Pearl Harbor, 82 years later...

A trip to the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial remains incredibly poignant decades after the attack.

I am writing this staring at Diamond Head on Oahu, a little before 8:00 AM. The light is beautiful; one can see the shade fading fast from the volcano, bright blue skies and yellow clouds framing this magnificent silhouette.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, at about 8:00 AM, Japanese Zeroes roared over the crater en route to Pearl Harbor, forever changing how America fought future wars.

The U.S. Army Signal Corps picked up the 183 Japanese planes about 45 minutes away, reported it to their commanders, unsure about what precisely they were seeing. Their commanders noted a squadron of B-17s was due back at Hickam Field at 8:00 AM as well, so that was probably what they were seeing.

It was not a group of B-17s.

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The National Park Service has renovated the Pearl Harbor Memorial and the accompanying museum, and there are shocking and poignant artifacts: a sailor’s watch, intact, from the Arizona. A live torpedo recovered near Battleship Row in 1991. A faded black and white photograph sent by a young sailor to his family stateside, marking where his watch position was located on the conning tower of the Arizona.

The family received it on December 10th, and their sailor vanished in the explosion when an armor-piercing bomb struck the ship’s black powder magazine, detonating the one million pounds of that powder and thousands of rounds of ammunition, immolating 1,000 other sailors in a flash. 1,177 sailors and Marines perished. 335 survived.

Some speculate that this was a safety failure on the Arizona, and perhaps the door to the powder was left open inadvertently, for this particular powder was designed to have a very high ignition threshold.

We can’t and won’t know.

The sea will not tell us now, and the last Arizona survivor, Navy Quartermaster Lou Conter, died at age 102 last year in Grass Valley, California.

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Boarding the Navy launch to the Arizona Memorial is somber experience. I went with a young 19 year old Australian, Zac Tarr, who is my wife’s nephew. He’s a fine kid, tall, handsome, lanky, and possessing impeccable manners. He’s studying Commerce in Melbourne. He wanted to go to see the site of this tragedy, and admitted he really knew very little about the event.

He’s 19. It was almost 83 years ago. It’s understandable. People my age and older had Pearl Harbor drilled into our heads as a national cultural catechism, for our fathers mostly had some World War II or Korean War military experience.

My grandmother’s brother. Lt. Commander Harvey Gibbs, was a PBY Catalina pilot stationed at Pearl Harbor, although I have been unable to determine if he was present during the attack. I haven’t been able to locate his orders. But I do have his Distinguished Flying Cross from his service in the Aleutians.

I have the citation for that.

Harvey was on a radio show once; I have the transcript. He described finding a severed foot in a military boot on the beach after he was shot down.

I also have a small item of Harvey’s that wasn’t a decoration; it’s a small medal that says Pearl Harbor Golf Club, with a Numeral One with a hole in it with a white ribbon through the hole.

It wasn’t on his uniform, but he was proud of that hole-in-one at Pearl, I am sure—something that reminded him that life could be normal, somehow, sometimes.

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One of my best friend’s fathers was a civilian employee at Pearl Harbor. Bob Hansen was a 19 year old kid from St. Paul, Minnesota, probably looking for some adventure he never, ever planned on having. Later, he joined the U.S. Army and served in Europe. One night, he related all of this to us, through many tears, decades repressed. He described an incident in Europe where his unit was sitting in a mess tent.

He was late to the mess tent, and, somehow, a grenade accidentally exploded, killing every single soldier in that tent.

He had never told this story, even to his family, and he concluded with, “…and that would have been the end of Bob Hansen.”

Thank God Bob Hansen lived to become a truly wonderful man and citizen.

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In World War II, so many did not.

The water in the harbor was choppy yesterday, and as we approached the memorial, the usually azure waters were gray, and he only way I can describe it, oddly, is battleship gray. In the middle distance, the battleship U.S.S. Missouri is at permanent anchor. As many of you know, the Missouri was the site of the signing of the Japanese surrender.

The ship itself is a relic of another time, 82 years ago, where air power instantly supplanted the the battlewagons, and the Arizona lies about 700 yards away, maybe, as a testament to the end of that era.

We got off the launch, and I had quietly told Zac a few things I knew were pertinent about the attack and the memorial.

“You’ll see oil on the water. That’s leakage from the 100,000 gallons of fuel still on the ship.”

I was wrong. It was 500,000 gallons from over a million on board. Some say the oil splotches are the tears of the lost sailors.

Looking toward the Arizona’s stern, there is a buoy marking its location, and Gun Turret 2 is shockingly close, its rust crumbling into the water. The decks are about six feet or so straight down, and I saw one lone fish circling above what was once the ship’s galley, where hundreds died instantly.

The wall of the memorial have all the names of the dead, many with the same last names. We were told there were 38 sets of brothers, and as well as one father and son. I tried to look at each name, but it became overwhelming after a minute or so. I turned away, the magnitude of the loss incomprehensible.

A moment later, I could smell the oil.

A large leak, iridescently green, yellow, and blue, suddenly appears and stretches about fifty feet or so.

Tears.

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The ride back was quiet.

I pointed out that the CINCPAC commander’s home sits on the shore of the island, overlooking where the doomed ships were moored, probably as a none-too-subtle reminder of the stakes.

Prior to boarding the launch, a National Park Service Ranger gives a short speech about the need for proper deportment and respect for the dead at the Arizona memorial, a lesson that the Republican nominee for president of the United States would laugh off as cornball, something for suckers and losers, but not for him and his cult followers.

The ranger concluded that the world really hasn’t learned much from the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Well, some people have, thank God.

But not enough.

When Trump stands next Zelenskyy, a man handling his own Pearl Harbor with courage and dignity, he had to pay a visit to a man who, given his own preferences, would surrender to Putin.

To put it in 1941 terms, would President Franklin Roosevelt negotiated some quick and dirty deal, handing Pearl Harbor and associated real estate over to Tojo?

No. No, he would not.

He knew what a day of infamy looked like.