Where there is peace on earth

"Peace, from war," today's #watercolor

In a season that is supposed to celebrate peace on earth, it's best to remember that humans rarely know peace, with wars and misery raging even today, for years at a time.
There is one place I know that seems to bring peace, though 77 years ago today it was just the opposite.
If you visit the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii, you approach and enter with silence and whispers and awe, standing over the tomb of 1,000 sailors in Pearl Harbor from that violent morning.
Here you can appreciate the cost of war, and the value of peace, waves gently lapping over the rusting remains of the battleship, oil still oozing from the depths.

A profound stillness and whispering

Approaching the Arizona Memorial

December 7, 1941...75 years ago.
Today, at the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, daily tours bring hundreds to stand over the sunken, rusting hulk of that battleship off Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i.

You take a ferry, operated by U.S. Navy sailors,  out to what was battleship row, where she and her kin were destroyed in a surprise attack from the Empire of Japan, plunging us into WWII.

A bomb struck her ammunition magazine and exploded, sending 1,177 men to instant death. 

Their remains are still there, beneath the water, their ship still oozing oil after all these years, from translucent slicks on the clear water, where you can look down and see the rusting remains of that ship.

I knew all this, but was reminded even more last week when visiting a bookstore, and noticed many new books displayed about that day.
It's more than a Memorial, it's a cemetery. I was privileged to visit there a few years ago when my son M/Sgt. Vance Clark, and family, USAF, were stationed.

When you get your ticket to the ferry from the visitor center at the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument on the island of Oahu, it carries the name and biography of every sailor killed that day. I can't find mine now, though it crops up when cleaning out a closet every few years. Mine was from a young sailor from Hominy, Oklahoma.
As you board the ferry from the visitor center, it's striking that the directions on the wall are in both English and Japanese. I'd guess from my visit that half the visitors are young Japanese. 
There's chatter in the visitor center, but when you board the ferry and head across Pearl Harbor, approaching the Memorial, it gets hushed.

When you pull up to the quay, and head down the ramp onto the Memorial that spans the ship, there is a profound silence, a whispering as people read the names of the victims on the walls, view the rusty circular mount of a forward turret rising above the gently lapping, oil stained waves, look at the rusting steel below, or gaze astern stern to the battleship U.S.S.  Missouri, moored as another museum. It was on her decks that Japan surrendered almost four long bloody years later.

Pearl Harbor is still a major Navy, Army and Air Force bastion in the Pacific.
Our servicemen do not forget. There are still machine gun bullet gouges in buildings at Hickham Field, in the seaplane ramps and other reminders of that day when the Pacific was not pacific.

USS Abe Lincoln passing the USS Arizona and USS Missouri

But most impressive to me is that on every U.S. Navy ship that enters, or departs, Pearl Harbor, sailors "man the rails" in their dress uniforms, and salute, in profound silence, as they pass the Arizona Memorial, and their dead "shipmates."
Salute.

 
**

I've blogged about this before. Click these links if you're interested. 
Pearl Harbor Thoughts
Here's to the Navy

I can't find my photos from my trip, and my son can't locate his either, after multiple moves, but my daughter-in-law Kerin sent the top three photos above from a friend of theirs, Airman Jonelle Snyder. Others are from the National Monument.

USS Abraham Lincoln arriving at Pearl

Eight days 'till Christmas--sacred places

Taos Pueblo, 5  by 7 watercolor, card

Where are your sacred places and why? Regardless of religion or beliefs, I think most people have some, especially as we grow older. 
They begin as special places and sometimes grow over the years in significance. They're based on memories, on events, on traditions, on cultures, perhaps even on genetics and barely understood instincts. Other living things apparently have them...witness the migrations of insects as small as Monarch butterflies to larger wildlife--birds, animals, fish and reptiles for breeding.
For humans, special places grow over years and centuries, especially with oral traditions, and dramatic geography or resulting architecture or more. Sacred implies spiritual as these places take on more than just a physical existence or presence. They become places where the the division between physical and eternal is thin.
Most sacred places in the world are old--Stonehenge, Easter Island, the Pyramids, Machu Picchu, Asian Temples, Temple Mount at Jerusalem, Mecca, The Vatican--places that were built because the land itself  was sacred and demanded attention and remembrance.
There are other places in all cultures I believe, when you visit them, that have become sacred on their own--have you been to Gettysburg? To the USS Arizona memorial? To the Normandy American Cemetery? To the Vietnam Wall? To Wounded Knee?
In nature, the mountains, the high places, the remote places became sacred also.
I see all that my New Mexico, where the Anasazi and their kin found sacredness in the landscapes and spirituality of all creation.
It is especially so for me both at Chaco Canyon and at Taos Pueblo--the oldest continuously occupied place in North America, the centuries old adobe and people still so in contact with the elemental sacredness, and their imposing sacred mountain.
In this season that is supposed to be sacred for one religion, let us respect all religions, beliefs  and  peoples who have sacred places and times. They are a part of our very existence.

Pearl Harbor thoughts

Ed Vezey, Oklahoma City

You can't go there and not cry. 
It's Dec. 7 every day in Pearl Harbor where the gleaming white USS Arizona Memorial straddles the hulk of the battleship, still oozing oil, and the coffin of more than 1,000 American sailors.
I was privileged to visit a few years ago when my Air Force son was stationed there. Since then I've been fortunate to meet Ed Vezey, a survivor of that day, a sailor on the USS Oklahoma.
That happened on the inaugural Honor Flight, a non profit organization taking WWII vets to see the memorials in Washington. Look at the hat he's wearing. There are so many stories. Check their web page for many photos of vets and the trips: http://oklahomahonorflights.org
I tried to tell the story of the honor flights in the November-December issue of Oklahoma Today, "Day of Honor." I've also written about the flight, with photos on the blog. Here is the first of the links from May, 2010.Veterans' stories.
It's been a long time ago--but I'm thankful for men like Ed Vezey who helps keep them alive. And for the Navy, and the silence and salutes as each ship passes that gleaming white monument.

Photo from the Honolulu Star Bulletin

The flag is at half mast

I wondered why as I walked across campus this morning, and saw the American flag at half-staff in front of the UCO ROTC building.

Then I picked up a copy of the New York Times and saw the date--Dec. 7.

Seventy years ago, Americans died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

I can't find my photos of my visit to Pearl several years ago when my oldest son was stationed there in the U.S. Air Force. But I saw the the 50-caliber machine gun bullet gouges in the concrete of the buildings and seaplane ramps.

I took the ferry ride to the memorial over the ruin of the U.S.S.  Arizona. Ironically, both English and Japanese language was prevalent in the visitor center.  And at least half of the visitors on the ferry ride were young Japanese. The card on my ticket featured a young sailor who died there--and he was from Oklahoma.

We arrived at the solemn white memorial straddling the remains of the battleship. Everybody was deathly quite--only whispers were heard. The names of the dead were on the walls. Oil still oozes from the sunken ship, where more than 1,000 sailors are still interred in water and rusting  steel.

A white buoy marks where  the bow of the ship would have been, and beyond, the  U.S.S.  Missouri, where the war ended four and a half years later in Tokyo bay, rests in final berth.

And the oil still oozes from the ship, still the tomb for more than 1,000 Americans.

And thankfully, the flag still flies at half-mast.