Pearl Harbor and the Lessons of War and Peace. - Right Truth Exclusive

Pearl Harbor and the Lessons of War and Peace. By R.J. Godlewski ©December 7, 2007, All Rights Reserved

I have to be honest; when I first received orders to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in 1982 my first thoughts were of lying on the beach, sunbathing myself, perhaps with a few women lying next to me and I made no pretense about it as I found the new desire to strut around our barracks drinking Hawaii Punches. After all, I had just passed through the infamous Chicago winter of 1981/1982 where it got down to minus 40 degrees F. without the wind and 85 below with the wind! Having spent Boot Camp during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years’, I was fortunate enough to have been allowed out of basic training for one day during Christmas and whether during this brief reprieve or during the one following graduation, I remember that it was so cold that half of Waukegan and North Chicago were without power. There we were, my parents, I, and my eighty-something-year-old grandmother sitting at the local Denny’s without heat, service, and expectations for a future. I didn’t care; I was out for the day!

I had requested Hawaii as a shore duty station on my ‘dream sheet’ and the detailer in Washington did the next best thing – he assigned me to the U.S.S. Jason, a repair ship that sat in dry dock in Pearl Harbor. Not that the ship actually went anywhere when it floated, but Hawaii is all that I remembered reading at that time. Once the shock of actually going somewhere where I wouldn’t freeze my unmentionables wore off – those of you who did their basic training during Great Lakes Training Command winters know about the Big Blue Machine J -- I immediately realized that I’d be shipping off to a place that held a whole lot of historical significance. Even as a kid, I knew about war, the military, and Pearl Harbor specifically. My father served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and I therefore grew up with stories regarding the Japanese Sneak Attack on the Naval Base. Yet, actually being there, touching a piece of history, seeing the “where” it all happened was absolutely astounding for a history nut like me.

I didn’t know quite what to expect when I arrived, but I had twelve hours on the airplane to think about it. Twelve hours in which I sat nervous, anxious, and positively scared shirtless over what I was to be encountering. Arriving to Boot Camp near Chicago after a seemingly ‘year-long’ train trip from Detroit – stopping at nearly every goat and sheep town along the way – was bad enough but at least there I rode with dozens of others, some ‘volunteered’ into taking charge. On this particular trip, I was alone and heading into what for all practical purposes was an alien land on the other side of the world. Fortunately, I found a Marine (Semper Fi! – I did my 1991 Reserve duty down at Charleston, SC and lived within the Marine Barracks for two weeks. Sorry that I didn’t accept those beers, Grunts, but I just don’t drink the stuff! J) who was heading out to Hawaii and he graciously changed his seating so he could calm down one tense Squid.

I really can’t remember much else about what I expected to find when I first arrived in Hawaii. I had images of Don Ho and Hawaiian music but as soon as I stepped out of the terminal I felt an oven blast of heat and heard 98 Rock on the radio. No hula girls. No grass skirts. Just me trying to find my luggage and how to get over to Pearl to find a ship that, at that time, I didn’t know was as out of the water as I was. To compound matters, I was traveling in civvies and when I arrived at the administration building I was somewhat quickly notified of this ‘outrage’. Fortunately, being secured away within the shipyard, I was retrieved by a member of the crew and deposited in the barracks which served as our temporary housing while the ship was pieced back together.

Pearl Harbor thus become my home for nearly three and a half years and Hawaii my adoptive land. Technically, I joined the Navy when I was seventeen, but by the time that I took my oath I was a week-old adult. I didn’t leave for Boot Camp until November, however, and spent until June at Great Lakes until I received orders to Hawaii which, because it was an ‘overseas’ post, came with thirty days’ leave. I was therefore nineteen-years-old when I reached the Islands and I will always consider the state the ‘home’ where I became an adult. Someday, I will tell you about flying to Las Vegas for my 22nd birthday on liberty, leaving Honolulu at 11:45 P.M. on the day before and flying First Class into all of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Vegas for my birthday and landing back within Hawaii forty-eight hours later. I never realized that we weren’t supposed to go more than 150 miles away while on liberty! J What a trip!

Most of the photographs that you see of me, Pearl Harbor, and the U.S.S. Arizona were taken during my first year there. In fact, being a ‘free’ tour, I think that I’ve been to the Arizona at least forty times. There was just something about the ship, the memorial, and all those names engraved on the memorial ‘bridge’ that kept me coming back to learn, to observe, and simply to think. After all, I worked on ships – I served aboard the U.S.S. Jason AR-8, the U.S.S. Worden CG-18, and finally (my favorite) the U.S.S. Benjamin Stoddert DDG-22 – I just never imagined being entombed within a ship before. Military people just never think about such things.

