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He had a wrinkled, leathery face with his eyes shielded by the bill of a battered green baseball cap with "John Deere" embroidered on it. He clutched the front rail of his walker as he supported his frail body while peering up at the names on the wall. I watched his lips move amongst the stubble of gray as he read the names. Did the names on the wall represent shipmates or old friends? I could not bring myself to interrupt his moment of solitude to ask. A shaft of light streaming through the memorial reflected off a tear slowly moving down his weathered cheek as the crowd of tourists silently moved me away from him. There were 1,177 names of the men who went down with the Arizona on that fateful day, December 7, 1941, listed on that wall. A number had my surname, but to my knowledge we were not related.
I retraced my steps toward the entrance of the memorial where a naval launch was waiting to take me back to shore. Along the way I paused by a large opening in the floor of the memorial where you can see the vague outline of the ship below. The USS Arizona, BB-39, was a Pennsylvania class battleship of 30,000 tons. Black oil bubbles to the surface from it as it has for the last seventy years. This oil once fired the boilers of the warship, producing steam for the turbines which produced 31,500 horsepower for turning four twelve foot propellers. Now the oil is called "black tears". She weeps for those she could not protect on that fateful day. The ship is 609 feet long with a width of ninety-seven feet. The memorial is over one hundred feet long, since it covers the width of the sunken behemoth. Off the starboard side is the USS Missouri, a larger battleship upon which the Japanese surrender was signed. The visit to the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was a very sobering experience.
Back aboard the tour bus the bus driver reminded us that there were two sunken ships at Pearl Harbor.
"How many ships are still on the bottom near Ford Island?"
There were several answers of one, two or three.
"Two. The Arizona and the Utah. We know 1,177 men went down with the Arizona."
The big Hawaiian's composure became more calm and he said, "Fifty-eight officers and men and..." his voice dropped to almost a whisper, "one baby girl."
The big man had our attention.
He continued his the story. "The Utah was an old battleship used for target practice and had a fairly small compliment of men. Albert Wagner was a sailor aboard that ship who had a very special cargo. Do you know what that was?'
No one answers.
"He had in his locker the cremated remains of his infant daughter. Earlier, Wagner's wife had given birth to twin daughters. Only one survived. Wagner's request to bury his daughter at sea had been approved by the Navy, but there was not a chaplain on board. However, there was a chaplain scheduled to come aboard before the Utah would put to sea on Monday, the eighth of December, 1941. As you know, the Japanese sank the Utah on December 7th. But that's not all of the story. Wagner and all but 58 men survived the attack. The tiny burial urn was never recovered. But every year a woman appears on Ford Island to throw a lei into the water at the Utah's resting place. She says that she's never met her twin sister but sees her in every mirror she looks into. She is eternally grateful for the 58 brave officers and men that guard her little sister's crypt."
The big Hawaiian bus driver finished his story and all was quite. Like the old man at the memorial I felt a tear on my cheek.
