Visiting Pearl Harbor was a soulful, solemn experiences I will never forget. The USS Arizon Memorial is set upon one of the sunken ships where over 1,000 men were entombed when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. There are parts of the ship that you can still see above water and you can see parts of the ship below the water. Looking at the wall of names... well, that was a lot of lost lives. It is difficult not to be touched as you stand giving honor to those who lost their lives fighting for our country.
This picture shows part of the ship that is above water while the one I will post below, if you look closely, shows part of the ship that can be seen beneath the water. I don't know that anyone can stand above this ship, think about the thousand men that were unable to escape below your feet, and not be moved.Around the harbor and not pictured here are markers of the other ships that sank that day.
This is a bit of information received from the USS Arizona Memorial website:
There were 1.4 million gallons of fuel on the USS Arizona when she sank. Over 60 years later, approximately two quarts a day still surfaces from the ship. Pearl Harbor survivors refer to the oil droplets as "Black Tears."
I also found this bit of information from Wikipedia:
The battleship "USS Arizona" was hit with an armor piercing bomb which penetrated the forward ammunition compartment, blowing the ship apart and sinking it within seconds. Overall, nine ships of the U.S. Pacific fleet were sunk and twenty-one ships were severely damaged. Three of the twenty-one would be unrepairable. The overall death toll reached 2,350, including 68 civilians, and 1,178 injured. Of the military personnel lost at Pearl Harbor, 1,177 were from the Arizona. The following day, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared Dec. 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy."
1 comment:
how some of the men died:
I am seven years old and I know how some of the men died. Some of the men tried to reach out of a little hole of the ship and only their hand was out. Two men tried to get their friends out. They really loved their friends. None of them survived. The aircraft carrier filled up with water and they all died. And from that day on we should always remember them. Especially if you have a father who died. We should always remember them.
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