Rising from a Tomb
Thoughts
on Pearl Harbor
By
Kirstin Cornett
It’s about thirty degrees outside right now. A brisk wind
slapped color into my cheeks moments ago as I hurried from
my car, bundled in the bulkiest down coat I own. Month old
snow lies listlessly in tired patches on the ground, unsure
if it wants to melt or freeze. With such bleak surroundings,
it might seem ironic that my thoughts are currently drifting
like a vagrant breeze through a tropical collage of memories.
But as I sit here in my reverie, the chill of winter pulls
back like a receding tide from my limbs and for a moment,
I bask in the warmth of a memory that has rested under the
surface of my conscious thoughts for the last four years.
Perhaps my mind is defying the bitter elements outside, perhaps
a part of me can understand this memory in a way it never
could before, but whatever the reason the years fall away
and I’m 18 again, sitting on the grassy lawns by Pearl Harbor
with a knot of anticipation in my stomach and French braids
in my hair.
I
remember not understanding where my sense of unease, my inexplicable
nervousness was coming from. Somehow, though, as I sat joking,
tanning and laughing with my friends as we waited for our
tour, I knew I’d never be able to forget the things I would
see in the next hour. Perhaps it was that thought that frightened
me, that in some way a part of my innocence would be lost
forever after that. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a thorough
understanding of the events had that transpired on December
7th some sixty years before on the very ground
where I now was so casually lounging. I was loftily secure
in my American history expertise; I figured I hadn’t earned
a five on my AP exam for nothing. I could have spouted off
statistics about casualties, costs, losses, I even could have
told you the names of every ship that still lay sleeping on
the harbor floor next to me. Yet even with all my history
prowess, a part of me knew that I really understood nothing
about Pearl Harbor. So when the tour guide called our group,
the knot in my stomach clenched a little tighter and I had
trouble getting myself to move from my safe spot underneath
a lazy palm tree.
It
was almost ominous, the way we passed from glowing sunshine
into the murky darkness of the movie theatre. I remember
the way goose bumps sprang out of my skin the second I entered
the dim room. I remember the eerie hush that settled on the
audience as the lights fell. I remember how my heart ached
as I watched, in crackling black and white film, the deaths
of hundreds, thousands of brave boys. I remember the way
that knot in my stomach shook as they played the actual recording
of the explosion of the Arizona, and if I try very hard, I
can still feel the waves of sound shoot through my body the
way they did that day. Seven and a half minutes. That’s
all the time it took for the Arizona to sink and clasp jealously
to her chest the hundreds of soldiers trapped under her decks.
I couldn’t even comprehend everything they were telling me.
As the film ended and I staggered out into the dazzling sunlight,
I struggled to make sense of everything I had just seen and
heard. As our tiny white boat made its way steadily over
to the memorial, I remember looking around me at the countless
Japanese tourists thinking, “what are they DOING here? How
can they even show their faces here knowing what their country
did to us?” But just as quickly, the words Hiroshima and Nagasaki
flashed across my brain and silenced my complaining thoughts.
Side by side, I stepped with them onto the white gleaming
memorial and together we made our way towards the wall of
names that stretched, as it seemed, for miles.
It
was heartbreaking. Heartbreaking to try to read every name
etched in stone, but realize that our tiny tour boat would
leave before we could get through half of them. Heartbreaking
to look into the pristine depths of that perfectly blue water
and see the twisted, broken corpse of the once proud battleship.
Hadn’t I just seen pictures of the Arizona at the height of
her splendor, gleaming and polished, flag fluttering triumphantly
in the balmy Hawaiian breeze? Was it even possible that the
crippled mass of rusting metal beneath me was that same magnificent
ship? As I stared at her, trying to soak in every detail
of the corroding orange mass resting just under the surface,
I noticed black bubbles rising from the ship, fanning out
into circles of iridescence on the surface of the water.
It was oil, still seeping from somewhere in the mighty ship’s
core. The Arizona was still bleeding, and somehow that thought
more than any other gripped my heart and wouldn’t let go.
I realized then that I really was looking at a tomb. That
there were the bodies of men trapped beneath me who spent
their last moments in terror, realizing the ship they had
come to love and serve was now going to be their coffin.
As I stood there with my throat tightening and tears prickling
in my eyes, waves of hopelessness and sadness began to flow
over me. How could humans do this to each other, I wondered?
What hope was there for humanity when we were capable of such
wholesale ruthlessness?
I
probably would have let myself continue on this disheartening
strain for the rest of the day, but as I wrestled with my
thoughts, a brilliant flash of yellow caught my eye and diverted
my glum reflections. Thirsty for a color other than the dead
orange of the ship’s hull, I chased the flash and followed
it to an entire school of beautiful tropical fish. They slipped
smoothly around the playground provided by the Arizona, radiant
sparkles of turquoise, violet, red and yellow, and they seemed
to illuminate the somewhat darkened scene in front of me.
The light bounced off their scales like facets in a jewel.
I was struck by how beautiful they were, and then, just as
powerfully, I was struck by that implication. Yes, great
sorrow had unfolded here. Yes, there was a scar carved forever
on the floor of Pearl Harbor that would never go away, but
that did not mean that hope had been banished forever as well.
Hope lived and breathed and danced everywhere around me, just
as surely as the gem-like fish flocked and swam and lived
in the shadow of the Arizona.
That
montage is the image that has stayed with me these four years.
Life amidst death, hope amidst despair, optimism for the future
amidst reverence for the past. I don’t think it will ever
dim in my recollection. In fact, as time passes, I think
my memory becomes even more heightened, the colors more vivid,
the sensations more intense. More than anything though, the
lesson becomes more deeply etched into my heart, especially
at this point in my life. Today, people I love dearly have
sworn their all to this nation, and I have had to come to
terms with the fact that someday, they too might be asked,
like the sailors of the Arizona, to give the ultimate sacrifice
for the cause of freedom. If I let myself, that same knot
of anticipation can start retying in my stomach, filling me
with doubt and fear, but when I call up these memories, the
warmth of hope comes flooding back and soothes me like sunbeams.
Somehow,
through the bitter cold of another winter night in Provo,
the memory of my time at the Arizona flows over me like the
caressing rays of the Hawaiian sun and comforts me. It is
true that sadness, trials and heartbreak lie ahead of me,
but hope is immortal and will survive the passing of years,
the exploding of bombs and all the horrors of war. Hope will
spring eternal, even from the unlikeliest of places, even,
as it were, from a tomb.
