History Ch_Hero Ships_04of13_USS Arizona
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00:00The USS Arizona, once the pride of the American fleet, now lies at the bottom of Pearl Harbor,
00:11bleeding oil for over 65 years as tourists above pay their respects.
00:18Studies are underway to unravel the mystery that killed 1,177 men in an instant.
00:26What kind of ship fights an entire war in 10 minutes?
00:30What kind of man returns to a burning ship to rescue dying shipmates?
00:36This is the story of these men and the sinking of their ship, the USS Arizona.
00:56From the surface of Pearl Harbor, the Arizona Memorial is a graceful monument.
01:13Its lines suggest the battleship it remembers.
01:17The swoop of its roof might trace the path of the war from defeat to victory.
01:25Only when visitors enter the soaring interior can they look down to see the disaster that lies just below.
01:33Clearly visible through the murky water is the shape of what was once the pride of the U.S. Navy,
01:39a 608-foot battleship.
01:42Much of the rusted hull remains as it was, ripped and twisted by over a million pounds of explosives.
01:51The oil still bubbles up from bunkers ruptured by Japanese bombs.
01:57Most of her crew is still aboard.
02:02USS Arizona is not just a memorial, but a national tomb.
02:07Over 900 sailors rest inside her.
02:13The memorial recalls how a hero crew met the worst day in American history on a hero ship.
02:29Arizona's memorial lies near the end of a string of white mooring quays,
02:34left in place by the National Park Service to mark the exact spots where the main battle line of the U.S. Navy was caught unaware.
02:44Of the four battleships that sank, only Arizona remains at the bottom of Pearl Harbor.
02:53Her long voyage to this place begins in 1915.
03:01When the USS Arizona was constructed at the Navy Yard in Brooklyn, she was the 39th battleship to be built.
03:10She was built with such great promise because as the navies throughout the world competed,
03:17the Arizona was going to be one of those that was going to be a top competitor.
03:29The presiding officer for the government was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was then the assistant secretary of the Navy.
03:37This was not long after U.S. battleships started being built to burn oil rather than coal, so she was one of the early ones.
03:46Most of the previous battleships had had 12-inch guns, and now here the Arizona and her sister Pennsylvania had 14-inch guns.
03:55The earlier ones had been known as dreadnoughts, now she was a super dreadnought.
04:02The launching was in the spring of 1915.
04:06The sponsor was a woman named Esther Ross from the state of Arizona.
04:11There were some temperance people who were opposed to using wine or champagne to christen the ship,
04:19so they had some water from a local dam in a bottle.
04:23She went ahead and used both the water and the wine,
04:28but found out that there was a superstition against using water to christen a Navy ship.
04:35So years and years later she wondered whether that had been bad luck and somehow visited on the Arizona.
04:43She was fitted out and commissioned in October 1916.
04:50As launched, Arizona can hold her own with any battleship afloat.
04:55At a length of 608 feet with a 97-foot beam, she displaces 31,400 tons.
05:02Her oil-fired turbines can drive her at 21 knots.
05:05Her original armament weighs in with 12 14-inch guns and triple-gun turrets,
05:13numbered 1 through 4, and 22 5-inch guns in single open mods.
05:23She carries two 21-inch submerged torpedo tubes.
05:27She is belted with armor up to 18 inches thick.
05:31Her first crew numbers 1,080 officers and enlisted men.
05:37Although America enters World War I in 1917 in an era when battleships are master weapons,
05:44Arizona sees no combat.
05:47Ironically, it's Arizona's modern propulsion that keeps her from the battle.
05:52She burned oil and there was a much more plentiful supply of coal rather than oil in the United Kingdom,
06:00so it was the older U.S. battleships that went over to help the British Grand Fleet.
06:05As the years now move forward, America found itself in World War I.
06:11The Arizona was never engaged in any major naval actions.
06:14She was engaged in patrols up and down the East Coast,
06:17and at the end when the President Wilson goes to France,
06:20it will escort his ship over to France to go to Versailles and sign the peace treaty.
06:29In 1929, Arizona gets the major upgrading that will provide her modern profile.
06:39Almost all of the superstructure was taken off.
