JAMES P. DELGADO

Recovering the Past of USS Arizona: Symbolism, Myth, and Reality ABSTRACT Archaeological investigation of the battleship USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor provided the first assessment of a shipwreck that included its mythic and symbolic importance. The study of Arizona also demonstrated material evidence of anticipatory recycling and a sense of strategic vulnerability, while also demonstrating the influence of alternative views of the past.

Introduction In his recent book on anthropological reconstruction of the past, Richard Gould (1990) cogently points to the problems archaeologists and historians face in their recovery and interpretation of human events of the distant or not-so-distant past. Even when the recent past is involved, there are alternative versions of the past reconstructed by historians and archaeologists alike. The belief in the alternative past at times attains a nearreligious fervor, particularly when dealing with cultural icons or sanctified places, such as battlefields (Linenthal 1983). This is certainly the case with the most recent of American battlefields on U.S. soil, Pearl Harbor, and with its most visible symbol, USS Arizona (Figure 1).

USS Arizona and The Arizona Memorial The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the cataclysmic sinking of the battleship Arizona was a violent, controversial event (Figure 2). While viewed at the time in Japan as a great victory in the tradition of “surprise strategic attack” that had secured a Japanese victory over the Russian fleet in 1904, Pearl Harbor was viewed in the United

States as a cowardly “sneak attack” and termed a “day that will live in infamy.” Like other places where great loss of life has occurred in defense of country or other political goals, Pearl Harbor became a national shrine, with much of the attention focused on the battle-scarred and submerged remains of Arizona (Figure 3), now the focal point of a shrine erected by the people of the United States to honor and commemorate all American servicemen killed on 7 December 1941, particularly Arizona’s crew. Arizona’s burning bridge and listing masts and superstructure-photographed in the aftermath of the attack and sinking, and emblazoned on the front pages of newspapers across the landepitomized to the nation the words “Pearl Harbor” and formed one of the best-known images of World War II in the Pacific. Indelibly impressed into the national memory, the Arizona Memorial is visited by millions who quietly file through the structure. Visitors toss flower wreaths and leis into the water and watch the iridescent slick of oil that leaks, a drop at a time, from Arizona’s ruptured bunkers after 50 years on the bottom, before reading the names of Arizona’s dead carved in marble on the Memorial’s walls. Just as important as the shrine, now embodied in the form of the modern memorial that straddles Arizona, is the battleship itself. Intact, only partially salvaged, and resting in the silt of Pearl Harbor, USS Arizona is an in situ major artifact of the attack. Following 1980 legislation authorizing the National Park Service to operate the USS Arizona Memorial, the National Park Service (NPS) and the U .S. Navy worked cooperatively to preserve and interpret the story of Arizona and the Pearl Harbor attack as well as Pacific forces’ wartime actions through the Battle of Midway in 1942. A modern visitor center, managed by the National Park Service, houses major exhibits, including attack artifacts, and models and graphics of the battleship as it was and as it now sits beneath the arched Memorial’s gleaming white walls. The partnership between the Navy and the National Park Service has also provided a much more detailed view of the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack through the archaeological investigation of the battle. The Submerged Cultural Resources Unit

70

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 26

FIGURE 1 USS Arizona heads down the East River from New York City on its way to sea trials in 1918 (Courtesy of the USS Arizona Memorial, NPS.)

