We Didn't Survive Pearl Harbor

Today has always been a special day for us. The five of us, my mom, me, my brother and twin younger sisters have known about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor like we know each other. Dad, King the Most, survived the bombing at Hickam Field where the US Air Force was hit first by the bombers before continuing run after run on the US Navy side of the harbor.

My very earliest memory is of the ol' man walking me and my brother out on the pier that comes into view just to the right of where the USS Arizona Memorial is now. I was four or five. My brother was two or three and he carried him out as I walked beside them. If he put my brother down I was sure that he would have to retrieve him from the water. I remember it was a long walk out onto the pier on a sunny day in Hawaii.

I remember him standing there and pointing into the water, "There's the Arizona," he proclaimed. I was born in Arizona, Davis Monthan Air Force Base. We had lived in Arizona all of about six weeks. We were military and this duty station, Hawaii, the island of Oahu was where I would start school on base. We lived in on base housing. On the enlisted side and across the harbor from the Navy side where we were standing.

The proclamation sort of confused me. I remember to this day being confused as to how I could have been born on top of the water so I had asked about it. There was no ship to be seen. Dad put my brother down and commanded him to stay still. Then he lifted me up for a better angle to view it. All I could see was a rusted-out turret... and then I saw it... the ghostly image of the USS Arizona sunk right before me.

He told me that when the planes came in he was asleep in his bunk. The barracks he said, "Lifted on one end... everything slid and bullet holes began appearing in the walls." He also told me that he was scared. My ol' man wasn't skeert of anything that I can ever remember. He was a tough old son of a bitch sergeant. He said that he had dived out of his bunk and got under it for while. I remember that scared me. It still scares me.

The ship ghosted in and out of view in the little chop of the water. I remember the wind was calm and soothing, but then he told me that the sailors were all still on board the USS Arizona. They were trapped and died in that ship... the ones that weren't killed or wounded in the bombing, explosions, and gun fire. "They are all still in that ship."

I imagined them pounding on the hull until it got quiet.

My brother was now running wildly in some inappropriate direction and Dad put me down to chase him. We got back to the car. For a while I watched the mirages forming over the little two lane road with no curbs that ran seemingly forever to a motion sick kid in the back seat.