Faded into memory today was the seriousness of the Cold War, especially during the infamous year of 1983 when the paranoid Soviets thought that President Reagan was just one blown circuit from launching full-scale nuclear war. Their trawlers sat stationed off the Papa Hotel buoy and, later, when we deployed to the Western Pacific, their Bear bombers skimmed over our masts at nerve-shattering altitudes. No, thank God, I wasn’t in a shooting war then, but we were still disciplined enough to know that there were “bad guys” out there who wanted to do us harm. Yet, some of ‘our friends’ also gave me cause to think.

Most of my fellow shipmates were never well-versed in either history or current affairs, so perhaps it was only I who marveled at the frequent visitation of Japanese warships into Pearl Harbor. I liked them; they were kind and studious professionals – even if I was somewhat taken aback by the Base closing the Arizona Memorial so that they could tour it whenever they visited. Some of my friends weren’t so courteous – once, when a young Japanese sailor asked “Where is Arizona?”, my companion immediately answered “Right where you F*&%-ing left it!” Again, I’ve always admired the Japanese and absolutely loved that country when we deployed there in 1983 for three months (remember, the Jason never went anywhere so this was great). Being a repair ship, we just basically went from Point A to Point B and tied up there. When we departed Pearl Harbor, we had an unusual escort – you guessed it; a fleet of Japanese ships.

While stationed in Japan, I got to visit the actual dry docks where they built the Yamato and some of the other ships that took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor some forty-two years previously. Yet, with the passage of time, it seems a distant, faded memory. Someday, I want to go back to both Hawaii and Japan; I simply loved both places. One memory that I will always carry, however, is the uniqueness of December 7th. I distinctly remember once walking along the deck, right around 7:55 A.M. when the attacks occurred when, lo and behold a Blue Angels flight roared over the base. I should say low and behold! That was the first time that I saw the team – the second was while driving a truck past Pensacola – but I had a front row seat! Absolutely, positively, breathtaking! I could probably travel to air shows around the planet and never see them that “up close and personal” again! If December 7th is important for the nation, it is personal for the Islands.

Maturity has given me a new perspective on the past events surrounding my former duty station and how it all correlates with today. Yes, we were attacked – and brutally. We immediately went to war and, well, we summarily got our asses beat in the Philippines and elsewhere. Yet, we didn’t quit – we knew we would win and, apparently, so did Admiral Yamamoto. We had the resources, we had the technology, and we had the manpower. We were attacked because our enemy didn’t think that we had the resolve to fight. Boy, were they wrong! While the Republicans wanted to stay out of the war and the Democrats wanted to engage in the fight – strange, ain’t it? – after Pearl Harbor America became one nation as our founding fathers intended. We were bruised and we wanted blood.

We didn’t care about niceties. We didn’t care whether we offended people. We wanted VICTORY! Scared perhaps, and therefore just a little bit vicious, we set about rounding up Japanese-Americans and placed them into detention camps. We’re still dealing with that awfulness today but I sometimes wonder ‘what if?’ we didn’t. Panic makes people do things that they normally wouldn’t do and we used the excuse that we were attacked to do some pretty terrible things – by today’s standards – to ensure victory. Of all the bad things that we may or may not have done, the good thing that we did was rally around the flag.

We were Americans and we wanted to win – unconditionally. Even the Japanese-Americans eventually lent to the effort; by war’s end, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team – consisting mostly of Japanese-American volunteers – earned a barrage of accolades and medals fighting throughout Europe. If you haven’t seen the movie Go For Broke! starring Van Johnson, I highly recommend it. Yes, we were all Americans, united, and determined to meet any sacrifices. Hollywood produced some of its best pictures in support of the war effort; women took to the factories in droves; our entire industrial base was geared towards war material; and private citizens learned to ration gasoline, rubber, metal, and purchase war bonds. The big ‘war party’ ending with two of the largest explosions ever seen in war: the nuclear destruction of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My, how times have changed.

Of the few lessons that we didn’t learn from the attack on Pearl Harbor, now sixty-six years in the past, is one of endurance. Because the entire country was motivated to win, our sixteen million military personnel ensured that we would within about four years and our private citizens actually made sacrifices themselves – no matter how seemingly ridiculous to those taking bullets in their defense. World War II marked the very last time that our nation was so utterly galvanized to vanquish a hated enemy. The Korean War ushered in the practice of infusing politics into war when President Truman fired American hero General Douglas MacArthur and the Vietnam War ushered in the practice of isolating the public from the war effort when liberal activists decided that they would no longer support the fight for freedom – ours or anyone else’s. Both of these problems are still smoldering – if not openly blazing – today.

The attacks on September 11th, 2001 are arguably infinitely more heinous than that unleashed upon Pearl Harbor in 1941. Then, we knew we would be going up against Imperial Japan – since at least the mid-1930s. Our military slept because our leaders were sleeping. The attacks on 9/11, in contrast, were largely taken against civilians and the American economic base. They were unleashed from within, by people we welcomed­ within our warm and friendly nation. Most importantly, however, the Pearl Harbor attacks were designed to persuade us into suing for peace so that the Japanese could go about their business in overpowering Asian nations with the natural resources that the Japanese needed for glory. Sure, Baron Tanaka and General Tojo, among others, held dreams of marching down the streets of Washington, D.C. triumphant, but the vast majority of the Japanese Naval leadership – the ones who delivered the attack against Pearl – hoped that we would be disinclined to fight.