of the NPS was initially asked to survey the remains of Arizona. The unit’s chief, Daniel Lenihan, worked with archaeologists Larry Murphy and Larry Nordby and scientific illustrator Jerry Livingston to capture Arizona on video, slide film, and mylar images, documentation that provided the first comprehensive understanding of the ship since its loss. The NPS drawings and photographs, and a model of the sunken hulk done by Robert F. Sumrall, now present a more graphic view of Arizona to the visiting public (Lenihan 1989). The Submerged Cultural Resource Unit’s study also allowed for an assessment of how Arizona came to be the major focal point and shrine of the

attack. In a strict sense, the survey of Arizona was not battlefield archaeology while the later survey of all of Pearl Harbor, including USS Utah, plane crash sites, and a search for a Japanese midget submarine, would qualify as such. It was not just a particularistic focus on a famous ship, such as Titanic. And yet it was also not an intensive study of an instructive lesser-known ship that epitomized specific behaviors, like Gould’s (1990) example of HMS Vixen in Bermuda. Rather, the archaeology of USS Arizona in large part was a study of how it became a wreck and of how becoming a wreck made it culturally significant. This approach is unique in shipwreck archaeology.

RECOVERING THE PAST OF USS ARlZONA

71

FIGURE 2. USS Arizona burns after its forward magazines have exploded. The wreck is the tomb of several hundred men who died aboard on 7 December 1941 (Courtesy of the USS Arizona Memorial, NPS.)

The Archaeology of USS Arizona When Lenihan and Murphy first planned their survey of Arizona, the goal was an understanding of the resource beneath the Memorial, its condition, and factors affecting its preservation. In answering these queries, Lenihan and Murphy also posed a higher order of questions about the battleship and what it demonstrated. In answering the simple question of what was left of the ship, they came face-to-face with the shadow realm of the mythic world and alternative views of the past. There are most assuredly different perspectives on Pearl Harbor, the most famous being the so-called “revisionist” history propounded by many, nota-

bly John Toland, who insists that Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance Pearl Harbor was to be attacked and allowed it to happen in order to push the nation into a war he wanted. There are also the alternative Japanese and American views of the attack. Even when not considering such lofty matters as different national perspectives, there is a “fantasy” or “fable” history of Pearl Harbor, in part “myth” and in part founded on imperfect memory and recollection. The best example of this perspective was the story that Arizona had been destroyed by a bomb down its stack. The U.S. Navy in 1942 and Lenihan and Murphy in 1983 found evidence to the contrary. The stack gratings were intact. In another exam-

72

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 26

FIGURE 3. The Arizona fires out, rests in 40 ft. of water, a complete wreck. (Courtesy of the USS Arizona Memorial, NPS.)

ple, a survivor standing atop turret No. 4 at the ship’s stern claimed it was hit a glancing blow by a bomb that “scooped out the side of the turret with a big mound of molten steel” (Murphy 1987). No archaeological evidence of such damage was found when documenting the mount of the nowremoved turret. Salvage of the turret might have extracted archaeological evidence of the bomb damage, but a 1942 salvage photograph of the turret in question clearly shows no such damage. However, the historical record that aided archaeological interpretation of the No. 4 turret was, on the other hand, a complete failure in terms of what to expect with the No. 1 turret. Based on the extensive surviving documentation of salvage of the

battleship, the on-site managers and the archaeologists assumed that no guns remained. Yet on the first dive the NPS discovered the still-mountedNo. 1 turret with its three 14-in. guns. One of the major questions of the survey was the extent of damage done by Japanese torpedoes. One of the most daring aspects of the attack was the use of aerial torpedoes that were successfully dropped to run in shallow water and detonate after short runs. Much time and effort had gone into preparation of specially modified torpedoes, and extensive practice in a new technique for aerial torpedo attack had honed the skills of the Japanese pilots. Survivors claim that Arizona was hit by at least two torpedoes, one of which passed beneath the

