actually the bombs went into the forward sec(Clockwise from top left) The anchor from the USS Arizona is displayed on the capital grounds in Phoenix. Roland E. Speckman Assembly area near the Shrine Room in the USS Arizona Memorial. James Tallon The USS Arizona at rest in Pearl Harbor Hawaii. Loye Guthrie tion and one or more pierced the deck. About 7 seconds after they detonated there was another explosion. Almost certainly, the ship's powder magazine. At 8:25, the Arizona was a burning wreck sitting on the bottom of Pearl Harbor in 38 feet of water. With her The USS Arizona Memorial is symbolism, perhaps best interpreted by Alfred Preis, the architect: “The form wherein the structure sags in the center but stands strong and vigorous at the ends, expresses initial defeat and ultimate victory. Wide openings in the walls and roof permit a flooding by sunlight and a close view of the sunken battleship eight feet below, both fore and aft. At low tide, as the sun shines on the hull, the barnacles which en-

by James Tallon

Pretty accurate. But for some you can never eliminate the “overtones of sadness” from the USS Arizona. And I was one of them. My feet were unsteady when they touched the Memorial. The hand that reached for part of the remaining superstructure trembled slightly. I felt I was in a sunlit grave and about me swirled the souls of those who lay below. They were mostly boys. Yet, even the youngest, had he lived, would be 56 now.

Fred Kukonu is the Memorial's historian and sensitive attendant spirit. No one summarizes the atmosphere better. “You can feel the silence,” he said. We shook hands warmly, and he showed me a newspaper article that quoted him as saying, “I consider those guys down below my shipmates.” It is no idle statement.

Fred has been on the Memorial since 1965. He gave 35 tours a day for 7 years. It cost him part of his voice, and today he shouts to whisper. He could tell stories, lots of them. Fifteen years' worth. He spoke of John and Delbert Anderson. When the Japanese attack began they were standing by the number 3 gun turret. Delbert ran forward to his battle station. That was the last John ever saw of his twin brother. “John and I keep in touch,” said Fred.

A second story touched on the life of a widow of one of the Arizona's officers. “She came to the Memorial many times,” Fred said. “The last time she was 92. She kissed me goodbye and said the next time I saw her she would be in a vase,” cremated, and delivered by her son to be scattered over the water above the ship “so she can be with her husband.”

One of the USS Arizona's visitors came before the construction of the Memorial, to place a wreath on the rusting remains of the bridge. Some forty-three years earlier she had had contact with the ship. On June 19, 1915, to be exact, and the place was the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The HonoluluAdvertiser identified her as Mrs. Arthur Wassell of Los Angeles, California. But in Prescott, Arizona, as a teenager her name was Esther Ross, daughter of an Arizona pioneer. George W. P. Hunt, then governor, selected her to represent the people of Arizona in performing an important patriotic duty. She smashed a bottle of champagne across the bow of a battleship. She christened the USS Arizona.

For years, thousands of the pilgrims who called at the USS Arizona had relatives or friends below. Things have changed. A matter of passing time and passing generations. “Sometimes,” said Fred sadly, “they come just for the boat ride.” Suddenly I heard laughter. Two pre-teens played unrestrained tag across the place of a thousand-plus souls. They didn't know, and their young parents were apparently unaware of the Memorial's significance. Then a man in his 60s clowned for his son's camera. Indignity to dignity. Dimmed memory?

Strangely, the sometimes bustle of the Memorial's assembly area was ab-sent in the shrine room. Most of the faces there concentrated on the names on the Italian marble wall, the men who had died on and in the USS Arizona. The voices were hushed, soft. Often the language was foreign. One accent reg-istered more than the others - Japanese. I turned to see a middle-aged man and woman behind me, and they wore enough wrinkles to remember. They bowed their heads. They were solemn and humble.

“Some people are still fighting the war,” Fred said. “They don't like the Japanese coming out here.” “The Japanese come to the USS Arizona to do penance,” Andy Rankin told me. Andy has lived on Oahu for eight years. “I was in Japan right after the war,” he continued, “and some of the country people didn't even know a war was going on. Even Hirohito had to be talked into it. Yes, a lot of the Japanese come out to the Memorial to cry.” Later, a friend and long-time Honolulu resident, Ed Baughman, would take me for a cruise off Waikiki on his boat Stella Dorina III. Aboard, we drank a Michelob and the guided tour of the USS Arizona came up. “The description of the attack and terms used to describe the Japanese,” he said, “were so lucid, we don't take our Japanese guests and friends out there anymore. You don't shame the innocent for the sins of the guilty.” Fred said, “The war has been over 40 years. Most of the Japanese visitors who come here weren't born until after the war. They are our allies now, and we need them.” “Although her big guns never fired once in combat,” wrote Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, Jr. his father, Captain Isaac Kidd, commanded the USS Arizona and died in the Pearl Harbor raid, “she will be remembered along with the Navy's most famous fighting ships. The loss of life was the greatest single loss in U. S. Naval history.... Although the ship was officially sunk, she never really went down. The Arizona still sails, if only in memory...” The USS Arizona was the third ship to carry that name. The first two were christened for the Territory of Arizona and faded into history. Ships that died in World War II were quickly honored by having their names given to newer ships. But there will probably never be another USS Arizona. That mark of valor may belong, forever, to the ship and her crew who sleep beneath the waters of Pearl Harbor. For three decades the USS Arizona was but an image in my mind, and as I write this, it has once again been relegated to that status. But the fuzzy lines are gone. That image is now sharp and clear, and it will remain so for the rest of my life. Like Fred Kukonu, I have felt the silence.