Pearl Harbor

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.