Pearl Harbor
Reading those two words brings several thoughts to mind; the most notable being the quote "A day which will live in infamy" uttered by a man twenty years before my birth. It also brings to mind a scene of Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri. A surrender signed by a general I don't know, following a war I wasn't part of, and ended in part by a man named Oppenheimer, yet I only know his name through archives viewed on the History Channel.
My most recent trip enjoyed some time off in Hawaii where some of the crew and myself opted to venture outside the limits imposed by our moped rental agent and take a short yet sobering trip back in time.
The tour of the USS Arizona memorial began with a video explaining the intricacies of WWII in a way I had never imagined.The Japanese had carefully calculated the time and location of the attack to best serve their purposes by inflicting the maximum amount of damage possible. Admittedly, having been in their situation I would have done the same. Prior to visiting the memorial I had understood the significance of December 7, 1941, but I had never looked at it through the eyes of the Japanese. Tactically, it was flawless. The fleet was amassed and so centrally located attack was imminent, so logical it would have been a sin to waste the opportunity.
Scenes flashed on the screen showing the carnage, the humanity, and the inevitable defeat such amassed weaponry could only bring. To their credit, the US Parks Department had made the video so real I found it had instilled a loathing in a generation that bore no malice toward the Japanese people. I left the theater finding myself with a red hatred seated just behind my eyes. I knew it was there and I could see it in the eyes of others leaving the theater. That is when duality struck me. It's manifestation would soon follow.
I toured the Arizona awestruck at the hundreds of bodies that laid buried just beneath where I walked and imagined the pain endured by the loved ones when the Navy called to say they weren't going to retrieve the bodies for proper burial. Oil from her holds brought the past to the present. Tiny blots of oil from the Arizona's fuel tanks escaped in front of my eyes and it took a moment to calculate that the oil was loaded into her belly some 58 years ago yet it rose up to link the past to the present in the eyes of the beholder.
The rust of her decapitated radio mast was within reach and the ancient cables that had run to silent antennae sat so close that my mechanic's instinct wanted me to reach out and repair them. The rusting hulk of her number three gun turret laid atop the water in defiance of her ultimate defeat. Just below the water I could see the decking and walkways and found myself imagining the men who trod these structures unaware where they'd be laid to rest on that fateful day. Just below where I stood, hundreds of corpses screamed in unison "Remember me! Remember so that our deaths be not in vain!".
Further on I saw a wall with the names of those who perished aboard the Arizona. An immense marble wall so filled with names that there wasn't an extra inch to print a single name more. At that point, a man next to me said "Can you believe that list?" My reply was "I've been in the military for 16 years. Wanna know why I do this job? Ask them..." as I motioned toward the wall.
As we left the memorial, I was drawn back to the present, surrounded by Japanese tourists and the loathing surfaced anew. I wanted to ask them "How the hell could you do such a thing?" but I'd stifled my thoughts with the rationalization that the people seated around me had nothing to do with the attack and their ancestors suffered far worse at the detonation of our first atomic bombs.
It was at this point that I was beaten severely by a thought that still haunts me. Is this what blacks see when they look at me? I had nothing to do with slavery, nor did my ancestors, yet I'd been forced to look at my own perception of reality through the eyes of another people who had been blindsided, tackled, and ultimately lost at the collective body whose only cause was annihilation and ultimate breakdown of the hierarchy and harmony they had labored to create.
I understand now. I understand the anguish, the betrayal, and the theft of cause the early slaves felt at the hands of their captors. I now understand how time doesn't erase the pain and how a peek into the past can make the loathing well up in one's throat to the point of lashing out at anyone who fits the description of the offender. And I wept not for myself or the hundreds laid below in the watery grave, but for the ignorance which had suddenly been liberated from my being.