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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| The 'Sacred Relics' of Pearl Harbor |
| 2007-12-07 |
| Brian M. Sobel, Wall Street Journal . . ."After the bombing, the USS Arizona had much of the superstructure and metal above the water line cut away and sent to the mainland, either for use on other ships or designated for scrap," explains Agnes Tauyan, deputy director in the public affairs office of the commander, Navy Region Hawaii. Still later, additional pieces of wreckage, several tons of the Arizona, were removed from the ship during the construction of the memorial and transported to a spot across the channel from Ford Island, where they have been ever since, holding a silent and lonely vigil against time and the elements. Daniel Martinez, National Park Service historian who has worked at the Arizona Memorial since 1985 and is an expert on the bombing of Pearl Harbor, says, "Someone, and we don't know who, since documentation does not exist, realized the importance of this wreckage of the martyred ship and put it in a place where it would be preserved." The specific location of what Ms. Tauyan calls the "sacred relics" is a closely guarded secret. The Navy will acknowledge for the record only that sections of the Arizona are on Waipio Peninsula, strictly off limits to the public and safely guarded in a storage area on a military reservation, but it granted access for this article to further tell the story of the famed battleship and its continuing contribution today. . . . |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #6 Here on Guam, I think it would be great iff the local National Park Service - WAR IN THE PACIFIC NATIONAL PARK would create replicas of ships based on Guam before WW2, or present on Guam on December 8-10, 1941 during the post-Pearl Japanese attack on Guam, and to include WW1. *E.g. USS PENGUIN gunboat, USS SUPPLY, USS YOSEMITE, German ship CORMORAN/KORMORAN [WW1]. Pehaps even models of Guam's pre-war OROTE PENINSULA including the CLIPPER LANDING + PAN AMERICAN HOTEL, + NAME OF LOCALS WHOM WERE ON WAKE, MIDWAY, etc. AIR REPLICAS/ORIGINALS? > include US-Japn. fighter-attack and ideally a B29. Iff I were working for the Guam NPS. I would be recomm these + related/other to my higher-ups becuz Guam's younger generations need to know what their elders went thru - moreso iff Guam hopes to attract more tourism. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-12-07 18:02 |
| #5 Stupidity, shame and asscovering will fill this bill. No conspiracy needed. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2007-12-07 16:44 |
| #4 ...What is kind of interesting is that until the early 90s the USN denied any of that material was even there, though there were some excellent pictures of it available. Now questions are being asked about any remains from the battleships Oklahoma, West Virginia, California and Utah, all of which were sunk at Pearl and had large chunks removed to facilitate salvage efforts. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2007-12-07 15:21 |
| #3 A visit to the memorial is well worht the time; i have been a coule of times and it is always a heart-wrenching event. I also have a flag that has been flown over the Arizona and it someday will be handed down to my son. |
| Posted by: USN,Ret. 2007-12-07 13:55 |
| #2 I saw this wreckage on a National Geographic special the other night. If they plan on doing anything with it they better hustle it up as it's rusting away and falling apart. It was powerful enough just seeing it on TV. I can only what it's like to see it for real. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-12-07 12:48 |
| #1 Two trolls in one day---global warming effects? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2007-12-07 07:44 |