RECOVERING THE PAST OF USS ARIZONA

repair ship Vestal, which was moored alongside the battleship. Arizona was also hit by several aerial bombs one of which is generally credited by historical accounts as the agent of the battleship’s destruction (Prange et al. 1981). The missile in question was an armor piercing 16.1-in. shell from either the battleship Nagato or its sister Mutsu that was modified into an aerial bomb. Navy divers assessing the battle damage in 1942 found evidence that the l,760-lb. projectile had hit near Arizona’s No. 2 turret, penetrated several decks, and detonated near the forward magazines, touching off nearly a million pounds of powder that demolished the forward sections of the ship, pushed out the casemates and hull above the waterline at the bow, lifted decks vertically, and collapsed the No. 1 turret and its barbette some 28 ft. No discussion of torpedo damage was made, and recent archaeological investigation has proved fruitless because the ship has sunk into the harbor mud and silt has built up, covering the underwater hull areas and effectively masking any possible torpedo damage. This situation is unfortunate, for it is also possible that a well-delivered torpedo hit forward could have touched off the magazines. A material argument for the 16.1-in. shell theory recently surfaced with the discovery at the Aberdeen Proving Ground Museum in Maryland of the base plate from a 16.1-in. Japanese naval shell recovered from the forward area of Arizona. It is indeed tempting to identify it as the shell, for it would then be as one historian claimed as important “as the bullet that killed Lincoln.” Yet there is insufficient archaeological evidence to assess the question. Archaeology cannot conclusively determine what sank Arizona. There remains the Navy’s conjecture, which the NPS has as yet found no evidence to refute. The question might be resolved by excavating the silt and mud from the hull to investigate the battleship’s port side, where the torpedoes would have hit. More instructive than the battle damage is what was done to Arizona after the battle. In the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, the United States Navy commenced repair and salvage work and succeeded in raising all the sunken vessels with the exception of USS Arizona and USS Utah. Of the

73

vessels raised, all were salvaged and returned to duty except USS Oklahoma, which sat at Pearl Harbor through the war, was sold for scrap, and sank while under tow to the mainland in 1947. The Pearl Harbor salvage was one the most comprehensive and costly maritime salvage operations of modern times. The first priority was the recovery of anti-aircraft guns and gun directors for them, a logical first order of business for a fleet subjected to devastating aerial assault, and was then followed by other armament, ammunition, and complete ships. Those ships that were lightly damaged were repaired and rushed into service, while more difficult jobs-such as completely capsized battleships and the destroyer Shaw, with its bow blasted off-were the next priority. Despite an emphasis on salvaging ships from apparently hopeless circumstances, early on it was decided not to pursue complete salvage of Arizona (Wallin 1968:267268). While Arizona was investigated and surveyed, the Navy decided only to remove its topsides, which stuck above the water, and salvage the battleship’s armament. Six days after the attack, the senior surviving officer from Arizona forwarded the ship’s action report to Adm. Husband Kimmel, Commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet, and noted: “The USS Arizona is a total loss except the following is believed salvageable: 50-caliber machine guns in maintop, searchlights on aftersearchlight platform, the low catapult on quarterdeck, and the guns of numbers 3 and 4 turrets” (cited in Lenihan 1989:34). Removal of the ship’s safes, personal belongings and valuables, and classified and sensitive documents was the first order of business in early 1942. Around this time, as many as 105 bodies were recovered. Salvage of the masts and the superstructurefollowed. The toppled foremast was cut free on 5 May 1942, followed by the mainmast on August 23. The stern aircraft crane and conning tower were removed in December 1942. Portions of the forecastle and the forward sections of the hull were cut free and raised, and holes were cut into the hull to remove equipment and permit access for salvage crews. The ship was not completely salvaged, however. As early as June 1942, the commandant of the Navy

