07 December 1941

(The people from the Washington Post failed to note that I cancelled my subscription years ago, and for some reason the Sunday advertising and comics has been showing up at my door. I took advantage of the freebie to sit down and read the comics, something I have not done in years. There are new strips and new sensibilities, and I was surprised by the sheer number of them. Among them was this one, a rendering of the wreckage of the USS Arizona (BB-39) by a very talented cartoonist names Brian Basset. The strip is apparently about a boy and his dog, but this one struck me, and drew my memory back through the years).

It is a lot of years down-stream from the event, not that I will ever forget. I wrote these words in 2001, just short weeks after our world as changed as profoundly as the attack on Pearl Harbor did for our parents. “Nothing is the same,” I wrote then. “And no place is as safe as it seemed short weeks ago.”

It seems a world away, but was not so many years ago that I was assigned to the staff of the Theater Anti-submarine Warfare Commander, headquartered at Ford Island, in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Ford Island was a tranquil spot in those days, accessible only by the slow ferry from mainland O’ahu. The air was redolent with the scent of plumarias, and the placid waters sullied only by the persistent oil sheen that still spreads with the current from the vast hulk of the USS Arizona. She still bleeds fuel from her tanks, filled to the top in readiness for action. It was a quiet Sunday morning, December 7th, 1941.

Over 1,300 of her sailors and her Admiral are still there within her.

Sometimes, going in to the Headquarters on a Sunday to stand watch, I was tempted to complain about the hours or the lost weekend.

But as the ferry slid silently past the graceful memorial, I would always think of those sailors who woke to alarm bells, roaring engines, explosion, panic, and death. And their sacrifice for us.

The shipmates who lived through that, and what followed, are frail, or have already taken their leave. The water of the harbor is tranquil now, but that morning fifty-nine years ago it boiled in the tropical sunlight.

It is a strange coincidence, if there are any of those left in this strange new world. It was on September 11th, 1941, that they held the official ceremony to dedicate the Pentagon Building. Sixty years later, Osama bin Laden sent a jet-liner into the building. Sixty years and six weeks later the wreckage was cleaned up, and concrete was being poured. The Pentagon wasn’t a crime scene anymore. It was a construction site. They are going to work around the clock and sixty-one years after dedication, the new wing of the grand old building will open for business.

One year to the minute.

Remember Pearl. God bless the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. They are still out there.

Copyright 2001 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303