Arizona Revisited (Part 3)
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There's something
about experiencing the scene of a violent act while swimming
underwater. There are no distractions. You hear nothing but the
sounds of your own breathing. Objects come into view with no
peripheral vision to take from their impact. The open hatch cover
here must have been an entrance to the inferno that day, one of the
gates of hell. There, a coupling from a fire hose emerging from the
silt looking silly, inadequate; the act of desperate men trying to
save comrades they knew were hopelessly lost. |
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A hatch with an awning located
in Arizona's heavily damaged forward
area near gun turret #2. Photo by Brett Seymour, NPS. |
A porthole, then another
with air trapped between it and the blackout cover. Air from 1941
probably could tell us about air quality. Air free from nuclear fallout;
air from a time when cigarettes were thought to be healthful, short
skirts were out and big band music was in. I tap on the glass, the
bubble doesn't move and there is no answering tap from within. For some
reason, I'm always surprised by this -- almost as if so much life must have
left enough residues to at least return my salute.
Photo by Brett Seymour, NPS.
There are ghosts on the
Arizona, whose presence you feel when you are alone, particularly
in the hours at dusk. But, they don't frighten me. I feel a strange
kinship with them; they make me sad - sad that they never got the chance
to be heroes, or fools, or anything else. To paraphrase the words of a
character in a Clint Eastwood film who talks about taking life; that
bomb took away not only what they were but everything they were ever
going to be.
Climbing out of the
water on the makeshift ladder we have rigged to the floating boat dock,
I scan the now-quiet memorial. Five thousand visitors have come and gone
and an American flag keeps fluttering above the watery tomb of more than
a thousand men.
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