74

Yard recommended abandoning work on Arizona because it was a task of great magnitude entailing the diversion of large numbers of men and equipment from other work. The facility of salvage was the deciding factor since time and expenses mounted as the Pacific Fleet was raised from the mud of Pearl Harbor. Arizona’s damage was such that the only option considered by the salvage officers was building a cofferdam, but ‘‘examination of the harbor’s coral bottom concluded that it was too porous” (Martinez in Lenihan 1989:34). As early as December 1942, the decision not to raise or salvage Arizona was made, and on the first of the month, the battleship was stricken from the Navy Register of commissioned ships. Despite this decision, more of the ship was salvaged. With the exception of the No. 1 turret, which was severely damaged by the blast-so that its gun trunnions appear to have sheared, depressing the gun barrels at an unnatural angle, all other ordnance and ammunition was removed in 1943. The 14-in. guns in turrets no. 2, 3, and 4, and all 5-in./51-cal. and 5-in./25-cal. secondary batteries were salvaged from Arizona. The aft sections were partially dewatered and ammunition was removed from the ship’s magazines. The salvage of the no. 3 and 4 mounts included the armored turrets themselves as well as the guns, their rotating parts, and hoisting mechanisms (Figure 4). This work appeared to Lenihan to fit a behavior described by Gould in an early work, Shipwreck Anthropology, that he found evidence of both in the wrecks of the Spanish Armada of 1588 and in airplane crashes during the Battle of Britain in 1940: “The greater the defensive isolation of the combatants, the greater will be the efforts by that combatant to salvage and recycle items and/or materials of strategic value from any wrecks that fall within its territory” (Gould 1983:106). The salvaged no. 3 and 4 turrets from Arizona are specific evidence of anticipatory recycling. The turret mechanisms, armor, and guns were used to equip two coastal defense batteries, one at Mokapu Head and the other up the slopes of the Wianae Mountains on Oahu’s western shore. As part of a plan that envisioned ringing Oahu with battleship turrets, the turrets from Arizona

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 26

FIGURE 4. Removing projectiles from turret NO. 4. (CourtesyOf the uss Arizona Memorial NPS)

were to be augmented with the four 14-in. turrets from the battleship Oklahoma-which had been hit by at least five torpedoes, had capsized, and was a total loss at Pearl Harbor. While Oklahoma’s turrets proved unsalvageable, the work to clean, repair, and reassemble Arizona’s turrets proceeded. This work included building new ammunition hoists and mounting the guns in 70- by 50-ft. concrete barbettes nine to 15 ft. thick (Kirchner and Lewis 1967:430-433). The installation at Mokapu, Battery Pennsylvania, was completed and testfired in mid-August 1945, four days before the Japanese surrender. After the war, both batteries were abandoned and the guns and machinery cut up for scrap. Nonetheless, these installations, regardless of their ultimate fate, were built and armed with Arizona’s guns in anticipation of a Japanese battleship assault by sea, in which case battleship gun to battleship gun (U.S. being on land, of course) would slug it out. It was not an unusual concept. On the mainland, 16-in. guns destined for

RECOVERING THE PAST OF USS ARIZONA

battleships never built were mounted in casemated concrete and earth batteries on the mainland near San Francisco. On Oahu, however, the placement of such batteries was clear evidence of strategic vulnerability and anticipatory recycling.

