Remembering Dad...and Pearl Harbor

Today is my Father's birthday (he rarely complained that he had the bad luck to be born the day after Christmas...because we never forgot it and made sure that we had a separate but just as special celebration for his day of birth). I've written about him before (here and here), but one aspect of Dad's life I never considered until I was physically where he was. That was Pearl Harbor. He was there the day of December 7th, 1941. He had volunteered and was stationed at Pearl when the Japanese strike force attacked on a Sunday dawn raid, decimating our Navy and killing a lot of kids. My Dad made it through despite the fact that he was standing on the dock of the Arizona at the time of the raid. Church services were being held on that ship and Dad was waiting for a buddy who was late...luckily. The chapel took a direct hit, and the Arizona's still there, upside down, oil burbling up from its tanks to this day, and crested by what is called the Pearl Harbor Memorial. Dad belonged to the organization called "The Pearl Harbor Survivors" but he refused to go back to Hawaii for their reunions. In fact, he would never entertain the notion. Too many memories, I guess. Bad ones. He had a bit of hearing loss from the attack, and you can only imagine what it must have been like--the explosions, the alarms, the toxic smoke from burning oil-fires, the confusion and panic, the screams...the stench. The death. The only story Dad ever told about the War was that "late" story, but he would scream at night the first year back after V-J day. And buried it with the stoicism that all the soldiers did...until "Saving Private Ryan" and other clear-eyed looks at the conflict allowed them to remember and acknowledge what they'd been through.* Certainly my father wanted to get on with his life. They all did.

But I went back to Pearl Harbor. When K and I went to Hawaii for a first vacation I felt a duty to go to Pearl. I would be the first in my familty to do so, and I wanted to see. So, early into our time there, we went...and it was peculiar. My dad had seen Pearl Harbor movies, of course..."From Here to Eternity" and "Tora! Tora! Tora!" were all shot on location. But being there was bizarre. If my Dad had been there with me, he almost would have freaked. The barracks are exactly the same as in those movies and at the time of the attack(they were freshly-painted as they were about to be filmed for the big Bruckheimer "Pearl Harbor" movie). In fact little has changed about it except for the addition of the visitor center...and the Memorial.

The visitor center is odd. I bought a variety of flyers and souvenier books for my Mom (she collected stuff about Pearl Harbor), and went in to the middling-sized theater to see the Presentation-an artfully produced film with a toneless female narrator that stuck to the facts of the attack without any sort of judgement or jingo-ism--a quiet, contemplative movie about a subject loaded with, well, explosive repercussions. The crowd that watched it, and it was made up 75% of Japanese tourists, did so quietly, and with a funereal respect. No cracks. No sarcasm. But a sad contemplation.

This mood continued with the short ride to the Memorial by water-taxi--the same toneless female voice pointing out facts, statistics, ship-positions...strategies. Costs. And when we got off the boat and stepped onto the marble Memorial, it was, again, like a funeral...held perpetually at a pure alabaster marble church, for that is what the Memorial, in its purity, feels like---the Arizona, rusting below it--the oil from its stores still slowly smearing the water's surface after fifty years. The names of the dead are etched in the marble and there are a lot them, too many to comprehend.

And then, Katheryn pointed something out to me, something that has filled me with wonder and mystery ever since. There is another section inside the white arch of the Memorial. A rectangular edifice that makes its way down to the water and the submerged Arizona, and it, too has names etched there. But they're not the names of men who died during the attack. They're recently buried. Comrades who survived the attack, and who are now buried with the Arizona.

Now, think about that. You survive the attack. You go through the war, and you live your life. You may have a good life or it might be horrible. You may marry and have kids, have a good life and die peacefully in your sleep. But where you choose to be buried, after all that, is back at the U.S.S. Arizona, with the ship-mates you left behind...decades and a life-time ago. When I realized what it meant, it raised the hairs on the back of my neck, and tears stung my eyes. Why? After all that time...after a full life...why here? And the concept of Survivor's Guilt hit my heart like a sledge-hammer. It was a debt to repay...beyond family and friends. You go back to the ones who didn't make it. I remember seeing a documentary about WWII veterans going back to Iwo Jima, and one of the vets, barely able to get the words out, saying "Better men than me...died here." Survivor's Guilt. As if any of it...any of it at all...was their fault.

That memory stings to this day, and I think about my Dad and wonder...did he think about those men left behind? Did he carry the names of the ones he knew didn't make it? Did it darken...even an hour...of the life he fought to achieve? And I think of his strength, and I know that if it did, he bore the burden with silence and didn't reveal it.**

Except for the screams...which he couldn't help.

My father is not buried at Pearl Harbor. He's buried in Seattle...with my Mother. He never went back.

I did...for him.

And I'll put flowers on his grave today to celebrate his birth, and that life.

*When my Mom died, I found a lot of my Dad's old papers from during and after the War, one of them a letter from the military saying, basically, "it's over--put it all behind you--don't talk about it--get on with your life." Probably everybody got that letter. My ex-wife's step-grandfather was at Normandy I was told, and when I asked him 'what the hell was that like," he replied: "It wasn't good (long pause) but I'm here."

**That popular propaganda phrase "Remember Pearl Harbor"--that was for everyone who wasn't there. The ones who were could never forget.