During the course of the almost two-hour onslaught on that otherwise quiet Sunday morning, two waves of Japanese torpedo planes and bombers attacked the eight battleships at anchor in the harbor, along with several other smaller vessels. Four battleships were sunk and another four were serious damaged. 2,335 people were killed that morning and another 1,143 were wounded. All but one of the battleships - the USS Arizona [BB39] - would eventually be raised and repaired to fight again in the victory over Japan four years later.
The USS Arizona - 608 feet in length and displacing almost 33,000 tons - was commissioned in 1916 to honor the state that had entered the Union four years earlier. It was finally deployed the US Pacific Fleet in April 1940 to beef up American defenses as Japan grew more and more bellicose. It had returned to Pearl Harbor just the day before the attack. The following morning bombs detonated ammunition and fuel stored below deck, demolishing the ship's forward section and killing 1,177 of the ship's complement. Only 334 would survive.
Although as a young boy I recalled my father telling me about his wartime service in Europe, I first became aware of the attack on Pearl Harbor when I was living in Asheville, North Carolina in the early 1960s. Our neighbors were a lovely elderly couple and they would frequently invite me inside for milk and cookies. She was always in the kitchen making something, and he would sit in his book-lined study in the afternoons reading. It did not register with me then, but how wonderful that room must have been for him . . . a place where he could retreat to read and mediate. I would bring my milk and cookies into his study and we would sit there and he would talk to me and ask me what I was learning in school. He had a wonderful old desk covered with books and sheaves of papers. I loved those afternoons we spent together.
I remember two photographs hinged in a frame sitting on one of the bookcases near his desk. I had seen them many times during my visits; two black and white photographs of towheaded boys in white sailor uniforms sitting in front of a folded American flag. One had a devilish smile; the other a quiet countenance, as if he was staring at something a thousand miles away. I asked my neighbor who these boys were. And they were boys. They wore sailor uniforms, but they were just boys.
He smiled and told me they were his sons and he was very proud of them. They were handsome boys. “Are they still in the navy?” I asked. He smiled at me again and looked out the window. “No,” he said. “They are both dead.” He was no longer smiling. And neither was I. A sadness fell over that sunlit room full of books.
I did not learn the full story of what happened to my neighbor’s sons until some time later. One son was stationed on the battleship USS Oklahoma and was killed in action on that awful morning. His parents were eventually able to bury him at Arlington National Cemetery. The other son served on the USS Arizona. He died the same day as his brother and is entombed in the wreck of his ship resting at the bottom of Pearl Harbor along with over 900 of his 1,176 shipmates.
A decade later, when I was living in Tucson, Arizona during graduate school, I joined some Pearl Harbor survivors and others on the campus of the University of Arizona on December 7th to listen to the ringing of one of the salvaged ship's bell hanging in the Student Union tower. The other hangs today at the memorial in Pearl Harbor erected over the battleship’s sunken hulk. There were several survivors of the USS Arizona still alive back then. Only three remain today, all of them in their late 90s. Next year perhaps they will all be gone. Time marches on.
Over the past three decades the US Navy has permitted the ashes of USS Arizona survivors to be interred in the sunken wreck. The 334 crew members who managed to survive the sinking are the only World War II veterans who may be interred inside the warship. Other survivors of the Japanese attack may have their ashes scattered over the Pearl Harbor naval base, if they so choose. This evening, the ashes of the last survivor who chose to be interred there will go to rest with his fallen shipmates. Those still alive have chosen to be buried elsewhere.
I listened to the ringing of the ship’s bell, thinking back to that hinged frame with two photographs of young boys who will always remain young boys. I was lucky I was able to grow up and have a son of my own. I can’t even imagine the pain of losing one son. But to lose two . . . on the same day? Those photographs of a half century ago haunt me to this day. They will always haunt me. I will always hear in my mind that bell ringing each December 7.
That date will always live in infamy. It may be just a dark shadow on most peoples’ calendar, but I will never forget it. Each year on this date I think back to that day in my neighbor’s study when he stared into the distance and told me about his two sons who died so close together and so far away.
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