75

leave both ships where they were, salvage written off or indefinitely postponed because it was simply too expensive to continue with either vessel for the limited possible returns. This raises the question of whether Arizona as a sunken ship became a relic and shrine as a convenient answer to the question of salvage. Salvage was entertained after the war, in 1948, in large measure explained as a means of Arizona as Relic and Symbol recovering the dead, but the idea was discarded. It is interesting to note that at this time the salArizona is now unique in the world as a naval vage of certain items from Arizona filled the na- memorial and relic, the nation’s only major naval tional need for a source of relics. Before the ship memorial associated with disaster (Figure 5). Alitself became a relic, pieces of it were shipped though destruction of USS Maine propelled the across the nation to serve as icons testifying to the nation into war in the last century, only pieces are sacrifice of the ship and crew. Anchors, the ship’s displayed. Other sunken warships lie unmarked in bells, a section of a mast, even bulkhead hatches the ocean, with only plaques ashore to commemand smaller items-like a bugle and clocks from orate their loss. As one naval officer noted, Arithe hulk-made their way onto patriotic displays, zona was the only warship lost during World War museum collections, and War Bond drives. It was II whose wreckage still remained in sight when the a response that echoed earlier memorialization war ended; all others were in deep water where tributes to lost or famous ships. When Drake’s “their bones rest in unknown lands beneath the Golden Hinde foundered after rotting on display on sea” (cited in Friedman et al. 1978:n.p.). Arizona, the Thames after its famous voyage of piracy and with the remains of its crew aboard, serves as a circumnavigation, it was broken up and its timbers tomb as well as a cenotaph for them, for the 1,177 used to make souvenirs, including a chair now at men killed aboard the battleship are not all there Woburn Abbey. Pieces and parts of the ill-fated now. Yet even the number of bodies aboard is USS Maine were sent around the country for me- subject to question. At least 105 bodies were remorials and exhibits, including bitts, the captain’s covered in early 1942, while other bodies-some bathtub, and the foremast, which now marks the complete, others merely parts blown across the recovered floating in the waters graves of the crew at Arlington National Ceme- harbor-were tery. Tons of scrap steel from Maine were even around the ship in the days after the attack. Yet cast into memorial plaques and sent throughout the others were completely consumed by the inferno. country to appease those who did not receive an Historian Gordon Prange notes that such was the appropriate relic (Prioli 1990). This process of case with the ship’s captain: relic-collecting started with Arizona but stopped Some time after the attack, when the Arizona had cooled short of raising the entire ship. off, a party boarded her, found a pile of ashes on deck, and in the ashes an Academy class ring. They took it ashore and It is interesting to note that in comparison USS had a goldsmith clean it. Inside they could then read the Utah was not as intensely salvaged. Daniel Leniname, Franklin Van Valkenburgh. The command sent it to han states that “many of the easily salvaged items his wife (Prange et al. 1988:422). of ship’s apparel, armament, and groundtackle on Utah were left in place,” which he feels possibly Others, sealed in the collapsed forward sections of indicates the “very nature of the Arizona and its the ship, remain aboard. There are probably sevsymbolic significance” (Lenihan 1989:10). One eral hundred of the ship’s dead aboard, and the could construct an argument for this and for stra- ship, once deemed unraisable, then became a war tegic vulnerability and the interaction of both be- grave and a tomb, a necessity borne not only out of haviors, as well as pointing to a decision reached at sentiment but also of pragmatism. In 1947, the a certain point, regardless of behaviors, simply to Navy’s final decision to not recover bodies from

76

FIGURE 5.

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 26

USS Arizona Memorial. (Courtesy of the USS Arizona Memorial, NPS.)

the wreck was made after weighing two factors. First, the costs of salvage were deemed too costly; and secondly, the bodies, if recovered, would be ‘‘medically unrecognizable. ’’ The same pragmatism emerged with shipwrecks in the deep sea where bodies were irretrievable, and thus the usual efforts to recover a body were abandoned and the only comfort available was the concept of burial at sea. Arizona, even in shallow waters and accessible, became such a site not only for those whose bodies do lie there, but also as a cenotaph for those whose bodies were completely consumed or recovered and buried unidentified ashore. In its more recent history, Arizona has even become the receptacle for the urns of cremated survivors of the ship’s company who expressed a desire to be buried at sea with their shipmates. They are placed inside the barbette of the No. 4 turret, now an open well that leads into the ship’s interior. It is interesting to note, however, that the rusting visible hulk of the battleship was not unanimously

viewed as an appropriate resting place. In 1955, the commander of the 14th Naval District at Pearl Harbor wrote the Secretary of the Navy of his determination that the Navy do something because “this burial place for 1,102 men is a rusted mass of junk” (Slackman 198457). The continued existence of Arizona as a visual vault for the dead was disturbing to others. Proposals ranged from dismantling the ship and burying its dead with other war casualties at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific to burying the ship beneath landfill and building a memorial park over the site. Arizona’s initial pragmatic role as a war grave and the later need to memorialize the ship and the attack gave rise to a new material expression at the site. During the war, the Navy discussed plans to make Arizona a war memorial. Even then, divergent views on a memorial’s nature and purpose reflected its symbolic value. While ultimately the wreck is a war grave, the Navy’s primary interest in Arizona was an obligation to memorialize

