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

Coffee with Clark, and Curry

Susan and I had a great visit yesterday with friend and 1993 UCO grad Steve Curry, USN, and his fiance, Marti Powers of Houston. He wanted the Coffee with Clark photo, and here it is...alas, we neglected to get a photo of him and Marti. But we'll have to visit, also to see my blood red painting of the Alamo hanging in her home. I do think Starbucks ought to pay us for this, don't you?

And, here's the 1993 graduation plaque hanging in our UCO building with Steve's name on it. This is the guy who got me the Tiger Cruise on the USS Abraham Lincoln three years ago.

Blog favorites on the birthday

At Black Mesa, March, 2012

Those of you who read this blog, which is now five years old, know I have some favorite topics.
Watercolors, art, traveling, New Mexico, books, family, trains, writing, a little religion. So as I started looking back over these 48 months of blogging, several articles and postings stood out. Here are my favorites.
My favorite--Best writing, humor, mingled with fun and tears--"Booth is a verb--A Love story," which stretched to more than 10,000 words in several posts over two months in August and September, 2009. Here's the link to the first episode, http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2009/08/booth-is-verba-love-story-prologue.html
Travel--lots of these but three are my favorites. First was a tie-- several posts about the USS Abraham Lincoln sailing from San Diego to Everett Washington in April 2011, thanks to former student and officer Steve Curry. When I was summarizing travel since the blog started, I left this out, and should have listed "Pacific." Sorry Steve. Here's the link to the opening post of seven about that "Pirate Proof Cruise" as I called it. http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2011/04/tiger-cruise-part-one.html.
I'd be hard up to rank it ahead of several posts a year ago this month, on our trip to Alaska...one of the items on my bucket list. Here's the first of 13  posts  in May and June with photos and video and writing. Here's the first link: http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/05/alaska-itinerary.html
Also at the top of the list, or near it, was the flight I took on a WWII B-17 bomber on D-Day, 2010. Brother in law Jim Henry and I each paid $300 for the flight over Oklahoma City. They wouldn't let me bomb Republican headquarters, but the posting includes video as well as photos. What fun for a fan of WWII aircraft. Here's the link to one of about four related posts that month: http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/search/label/B-17
Other favorites in travel included the trip to India, in March 2011, and to hike Black Mesa in Oklahoma in March, 2012, each with several posts and photos.  http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2011/03/flight-timeindia-journal-thoughts-i.html
http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/03/to-top-of-oklahoma-and-back.html
Then there are other blog favorites, like humorous conversations with God on tenure, heaven's bar, and church services--check the months of Feb., 2010., Oct, 2011 and July, 2012.
Too many paintings, book reviews , photos and family history, and New Mexico to share. Yes, it's multimedia, but after all these years, it practices what I preach...you have to have good writing first. Thanks for reading. More to come.

Two American flags--freedom and imprisonment

On a rural highway in New Mexico.

One American flag always seems to demand my attention more  than others. Sure, the Stars and Stripes,  the Lone Star, the Stars and Bars always catch my eye.

But this one is usually tattered, sometimes faded. Yet it always stands out. The flag of freedom offset by a flag of imprisonment.

The black MIA-POW harks from 1971 in the Vietnam War when the wife of a missing service member and member of the National League of Families of American Prisons and Missing in Southeast Asia saw the need for a symbol, and the group created it.

In 1989, a league flag that flew over the White House  on the 1988 POW/MIA Recognition Day was installed in the Capitol Rotunda--the only flag every displayed there, and the only one other than the Stars and Stripes to have flown over the White House. A bipartisan congress officially recognized the flag.

The design has varied some over the years, but it is a stark reminder of the cost of war to this country--barbed wire, a guard tower and the bust of a soldier.

You rarely see the flag in Oklahoma--there's one flown in the yard of a Marine near 30th and Penn in Oklahoma City. But in New Mexico you see the flag everywhere, including flying from the state capitol, hanging over the doorway at the Albuquerque airport, and in yards and windows around the state. New Mexico has paid a huge cost  in lives over the years, and in that state, for veterans, the flag's motto is real: "You Are Not Forgotten."

In Washington D.C. for years "The Last Firebase" set up between the Vietnam Memorial and the Lincoln Monument flew the flag, with volunteers trying to answer questions and provide information.

According to the Defense Department Defense Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office, there are probably no surviving MIAs from Vietnam. As of 2010, the office listed 1,711 Americas as MIA from Vietnam, with 969 being pursued, 117 deferred and 625 not being pursued. The office ha s received 1,997 first hand reports of live sightings of possible U.S./ P.O.W.s since 1975, of which only 55 remain unresolved.

Aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, CVN 72

Today, for the U.S. Military, the flag has become a symbol of those MIA in all wars. Two years ago, when I was aboard the  nuclear carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, a table was set every day in the main eating area for the crew, carrying the symbols of salt, a lemon, a rose and an upturned glass, with the flag's logo and motto.

**
This is a series on the far-flung readers of this blog. Of the readers of this blog over the past four years, fully two thirds have been from the United States, and I suspect that some may have been former POWs. 

Hi-tech, at sea

Amid all the super scientific stuff aboard the USS Abe Lincoln, I found two impressive tools.

