War Graves
Pearl Harbour is a busy place, the working headquarters of the US Pacific Fleet. There is one quiet corner, however – an area marked by a white pavilion installed above the sunken Arizona, one of the nine US ships sunk during the 1941 Japanese that drew America into World War Two.
You reach the memorial on a small motor launch, after screening a moving documentary film on the attack and the lives lost. The film, the crew of the launch, and the guards on duty remind you that this is a sacred space – part of the memorial is referred to as a “shrine”, and guests whispering too loudly during their fifteen minute visit are asked to be respectfully silent.
I asked the guide back at the visitor’s centre whether any of the wrecks were open to scuba divers. She looked shocked.”No, sir”, she said. “These are war graves. Those people died for their country.”
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At Chuuk Lagoon, “the bones” are one of the big attractions.
The lagoon was a major refueling base for the Japanese Navy during WWII. On February 17-18, 1944, the American Operation Hailstone sank more than fifty vessels at Chuuk – cruisers, destoyers, merchant ships – as well as hundreds of aircraft. The ships and their human remains lie today at depths of up to 200 ft., and are rated the top wreck dives in the world.
The bones are everywhere, Japanese bones, for the most part invisible under silt in the deeper, less accessible parts of the ships where sailors died in the dark. Over the years, enterprising guides have brought many of the more recognizable bones – skulls and femurs – to the higher levels. On one wreck a stack have been piled on a sick-bay operating table. In the engine room of the Yamagiri Maru a guide will lead you to “the Skull”, perched in a little niche overlooking the divers.
I asked our DM if anyone ever objected to the treatment of the Japanese remains. He shrugged. “Well, we ask people not to play with them.”
Wondrous reflections, balbulican.
So the American’s protect the site where the ship went down and the Japanese don’t. What’s the point?
“What’s the point?”
Whatever you think it is.
You’re often at your most interesting after you come back from diving.
Probably because I’m usually a total wreck BEFORE I go.
How many American remains still rest at the bottom of Pearl Harbour? Considering the lengths they go to to recover their MIA/war dead, I would be surprised if you found anything recognizable as human down there.
Also, it’s not quite fair to compare the treatment of the sunken remains of a ship that was part of the reason the Americans (fully) joined the war–in a busy harbour with a guaranteed, non-war-ruins-related tourist base–to the remains of a Japanese ship, sunk much nearer the end of the war, in a place that has those ship remains as the only real draw.
Oh, and then there’s the whole Christian nation vs. Buddhist nation comparison. And West vs. East. And White vs. Non-White.
I’ll eventually figure out what I want the point of this post to be
PS welcome back! Looking at where you were, we wouldn’t have been surprised if you managed to figure out an underwater Chuuk Lagoon bunker set up.
To be clear, I was not trying to make any of the facile comparisons at all. Japanese divers visit Chuuk in droves. I just thought it an interesting contrast.
I listed those “comparisons” which I know you didn’t mean after the relevant one, and I think your point about Japanese divers highlights the contrast. Pearl Harbour is on Oahu miles from Waikiki/Honolulu and millions of people go there, some with no idea of the significance of Pearl Harbour before they get there. The diving is THE draw of where you went. And after a minutes worth of research my assumption about the bodies in Pearl Harbor is shown to be wrong, but if people didn’t flock to Hawaii with the rest of the sheep the diving around the USS Arizona might be attracting American divers in droves.
… I’m usually a total wreck BEFORE I go.
No pun intended, I’m sure.
No, never.