RECOVERING THE PAST OF USS ARlZONA

77

“what had been one of the fleet’s proudest ships carded, it was not, and apparently could not be, and the sailors that went down with her” scrapped. A painted sign on the rusting steel notes (Slackman 1984:47). Yet in time the ship itself did it is “not for sale.” While seemingly bothersome not serve as a war memorial. That distinction be- for memorialization efforts, the Arizona remains at longs to the concrete arched structure that spans Waipio could not be treated as garbage given their the sunken ship but does not touch it. The Arizona sacred nature as relics, in part reflected by the Memorial, built in 1962, supposedly dips in the admonition they are not for sale. Ironically, one of middle to symbolize the initial low point of U.S. the Navy’s reasons for cooperating with the arfortunes after the attack and rises at both ends to chaeological survey of the ship in 1983 was to seek symbolize the nation’s rise to victory. It would a place to bury the Waipio scrap “at sea” next to therefore be less a memorial to Arizona than a the hulk. memorial to the great experience of America in The Memorial, by not touching the ship, World War 11. An alternative view is that the Me- remains clean, and offers a sanitized, alternative morial’s shape is constrained by the structural re- view of death and disaster. What is most quirements of a concrete ‘‘bridge-like’’ structure. interesting is the apparent discrepancy of the Yet, the original design concepts of Memorial Memorial’s message in later memorialization architect Alfred Preis reflected the site as a grave. efforts. If the Arizona Memorial is indeed, as In 1950, Preis envisioned a floating “eternal Congress decreed in 1961, “in honor and flame.” The first design he submitted for the ac- commemoration of all the members of the Armed tual memorial was similar to European crypts he Forces of the United States who gave their lives to had visited in his youth. It included a submerged their country during the attack,” then why are viewing chamber open to the sky with portholes only the names of Arizona’s dead carved on a where visitors would “view the underwater re- white marble wall inside the Memorial? This led mains of the ship, encrusted with the rust and ma- to two other material expressions of this discreprine organisms that reminded the architect of the ancy, the 1972 memorial to USS Utah, at the jewelled imperial sarcophagi” (Slackman 1984: other side of Ford Island, and recent plans for a 73). That design, with its stark confrontation of “Remembrance Exhibit” ashore that will list the death, met with a lack of enthusiasm from the names of everyone else killed at Pearl Harbor on 7 Navy. In time, these and other political consider- December 1941. Left unresolved is whether the ations actually drew the memorial purpose away new memorial will list the names of Japanese from the ship itself to become a statement on war, airmen and submariners killed in the attack. with the ship and its crew serving as a metaphor. Clearly, the Arizona Memorial is not a memorial The Arizona Memorial is now interpreted to em- to everyone killed on that day. Why then the need phasize the war experience at Pearl Harbor. This to separate the Memorial from the ship? gives a new meaning to why the Memorial does Arguably, Arizona has now become the centernot touch the ship. Is it an engineer’s desire to not piece, and the major focal point for visitors to rest a permanent structure on a rusting, unstable Pearl Harbor. By the 1960s, the ship and the hulk? Or, is it purposeful distancing? The clean, Memorial had become a vehicle for personal pristine white concrete and marble of the Memorial reflection on war’s causes, conduct, and results. is a stark contrast to the rusty and fouled remains When the shock and initial anger of 7 December of the ship. had diminished, Arizona transmuted into a symbol Sections of the ship “blocking” the Memorial’s of what could happen if the nation were again construction were actually cut away in 1961 and caught unaware. The battleship stood for the need now rest, unmarked and overgrown with weeds, in for military preparedness, for not underestimating a scrap pile on the Waipio Peninsula. This wreck- potential foes, for alertness, and for mutual age is in itself an interesting archaeological state- understanding and respect (Prange et al. 1986: ment. While in the way of the Memorial, and dis- 629). To most Americans, the Memorial and ship

