August 26, 2003

Infamy revisited

Today, 25 years and 3 months after I moved here, I finally went out to the Arizona Memorial. The official photos are here; I only took a couple, which I'll post later (or I won't...they may be junk, after all). You enter the visitors center and take a ticket; that gets you into a movie theater which shows a half-hour documentary film of what led up to the attack, and some astonishing newsreel footage from both American and Japanese sources. Once the film ends, you file out onto a landing, where you climb aboard a boat (capacity about 60) which takes you on a short trip from the shore out to the Memorial itself. It's a very somber place. There is a wall at one end, in a space called the Shrine Room, which has carved into it the names of all 1,177 crewmen who died on or shortly after December 7, 1941. Looking at it, I was strongly reminded of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington. Each has the same stark simplicity: a list of names of the dead, carved in stone (white here, black in DC). There's a difference, though: the Arizona names don't elicit the sense of futility that the Vietnam names do, at least for me.

I'm glad I went.

Posted by Linkmeister at August 26, 2003 09:14 PM
Comments

Someday I would like to see the Arizona Memorial. That would mean getting to Hawaii, of course...

I have visited the Vietnam memorial. I can't even begin to describe the powerful emotions that swept over me as I gazed at name after name after name after name after... Totally unexpected reaction. You're correct about the feeling of futility. Or maybe an extreme sense of hopelessness in the endeavor. I felt such an incredibly deep sadness for all of those lives lost. For nothing.

Posted by: Raye at August 31, 2003 06:44 PM