A Day at the Arizona Memorial

This was something else that had changed. Not the Arizona memorial itself, although I think there's been some plaques and things added to the inside sometime during the last 30 plus years. But now there's an entire exhibit - Valor in the Pacific - that opened while George W. was president.

It was far more crowded than I remember and apparently they frequently don't run the boats out to the Arizona in the afternoon for safety reasons (too windy). But the memorial itself and the battleship below it remain relatively unchanged.

One difference I noticed was that on my first visit, Japanese visitors would bow in front of the names. They don't do that anymore. Maybe it's because it's more crowded and there is less room to bow. Maybe it's because people in general are less respectful. Maybe it's because with the passage of time, people forget what happened. Or maybe Pearl Harbor has been relegated to the area that encompasses historical fact and no longer has a human face.

It's one thing to intellectually grasp that over 2,000 people died during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Historical fact. Totally different if one of them was your husband, father, brother, cousin, or uncle. That's when the event takes on a human face. This is what makes movies and books so great. It puts the human face and feelings back into an event. An event that most of us couldn't even imagine.

I don't remember them talking about this when I visited in 1978 but crew members of the Arizona who survived the attack have the option of having their remains returned to the ship upon their death. It's touching that many of them do. At this time only a handful of survivors remain.