78

are a major shrine that reflects the basic truths of how people perceive and deal with war. It remains a potent symbol, meaning many things to many people. For those survivors of the event, and the families whose dead are entombed in the ship, Arizona is a place to come to confront the past and perhaps come to terms with it. For many Americans alive on 7 December 1941, Pearl Harbor was a symbol of the nature of the enemy they fought. Propagandists often employ emotionladen terms, and for war-generation Americans, Japanese military conduct is summed up in phrases like the “Rape of Nanking,” the “Bataan Death March,” “Kamikaze,” and “Pearl Harbor” (Dower 1986:28). For some people, Arizona symbolizes the sinister character of the enemy attack. While not suggesting that this perspective is wrong, it is an alternative view to that of the Japanese, and thus even the archaeological study, conducted by Western scientists and explained by Western interpreters, is colored by this perception. The author often wonders what the archaeological study of Pearl Harbor would offer if it was done by Japanese scientists in some alternative world in which they won the war.

Conclusions Archaeology like all science is a social process, never practiced in pure isolation, and includes the real world and its mythic perceptions. The archaeologists at Pearl Harbor came face to face with this phenomenon. The Navy initially insisted no dives could be made because people had been killed diving on the wreck during salvage operations. Three different versions of the tale were even offered (Murphy 1990, pers. comm.). The record is clear, however. There were no diving fatalities on USS Arizona. Thus Daniel Lenihan and his colleagues were confronted at the very beginning of their project with the mythic past. The nature of the ship of the war grave-and symbolically laden terms like ‘‘desecration’’-also affected their work, for one of the first concessions they made was a commitment not to enter the ship. Even the data they gathered were appropriated for the symbolic values

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 26

and alternative views of the past. Thus the videotaped tour of the ship produced from their work in 1983 notes that an awning stands open as it did on 7 December 1941, invoking yet again the image of unpreparedness and sneak attack on a peaceful Sunday morning. Fire-hose nozzles scattered on deck could be appropriated for the theme of sacrifice, or of “they died with their boots on.” (The Errol Flynn movie of “Custer’s Last Stand” with the same title was one of Hollywood’s most popular offerings of December 1941.) Even crockery scattered on the galley floor can serve as a reminder of a Sunday morning breakfast forever interrupted by Japanese perfidy (Murphy 1990, pers. comm.). It is perhaps for these reasons that some people may be critical of studying the archaeology of the recent past, or the archaeology of such a well-known vessel, a “great” ship. As archaeologists look at other “great ships,” or warships in particular, the symbolism is so powerful that even scientists are drawn into responding solely to the mythic values, as was the case with Monitor and Titanic (Delgado 1988). Only a few meaningful anthropological inferences have been gleaned from Monitor. All other approaches to the ironclad have placed little emphasis on anthropological returns, or analyzed the role and context of mythic or “relic” value and its connotations. Researchers should be looking at these “great ships” for just that reason, among others, to delve into the how and why of mythicization. Archaeology is, after all, often viewed as only the recovery of lost or forgotten information from the past. In truth, archaeology should function as a systematic scientific tool that extracts meaningful human behavior from the material record regardless of its age. Given an event of the magnitude and emotional impact as Pearl Harbor and Arizona’s loss, perceptions and memory, even the historical record, are clouded by what the participant or historian chose to see or thought they saw. People see the same events differently, based on their unique psychology and cultural experiences prior to the event, hence alternative views of the past abound. Archaeologists suffer from the same “behav-

