27/9 Pearl Harbour

Thursday 27^th Pearl Harbour

Once again, slow crawl by bus through the city and past the airport and penitentiary. We had to wait 2 hours for our turn on the boat to visit the USS Arizona memorial but there was a full range of exhibits to keep us interested in the meanwhile. The whole area of many acres was eerily quiet. Reminiscent of Dachau and Gallipoli. People walked quietly around looking across the harbour at the battleship USS Missouri, where Macarthur signed the 1945 treaty after the Japanese surrendered and where Cher straddled the 14” gun in her microcostume; and the white memorial above where the Arizona blew up and burned to the waterline.

USSMissouri & monument over USS Arizona

USS Missouri

USS Bowfin - sub

 

Sombre and solemn.

The Americans are absolutely not given to episodes of silence and it only takes half a dozen Italians or teenage dickheads of any nationality to destroy a serious atmosphere but here the quiet was almost tangible. Groups of Japanese circulated with their own guides – who knows what they were being told?  Apparently, not much in their school curricula.

I was surprised that in all the mayhem only 2800 lives were lost (plus 65 Japs). With 5 huge battleships being destroyed plus 175 US planes and widespread bombing by 300 Japanese planes, I would have expected tens of thousands. There is absolutely no doubt as to the immense significance of the event as a major determinant of world history, but as a human disaster it did not rank on the same page as any one of dozens of episodes of carnage that took place on the Somme in 1916. The British lost 57,000 men on the first day of their attack.

The Japanese sailed away having achieved what appeared to be a sensational victory but 6 months later most of those same carriers and pilots were lost at the battle of Midway as the result of the Americans breaking their secret signal code and ambushing their fleet.

A hundred or so of the crew of the Arizona survived or were elsewhere on the day. Their major reaction appears to be guilt at not being killed with their shipmates and there are separate monuments to those men, who, uniquely, have the right to have their remains laid in the wreck when they die.

Memorial

Remain of tower.  White boy marks the stern.

Oil - looked like spirit orbs

Mast remains

Oil still rises to the surface after 50 years like the ship is weeping.  The blobs look artisic and then disperse leaving a cirle of rainbows on the surface.

On the way back we were boarded by a mob of dysfunctional people who would have fitted perfectly on the Midland line. I wonder if the Americans beat themselves up over it? You have to feel sorry for the children – what chance do they have?

It was free to enter the Pearl Harbour museums and memorial and the bus cost us $2.50 return each, so was a very cheap day.