Touring the 'Mighty Mo' (Pearl Harbor Day coming up)

Arizona Daily Star/AP ^ | 11/28/04 | Katherine Nichols

[SandRat]

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii -

Each day, thousands of people visit the USS Arizona Memorial to pay tribute to the victims of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese sneak attack on Dec. 7, 1941, killed some 2,400 Americans, shattered the U.S. Pacific Fleet and propelled the United States into World War II. A gleaming white memorial straddles the sunken battleship where many of the 1,177 sailors killed that day still are entombed.

For many visitors, paying their respects at the Arizona Memorial is a prelude to touring the Battleship Missouri Memorial. The USS Missouri served in World War II, the Korean War and the Gulf War, and the ship has been turned into a museum about daily life aboard a 20th-century war vessel.

Together, the Arizona and the Missouri served as bookends for the war. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the Arizona's destruction forced the United States to enter World War II; the conflict formally ended aboard the Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945, when Japanese leaders signed surrender documents in Tokyo Bay, at a ceremony presided over by Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

"We want people to come to the Missouri, but we want them to go to the Arizona first," said Lee Collins, spokesman for the USS Missouri Memorial Association. "They're going to cry and then come to the Missouri and get the rest of the story. The experience isn't as powerful if you don't have that sense of tragedy."

Visitors to the Missouri walk under a main battery of gun turrets 65 feet long - each weighing 116 tons and able to hurl 2,700 pound shells 23 miles in 50 seconds with near-pinpoint accuracy - and marvel at the 1,200 foot-long anchor with 110-pound links.

[SandRat]

Did, it was copied exactly from the article. Proof positive the journalist didn't proof read, or use grammer check.

[mad_as_he$$]

:-) Been to Sky Harbor many times myself on business. It is a great story about your son. I have book marked it for my friends. Remember Pearl Harbor!

[Mr. Lucky]

Any chance you, or anyone who might be competent in these affairs, could post a picture of one of the Iowa Class ships firing off a broadside?

In my inexpert opinion, even in the 21st Century nothing would terrorize a terrorist nation so much as a couple of the Iowas sitting a few miles offshore limbering up their main guns.

[GATOR NAVY]

Your wish is my command ;-)

[Mr. Lucky]

Awesome Chief, just awesome.

[Ciexyz]

When my Dad was alive, I used to call him every Dec. 7th and ask him, "By the way, it's Pearl Harbor Day. What were you doing on Dec. 7, 1941?"

And he always enjoyed reminiscing how he was a student at Penn State, that he and his engineering buddies were studying when the news came over the radio. "We knew we were going to war," he'd say solemnly.

[Mr. Lucky]

With some luck, the war into which the US was unexpectedly thrust on September 11, 2001, will end in the same unconditional victory as did the war into which we were thrust on December 7, 1941. (At least your, and my, father's generation knew that they were in a war)

[Ciexyz]

At least your, and my father's generation, knew that they were in a war.

Yes, they were smart enough to realize that the survival of their way of life was at stake. They also had a strong sense of right and wrong (no situational ethics like today, no MSM trying to sabotage the war effort), and they were determined to right the wrong done on Dec.7,1941. Which meant that the perps had to pay with total defeat.