When Usama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda cohorts attacked New York and Washington, they weren’t simply hoping that we would seek ‘peace’. They wanted to destroy America not simply conquer it as had the more fanatical Japanese. They wanted to kill civilians first and foremost and, unlike the Japanese, they didn’t even bother trying to deliver a last minute ultimatum. Pure dumb luck forever classified the Japanese as heinous war criminals, but the attacks against the World Trade Centers and Pentagon were staged completely “out of the blue”. The difference today is that we seem to be bending over backwards to accommodate the Muslim World who, though not specifically co-conspirators, are indicted as accomplices merely through their unwillingness to voice their disapproval of the attacks.

I cannot answer for anyone else, but the loss of my brethren at Pearl Harbor – time does not distance people who serve – has given me strong insight as to what should be done today against our new enemies. During WWII the United States and its Allies made extensive use of ‘civilians’ in areas where the military was lacking (e.g., coast watchers, guerrillas in occupied Philippines, etc.) and perhaps this is why I am so determined to combat terrorism today. Perhaps my service in the ‘mere’ Navy does not lend well to active combat operations against insurgents, but my military experience has taught me that there’s no reason that a person cannot do something if they have enough drive to do so. Pearl Harbor, for this one-time resident of the Base, represents commitment to win despite seemingly overpowering odds. It represents a desire of this “One Nation” to be truly one and fully dedicated to vanquishing a heinous enemy.

Perhaps others do not believe this way and there are many who chastise me for my own beliefs. However, the greatest lesson resulting from Pearl Harbor is that we need to vanquish before we empower; fight before we trade; and unite before we divide. It is my belief that today we need to defeat the Islamists – one and all – before we can set about welcoming the Muslim World into the 21st century of economic opportunity and growth. Pearl Harbor represents the purity of both war and peace. We destroyed our enemies. We uplifted their survivors. We need to do the same today with Greater Islam. What have you learned from Pearl Harbor?

U.S.S. Jason AR-8 (Official U.S. Navy Photograph. Date unknown). The first of my ships, but this particular specimen also served during World War II having been torpedoed by the Japanese and, thus, serves as a great symbol for this story. Incidentally, the torpedo was a dud and the ship’s crew used a sledge hammer to knock the weapon back out of the hull. The ship’s log didn’t state whether they disarmed it our not.

________________________________________________________________________ Sharing the article and Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary's Thoughts, The Random Yak, 123beta, Adam's Blog, Leaning Straight Up, Big Dog's Weblog, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Adeline and Hazel, The Uncooperative Radio Show! Special Weekend!, Pursuing Holiness, Nuke's, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, The World According to Carl, Pirate's Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, Celebrity Smack, The Pink Flamingo, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, The Yankee Sailor, and Church and State, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Comments

[Pearl Harbor Tours]

I think the concept of 'myth' is not very accurate. Polynesian culture is alive and well in the islands. To consider the belief of these people to be myth is to deny the culture altogether. I lived on Oahu for 5 yrs. and it was one of the most meaningful spiritual experiences in my life as a Pagan. I wish I could go back. A huge part of my heart will always belong to Hawaii.

[PALADIN]

I,VE VISITED THIS SACRED MEMORIAL , AND THE FEELING I HAD WAS ONE OF PEACE.EVERYTHING SEEMED SO PEACEFUL THERE ON THE WATER. MAYBE IT HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE WATER?? I KNOW WHEN I VISITED THE VIETNAM MEMORIAL, I FELT COMPLETELY DRAINED AFTERWORD. NOT SO WITH THIS MEMORIAL, JUST A COMPLETE PEACE. DON,T GET ME WRONG I FELT SADNESS TOO BUT IT WAS A SADNESS WITHOUT TURMOIL.

[Debbie]

Grouch (hubby): I enjoyed every minute in Hawaii. For those who don't know, we lived there for about 18 months. What a privilege.

Chill bumps every time we visited Pearl Harbor.

Steve: Thanks for the tip on Michelle Malkin's post with pictures, I haven't made it over there yet today.

[Steve]

Nice post! Michelle Malkin has a very nice post and pictures herself here...
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/12/07/pearl-harbor-66-years/

[Grouch at Right Truth]

Reminds me of my first visit to the Arizona. What I found surprising was that about half the visitors were Japanese, most younger than myself. They were smiling, pointing, taking pictures and jabbering. I wondered how many of them really comprehended what happened here in 1941 and what went on during the 3 years and 9 months that followed.

I guarantee you that there was not a hair on the back of my neck that was not standing at attention as I stood there watching what remained of her now silent gun turrets protruding from the water.

That the Japanese as a free people can come there now to visit in peace speaks to the greatness of this nation.

God Bless America!