September 2007 Archives

The new Ken Burns documentary on WWII, The War aired last week and I was able to catch the first episode and it set me thinking about the USS Arizona Memorial again. In my last post about the Arizona Memorial, I was wondering about the ambiguity in how the memorial materials portrayed the Japanese in a greedy imperialistic way while downplaying the US presence in Hawaii. Despite the ambiguity in the memorial, Burns’ documentary reminded me of the very real atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese in Asia and the Pacific and the Nazis in Europe. It is difficult to imagine what the world would be like now had the US not entered the war or if the Allies had lost, but given the incredible atrocities that we know occurred during the war, it would likely have been a very dark reality. Perhaps memorials such as the USS Arizona (and Burns’ documentary) serve as means for remembering why the US became involved in the war.

While the atrocities of the Japanese are memorialized at Pearl Harbor, the atrocities of the Nazis are memorialized in Washington DC (among other places) at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, which I was able to visit last year, and wrote about here.

Outside the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Most of the Holocaust Memorial feels like a museum exhibit but like the Arizona Memorial it too has a ritual component. The tour at the Holocaust Memorial Museum is linear, you enter the museum by taking an elevator up and then you wind your way back down through the many exhibits. At the end of the museum tour you have the opportunity to enter The Hall of Remembrance which is essentially a mediation chapel. The Hall of Remembrance is a hexagonal room, forming the interior of a Star of David Across the room from the entrance is a burning eternal flame under which is written “Remember What You Have Seen.” The walls are black metal, each with a name of a concentration camp written over dozens of small candles which visitors can light. There are also four scripture verses listed in the interior of the room. Although only fragments of the verses are written on the walls of the chapel, these are the full verses (NRSV).

Deuteronomy 4:9
But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children...

Deuteronomy 30:19
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live...

Genesis 4:10
And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”

Also, near the main entrance is the largest hall in the museum, The Hall of Witness which has words from Isaiah written on the wall. (Again I have provided the entire verse.)

Isaiah 43:10
You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.

The ritual practices at both memorials are non-sectarian: the laying of flowers, observance of silence, or the lighting of candles. However, the Holocaust Memorial is much more specific in its religious connections drawing heavily on sacred texts and iconography, whereas the Arizona memorial is much more nationalistic. Yet, despite the difference, the ritual practices at both memorials serve a function of creating certain “memories” about the events of WWII by encouraging visitors to “remember what you have seen.”

Inside the USS Arizona Memorial.

For most of the viewers of these memorials, remembering is impossible as they were not themselves witnesses of the events. However, through participation in ritual practices at the memorials and in viewing the exhibits, films, and photographs at the memorials, visitors “witness” the events through a memorialized frame. Yet this kind of memory is not necessarily individual memory but rather a social construct.

What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds. Ideologies create substantiating archives of images, representative images, which encapsulate common ideas of significance and trigger predictable thoughts, feelings (Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, pp. 85-86).

By building memorials, societies are able to construct ways of remembering and depicting significant events and stipulating what was important about those events. The Arizona and Holocaust memorials serve as ways of generating particular understandings of why the US was involved in the war and encourage visitors to see the events through a particular lens to develop shared narratives and understandings of those events, creating and reinforcing a sense of shared identity among visitors.

In addition to seeing the first episode of The War, I was able to catch the last episode, which closes with a statement that 1,000 WWII veterans die a day now in the US. It will not be long until the memorialized memories of WWII held in family stories and National museums will be the only ways we have to remember what happened during the war.

More of beautiful O'ahu

Beautiful blue Hawaii.

A couple of weeks ago, while vacationing in Hawaii, I had the chance to visit the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. The memorial is run by the National Park Service and is incredibly popular, so we arrived as the park opened to get in the ticket cue to go out to the memorial. When our tour time was called about an hour later, we were all gathered into a theater where we would watch a brief film about the events of Dec. 7, 1941 and the destruction of the U.S.S. Arizona. Before the film began, and elderly gentleman welcomed us to the memorial and encouraged us to remember the sacrifice of the young men killed on the Arizona, and that the memorial is a grave site and we should speak in hushed tones if we felt the need to speak at all.

As the film began, it immediately caught my attention. As the narrator was describing the attack, she described how ‘we were attacked’ and how Japan was a growing, greedy, imperialist power. Given that the theater was about 50% Japanese tourists, I began to wonder who “we” was supposed to be. Certainly a US naval base was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941 and it could even be called a military disaster for the US. However, Pearl Harbor is located in Hawaii which was not a US State at the time but rather a US Territory, having been annexed by the US in the late 1800s following a coup of the Hawaiian monarchy which led by business men and supported by US troops. It seemed to me to be a little disingenuous to speak of Japanese imperialism and to forget to mention how the US came to have a naval base in Hawaii in the first place.

So why then is there a memorial for the Arizona anyway? Why memorialize a symbol of a US defeat? And why is it important visitors’ voices should be hushed if used at all? It seems that the Arizona memorial is a holy site, a shrine for US civil religion, a way to develop and answer to the question: Who are we? For a nation that includes millions of people from all over the world, and spans thousands of miles, the memorial is a way memorializing who “we” are.

The stark memorial itself straddles the remains of the Arizona. Inside, there is a small room where the dead are named, there are many opening to view the sunken ship and the surrounding harbor, and there is an opening in the floor where wreathes and leis (Hawaiian flower necklaces) are offered frequently enough that an announcement is made about how to remove the string from leis so marine life is not harmed. The memorial serves as a place to remember not only the dead of a military disaster but is a particular way of remembering why the US was involved in WWII emphasizing personal sacrifice for the sake of freedom.

The printed materials given at the memorial also developed this particular way of remembering the attack. On the reverse side of the tour tickets were historical bios of people who were involved in the events and looked like collector baseball cards, emphasizing the medals that people had won for their valor. The most interesting one in our group was one of an American soldier of Japanese descent who was killed by friendly fire on his way to report to his base.

While the park does not charge admission, you can rent digital audio tour sets, and the brochures for the audio tour even are designed to call up a particular time. The brochures are modeled on the 1940s look of Life magazine, a publication associated with promoting American Values – a tradition that continues in Life’s publishing of retrospective books and periodicals.

My time on the floating memorial was brief -- groups are shuttled on and off with an average stay of 13 minutes, and you cannot stay longer. In that time though it became clear that notion of “we” is an incredibly important feature of the memorial. The memorial serves as a pilgrimage site and through ritual, it works to reinforce a particular sense of national identity. It offers a vision of the US as a nation that was wounded in the surprise attack, but got back up to fight the good fight, stood up against imperialism, and fought for freedom. However, the memorial makes little mention of some other US practices such as the interment of Japanese Americans after the attack or of the US’s own imperialistic activities.

While the memorial may be a way of remembering good and heroic things so that people will forget other less admirable actions in US history, the memorial may also be a way of highlighting the positive values that many Americans hold dear, personal sacrifice for the good of the community and the value of freedom and the willingness to give of one’s self to defend it. I haven’t decided which one I think it is, but perhaps the memorial and the rituals that surround it serve a bit of both.