{"id":660,"date":"2011-12-04T16:34:17","date_gmt":"2011-12-04T07:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=660"},"modified":"2013-06-17T18:12:59","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:12:59","slug":"freedom-is-not-free-honolulupearl-harbor-11292011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=660","title":{"rendered":"\u201cFreedom is Not Free\u201d \u2013 Honolulu\/Pearl Harbor \u2013 [11\/29\/2011]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDecember 7th<\/sup>, 1941<\/em>\"\"<\/a> \u2013 a day that will live in infamy\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

They say she still weeps for her lost crew\u2026and until you are standing above what\u2019s left of her deck, looking at that shining rainbow of oil on the glistening green surface of Pearl Harbor\u2026you don\u2019t really understand\u2026<\/p>\n

The USS Arizona<\/em> is indeed\u2026crying\u2026<\/p>\n

I read up on the site before I went. I was prepared. As prepared as you can be for something like this. But in truth, nothing really prepares you for standing above a site where not only so many died, but where so much began.\u00a0 Nothing can prepare you for the silence. Because it is silent. Nearly totally silent. Except for the occasional mother silencing a child that doesn\u2019t understand what they are seeing \u2013 people speak in whispers, if they speak at all.<\/p>\n

If you can be said to Hear Silence, that is perhaps the best expression of what you feel standing there, looking at the massive rusted hulk that is memorial, monument and tomb to 1,117 men, all killed in a single stunning swoop when an armor piercing bomb blasted through her top deck and ignited her own ammunitions against her.<\/p>\n

They would never have known what hit them.<\/p>\n

When you think about it, perhaps the US Military was just too na\u00efve to believe anything could happen to them, their battleships were their biggest defense; placed in Hawaii as a deterrent to the Japanese forces, a warning of \u201clook what will move against you if you fail to comply\u201d\u2026and yet, it had the opposite effect. One of the articles I read before I made the trip quotes a Japanese Admiral as saying \u201cnever, even in times of maximum world peace, could he dream that military might of nation would have its unprotected chin stuck so far out, just begging for a right cross to the jaw. \u201c<\/p>\n

By the time the smoke had cleared, \u201c3,566 Americans were dead or wounded, six mighty ships had sunk into the ooze, 12 others stumbled around battered and punch-drunk and 323 warplanes were useless heaps of scrap\u201d. \u2026and the world had changed forever<\/p>\n

In an odd twist of irony, if you stand at one side of the memorial and look across the ragged remnants of the Arizona\u2019s<\/em> bow you find yourself gazing directly towards the proud figure of the USS Missouri,<\/em> where it all ended\u2026as if they are looking at each other across time\u2026<\/p>\n

Pearl Harbor also did something that the Japanese could not have accounted for, with all of their planning and careful deployment: it rallied the Western World, and united them in such a way that they proved stronger than before. But it did so at an almost incomprehensible cost.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t hit you, not really, until you\u2019re standing in the shrine room, backing up, and find that you\u2019re unable to fit the entire massive marble wall \u2013 containing all the names \u2013 into one picture. It\u2019s simply too big, there are too many, and, no matter how far back you stand, you can\u2019t catch them all.<\/p>\n

My father is a musician. I grew up hearing a lot of interesting stories, and one horribly tragic one, that even as a child, made me want to cry and scream and stomp my feet at the unfairness of it all. About a band, on a US warship, that had played a huge dance of an evening, and were granted the next morning off as a reward. That morning was December 7th<\/sup>, 1941, and that band, was the US Navy Band #22, aboard the USS Arizona<\/em>. They would become the only US navy band in history which was formed together, trained together, transferred together, reported aboard a ship together, fought together, and died together.<\/p>\n

Today, I stood in the blazing Hawaiian sunshine and looked down upon their graves, and could think of nothing to say. I couldn\u2019t even cry, until much later when I was back at work, and trying to process what I had felt, or what I thought I hadn\u2019t felt. At the time I just stood there, and stared, and tried to think of something to say, something to think, something to feel, that would capture everything.<\/p>\n

But it was all lost in the Silence.<\/p>\n

In a perfect world, we would say that the lesson was learned, that such events were never again repeated\u2026but we all know that, six decades later, our generation had its own \u201cday of infamy\u201d, the other \u201cday America\u2019s luck ran out\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Pearl Harbor, it took an empire\u2019s entire military might \u2013 a whole fleet of ships and subs, including six aircraft carriers, 353 planes and thousands of soldiers. September 11th<\/sup> required 4 planes and 19 men with box cutters. But whatever the source, it awakened a nation that had previously felt safe and isolated from the harshness of the world\u201d\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

I am not American, but places like Pearl Harbor are not only significant to Americans, because they are a reminder that nothing is permanent. Nothing is guaranteed, and everything can change in a heartbeat for the better or for the worse.<\/p>\n

Standing there, in the blazing heat, staring at that rainbow stain on the water\u2026you find that you are of no nationality, you are merely human\u2026and as such\u2026you feel the silence tell you how to mourn\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDecember 7th, 1941 \u2013 a day that will live in infamy\u2026\u201d They say she still weeps for her lost crew\u2026and until you are standing above what\u2019s left of her deck, looking at that shining rainbow of oil on the glistening … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[39,12,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-asiaaustralia-2011","category-historical-sites","category-ports-of-call"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-aE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2150,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions\/2150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}