Historic
The Underwater World of
USS Arizona
How the custodians of a submerged WWII touchstone came to know her better
Words by Daniel Lenihan Photogprahy by Brett Seymour
J 40
apan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941, marked entry of the United States into World War II. Canadians, already long committed to
the struggle in Europe, immediately declared war on Japan. The war would rage four more years, leaving more than 400,000 American soldiers, sailors, and marines moldering in European graves, coralline atolls and ocean bottoms. It would have the same outcome for 42,000 Canadians.
Magazine
Grainy black and white film
that survived the attack shows a U.S. Navy seemingly asleep as warplanes, launched from Japanese aircraft carriers, arrived at 8 A.M that Sunday morning. The most extraordinary of these celluloid memories show USS Arizona just as its forward magazine was hit by an armor-piercing bomb that penetrated the main deck. A terrific blast sent jet black smoke shooting skyward, followed by an inferno that consumed 1177 sailors and marines. Arizona casualties account for almost half of all losses that day.
A result of the
1983/84 mapping projects, this overhead
perspective
shows the current condition of the USS Arizona
Japan, primarily in reaction to
a crippling American oil embargo, engaged in a military operation tactically effective but strategically disastrous. They managed to invigorate a reluctant enemy, sink battleships verging on obsolete and miss the American aircraft carriers, vanguard of a new age in naval warfare. Within six months of this ‘victory’, the pride of Japan’s naval capability would be spread across the ocean bottom near an atoll called Midway. The American people were very slow to become directly involved
illustration: NPS / Jerry Livingston and Larry Nordby
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