RECOVERING THE PAST OF USS ARIZONA

ioral baggage” in their analysis, and their work is often colored by social processes of the present in which they are immersed, including the intrusion of the mythic world into the real world, including perceptions of battlefields and wrecks like Arizona as “reservoirs of sacred power” (Linenthal 1991). However, when archaeologists practice their science as systematic minimalists they work not from imperfect memory or selective documentation and perceptions but rather from a wide range of physical remains. The study of Arizona offers firstlevel impressions of what happened and what survives, and provides the means for assessing reality against subjective perception while accounting for differences in human behavior. Hence, the archaeology of Arizona is in part a laboratory for analyzing American society’s myths, symbols, and images-the expression of what makes people what they are. It is also the means for anthropological assessments of the ships, crews, and events of 7 December 1941. It is even the anthropological assessment of reactions of people to the archaeological study, as demonstrated here. In the end, it all reflects the basic truth that Arizona is a very sacred place that reflects the cultural beliefs as Americans at this place and time, and that this view may not be compatible with the material evidence of the archaeological record.

79

Historian, USS Arizona Memorial) provided historical citations and clarified discrepancies in the written record.

REFERENCES DELGADO, JAMES P. 1988 A Symbol of American Ingenuity: Assessing the Significance of USS Monitor. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. DOWER,JOHN W. 1986 War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. Pantheon Books, New York.

FRIEDMAN, NORMAN,ARTHUR D . BAKER111,

ARNOLDs. LOTT(LCDR, USN [RET]), AND ROBERTF. SUMRALL (USNR) 1978 USS Arizona (BB39). Leeward, Annapolis, Maryland. GOULD,RICHARD A. 1990 Recovering the Past. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. GOULD,RICHARD A. (EDITOR) 1983 Shipwreck Anthropology. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

KIRCHNER, D . P., AND E. R. LEWIS

1967 The Oahu Turrets. The Military Engineer, November-December: 1.

LENIHAN,DANIELJ. (EDITOR) 1989 Submerged Cultural Resources Study: USS Arizona Memorial and Pearl Harbor National Historical Landmark. National Park Service, Santa Fe, New

Mexico.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This article in part incorporates portions of an earlier work, a chapter entitled “Significance: Memorials, Myths and Symbols,” which was published as part of Lenihan (1989). I wish to acknowledge the hours of discussion and critical thinking provoked by my colleagues Larry E. Murphy (National Park Service, Submerged Cultural Resources Unit) and Edward Tabor Linenthal (Department of Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh). Carmine Prioli (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) shared his thoughtful analysis of Maine’s postwar fate. Daniel J. Lenihan (Chief of the Submerged Cultural Resources Unit) provided the opportunity to participate in the last field season of the Pearl Harbor survey and to prepare the significance chapter of his final report. Daniel A. Martinez (Park

LINENTHAL, EDWARD TABOR 1983 Ritual Drama at the Little Bighorn: The Persistence and Transformation of a National Symbol. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 51(2):267281. 1991 Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields. University of Illinois Press, Urbana. MURPHY,JOY WALDRON 1987 Diving into the Past: A Rare View of Pearl Harbor. Impact/Albuquerque Journal Sunday Magazine,

March 10:3. Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Prange, GORDONw., DONALDM. GOLDSTEIN, AND KATHERINE V. DILLON

1981 At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. McGraw-Hill, New York. 1986 Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History. McGraw-Hill, New York.

80 1988 December Seventh, 1941; The Day the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor. McGraw-Hill, New York.

PRIOLI, CARMINE

1990 The Second Sinking of the Maine. American Heritage 42(1). New York.

SLACKMAN, MICHAEL 1984 Remembering Pearl Harbor: The Story of the USS Arizona Memorial. Arizona Memorial Museum Association, Honolulu, Hawaii.

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 26

WALLIN,VADMHOMERN. 1968 Pearl Harbor: Why, How, Fleet Salvage, and Final Appraisal. U.S. Government printing Office, Washington, D.C.

JAMES P. DELGADO VANCOUVER MARITIME MUSEUM 1905 OGDENAVENUE VANCOUVER, BRITISHCOLUMBIA V6J 1A3