| A Visit to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii |
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| The USS Arizona Memorial, located in Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, is the site of the event which began the United States' involvement in World War II. On December 7, 1941, the majority of the United States' Pacific fleet was moored in Pearl Harbor when Japanese planes attacked. The USS Arizona was bombed and 1,177 sailors and marines perished. Because many of the bodies were never recovered, the ship was left where it sank and designated a monument. The white structure is the monument itself and the USS Arizona lies just below the water. |
| After watching a short documentary on the history of Pearl Harbor, the events leading up to the attack, and the attack, I took a ferry ride from the shore to the monument. Pearl Harbor is a perfect place for a port because it has deep channels so big ships can get in and out easily. The ferry ride took about 10 minutes and the white marble of the memorial shown brightly in the Hawaiian sunlight. |
| The Arizona sits in the harbor submerged in only 40 feet of water. Gun turret number 3 still shows above the surface. On December 7, the first wave of the attack began just after 6:30 on that Sunday morning. Many of the men in the Arizona were still below deck sleeping when the first torpedoes were dropped. According to Dick Fiske, a former Marine Corps Bugler, who served on the nearby USS Virginia, "...by the time you saw that red ball on their wings, those torpedoes hit. The force of the explosions blew Stanley Bokowski and me across the ship to the starboard side, 118 feet away, and covered us with oil." |
| The bomb that hit the Arizona penetrated the forward magazine where over a million pounds of ammunition ignited and vaporized more than a thousand men. Fiske said, "It was a hellish fireball." In minutes smoke filled Pearl Harbor and flaming oil raced across the harbor as men tried to escape their burning ships. Today the USS Arizona continues to leak oil even after 60 years. It has been leaking at least a quart a day for that long. The park service believes that there may still be half a million gallons of oil in the storage tanks.They have been diving to see if they can determine what could happen next. To me, the oil you can see in the picture on the left represents the ship's tears for her lost crew. |