Sunken battleship Arizona made lasting impression
From the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Princeton, the sunken battleship USS Arizona was clearly visible underneath the surface of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. That was 1957, years before the Arizona Memorial was constructed. Hawaii was still a territory of the United States.
The Princeton crew was “manning the rails,” a centuries old tradition for naval ships, comparable to a military gun salute. In November 1956, after boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, I was assigned to the Princeton, CVS-37, designating the ship’s anti-submarine warfare mission. My job was in the Supply Department.
The Arizona is perhaps the best known symbol of the Japanese attack on the Sunday morning of Dec. 7, 1941 – a day that President Franklin Roosevelt famously described as “a day that will live in infamy.” The Arizona was one of seven battleships tied up on Battleship Row on Ford Island. The Pennsylvania was in drydock. The attack by carrier-based Japanese war planes killed 1,177 Arizona crew members, almost half of the U.S. casualties.
One heavy (800 kilograms) Japanese bomb hit the Arizona and the forward magazine exploded. An eyewitness is quoted in a new book by Craig Nelson, “Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness”: “The foremast leaned forward, and the whole forward part of the ship was enveloped in flame and smoke and continued to burn fiercely.”
Nelson writes: “ … then the 32,600-ton dreadnaught lifted out of the water, cracked her back, and sank back down, her enormous superstructure enveloped in vicious and immense oil-black clouds, her forward compartments flooding with both water and oil.”
Published in November is another book, “All the Gallant Men: An American Sailor’s Firsthand Account of Pearl Harbor” by Donald Stratton with Ken Gire. Stratton, 94, is one of only five living survivors of the Arizona.
It’s important to remember that men were killed on other ships, notably the capsized Oklahoma, and others died at Wheeler Field, Schofield Barracks and Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay.
The attack came as color guards on all ships prepared for raising the flag. About half the Pacific Fleet was in port that Sunday, including a total of eight battleships, eight cruisers, 29 destroyers and support ships such as tankers. No U.S. carriers were in port, however, reducing the impact of the attack.
In 1941, aircraft carriers and naval aviation were secondary. That changed with the carrier-based attack on Dec. 7. U.S. officials, including President Franklin Roosevelt, top military leaders, intelligence people and diplomats, felt that the Japanese might attack U.S. forces in the Pacific, but few thought Hawaii would be the target.
Nelson, like others, points out that Japanese leaders had a big debate about attacking Hawaii. Japan effectively was a military dictatorship, and the military leaders carried the day. And while they planned the attack, they instructed their diplomats in Washington to continue meeting with Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
Indeed, the attack was under way as Hull and the Japanese were scheduled to meet on Sunday. The Japanese were known for surprise attacks; Nelson shows that the Japanese intended less than an hour’s notice, but that was delayed by a lack of typists in the embassy.
That said, Nelson notes that there was command failure on the part of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Army Gen. Walter Short. Our military services did not communicate well with each other 75 years ago, before the Department of Defense.
Other background to the attack: The U.S. had an oil embargo on Japan, which had been taking territory, including China, for several years. The big Japanese attack plan was Operation Number One in the Philippines, Guam and East Indies. War also was under way in Europe and the overwhelming view in the United States was to stay out of war with Germany and Italy.
Nelson writes: “The attack on Pearl Harbor, such a vital part of American history, was for Japan at that moment merely a preemptive strike, a minor sideshow to Operation Number One.”
For the United States, of course, the attack on Hawaii effective ended isolationism here and brought the nation into a war in two theaters, Europe and the Pacific, that profoundly shaped today’s world.
D.G. Schumacher is a member of The Sun News Editorial Board. Contact him at dschumacher@thesunnews.com
This story was originally published December 3, 2016 at 11:52 AM with the headline "Sunken battleship Arizona made lasting impression."