Look at that wonderful old-fashioned wrench!

And in the welding shop...an anvil! Somethings just don't go out of style, or need.

The welding shop "nerve center."

Hawsers ready to be shot ashore to moor The Abe at Everett.

But, high tech abounds. Here are views of the medical department:

Operating room and equipment

Examination and treatment room

X-Ray--which are then zapped to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland to be read.

"Sick bay"--not shown, the three bed ICU.

Officers and enlisted

Civilians don't think much about rank in our everyday world...official rank. Sure, we know some people have higher paying jobs, some have the power to hire and fire, but we don't have labels on our clothes designating our rank in a hierarchy  and we don't formally salute superiors or follow strict orders.

The second you step about a military base, or into a military organization, or aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, you notice the difference.

As we walked up the stairs and crossed the gangplank to the brow of the ship, our host, Lt. Cmdr. Steve Curry stopped just before boarding the ship, turned aft and saluted the flag. The enlisted people waiting for us, snapped salutes to him which he returned. We were among about 300 other "Tigers" on the ship for the four day cruise, and we soon were thankful our host was an officer. Most of the others were hosted by members of the enlisted crew.

Though they work as a team in close quarters, the line between officers and enlisted, is everywhere apparent--as you saw with the label on the door to the male officers head. Other labels in berthing areas clearly announce the area as officer country. You also saw the difference in eating areas, and officers don't have to bus their own plates.

Sleeping quarters are one example. We were bunked in a suite of six, two sinks, ample storage.

Where I slept, bottom bunk

Four of the bunks in our area--you can barely see mine behind the locker and chair on the right

Another view, of the sinks, and storage.

Enlisted quarters, three bunks in a stack s0 there's less overhead room, and there are many bunks to each area.

 I expect the only place rank doesn't matter is in sick bay and medical treatment...all are equal there.

Steve and I in San Diego. He's wearing the NWU.

You see the difference in uniforms too, obviously. On the NWU (camouflaged Naval Working Uniform), you have to hunt for rank, and if officers don't have their hats on where the rank is displayed, there aren't salutes from enlisted. But dress uniforms:

Steve Curry's dress uniform, ready for wear. Note the name tag, with the ship's logo--a Lincoln head penny.

An enlisted uniform

An officer conducting a tour on the bridge

The sailor of the year aboard the Abe, Quartermaster 2^nd class Sarah Y. Degraw. She's on the bridge checking the rudders prior to departure from San Diego. Oh, while you can steer the ship and those massive rudders by punching computer buttons, most people prefer the little steering wheel at her left. Yep, smaller than your car steering wheel, for that mammoth ship. And the top ranking enlisted person on board, a command Master Chief, is also a woman.

What a "mess" at sea

It takes a lot of food and space to feed the crew of the USS Abe Lincoln, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You read the stats of the amount of food in earlier posts. Here are some photos to go with them.

Loading Poptarts and more in San Diego

More groceries

Some of the day's milk supply

Part of one of the kitchens

Ditto

The salad bar in wardroom three for the officers...the fresh fruit is available 24 hours a day

Part of the buffet in the officers' third wardroom

and more...

And if you're there before 7 am, the cooks will fry you eggs or make omelettes, etc.

Wardroom 3--where we ate everyday. Two others were closed because the airwing was gone.

One of the mess areas where the enlisted sailors eat.

Does that whet your appetite? We had lobster one evening---no wonder the crew likes Tiger cruises...special food for special guests. Let's see, that means almost 4,000 lobsters that day. Mmmm.

Oh, the most important area of the wardroom, to me at least:

Coffee keeps the Navy afloat, says my uncle Mike, a WWII and Korean War combat Navy veteran.

 And that's what's brewing in my coffee pot, today.

Next, sleeping quarters, sick bay, shaft alley, and the wide wake of the Abe Lincoln, plus a surprise or two.

"Saltwater flush"

Everything on the USS Abe Lincoln is labeled. it has to be.
"Saltwater flush" caught my eye on the pipe leading from the toilet in the male officers' head.

All the wiring, all the pipes, all the doors are labeled in several ways. And there are maps of the deck layout everywhere. They have to have them, or you'd easily get lost.

This was the map on the wall near our bunks. It's deck 2, which is one below the flight deck, I think. Yellow spaces are bunk areas. The large blank area in the middle is the hangar deck, which means we had to go down or up ladders and through hatches to get from our births near the bow, to the hangar deck to near the rear of the ship where we went down mor ehatches and ladders to the wardroom where food and coffee was always available.

This is a door with labels. I don't understand most of them, except  02 is for our level of births, and 33 means your're fairly close to the bow. the higher that number, back to 255 the farther aft you are.

This is the most important door that I left out of the door post earlier. In the middle of the night, you have to get up and go down a narrow hall and use your hotel type magnetic key to get in here to use the toilet with the "Salwater flush" lable Also the showers.

The narrow hall between sides of the ship, off of which was thedoor to our quarters, and which also lead to the most important door, "Men's head."

I told you everything was labeled.

Including fire hoses

Including gauges like this...

Mind boggling isn't it? 20 decks, 1,097 feet long, 257 feet wide, on every deck. Size, science, people and pride.