06:42That is the great masts fore and aft and the old bridge and what have you.
06:47And they built much sturdier masts.
06:51These were called tripod masts.
06:53And at the top they had a three-story platform, a little house, forward and aft.
07:00And by then the control of the gunfire was more sophisticated than it had been,
07:06and so people would be up topside watching the projectiles and getting reports from airplanes.
07:15The elevation of the gun barrels had originally had a maximum of 15 degrees.
07:21Now that was doubled to 30 degrees,
07:24and the result is that you get that much more range.
07:28You can shoot that much farther.
07:32Below her upper decks, she received more horizontal armor
07:36for protection against the fall of high-angle gunfire
07:39and from the new increasing threat of aircraft bombs.
07:42She was in many ways a new ship.
07:44She had blisters put on the side, which were void spaces,
07:50and the idea was that would be extra protection if the ship were ever torpedoed.
07:56As it turned out, she never was.
07:59Through the 1930s, Arizona earns the reputation as an outstanding ship to serve aboard.
08:05When I was a young boy, I always wanted to join the Navy,
08:08and I looked at battleships and pictures in the papers, and that's what I wanted to do.
08:13And when I saw that of USS Arizona out there, that's exactly what I wanted to do.
08:20Absolutely. Couldn't have been any happier.
08:26Her crews are disciplined and well-trained,
08:29but find fun in the grinding routine of running a huge ship.
08:34A seaman would make $50 a month or a little more,
08:38so they had these boxing matches and various things to keep the crew trained.
08:45And many of them stayed on board for years and years.
08:50They had no other home to go to ashore, and the Arizona became their home.
08:57By the late 1930s, the weapons and plans that doom Arizona are already in place.
09:03A Japan aggressively expanding for natural resources
09:07is building a Navy intent on surpassing the American fleet in size and modern power.
09:13And as the United States begins to move to hamper imperial expansion
09:17with embargoes on oil, rubber, and steel,
09:21Japanese war strategy moves quickly ahead.
09:24Training begins to prepare six aircraft carriers to become the spearhead
09:29against the U.S. Pacific fleet that has been moved west
09:32from its mainland base in Long Beach, California.
09:35In 1940, the USS Arizona and the Pacific fleet was moved to Hawaiian waters.
09:41They had been conducting maneuvers,
09:43but it was during that time it was decided by President Roosevelt,
09:47because of the growing tensions with Japan,
09:49to extend the flag 2,500 miles closer to Japan by moving it from the west coast.
09:56Admiral James Richardson was relieved of command at Pearl Harbor
10:00when he said he would not be a party to keeping the fleet in this horribly unsafe situation.
10:06In October of 1941, Arizona has a twist of deadly luck
10:10while maneuvering in fleet exercises in bad visibility.
10:14It was foggy, and the next thing we know, the lookout is screaming bloody murder,
10:19and there's this big battleship bearing down on us.
10:22The Oklahoma rammed us.
10:24Somebody got the wrong information,
10:26and they knocked a hole in the bow about like a boxcar,
10:32and we were scheduled to go back to Bremerton for Navy Yard overhaul.
10:37We had to go in the Navy Yard in Pearl to get that patch put on that temporary,
10:42so we missed our turn to go before December 7th, and that's why we were there.
10:47If we hadn't have got rammed, we'd have been in Bremerton.
10:49When Arizona last came home to Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 5th,
10:55the battleships that made up the Pacific Fleet had been out in maneuvers
10:59and were now being pushed into their mooring quays.
11:03There were reports of Japanese submarines following us,
11:08but we went into port on Friday and took up our regular berthing.
11:14I think the first time I ever saw it was where they rigged torpedo nets around a ship
11:21to stop torpedoes in case of attack in the harbor,
11:25but we sure didn't expect attack from air or that.
11:30Arizona's skipper on the eve of war is Captain Franklin Van Valkenburgh,
11:35an old-school gentleman hardly a year from retirement,
11:38happy in his battleship command, the culmination of any sailor's dreams.
11:43Arizona is the flagship of Battleship Division One,
11:47and its commander, Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd.
11:51A solitary and separate figure at the peak of a long career,
11:55he is in charge of the three-ship division that also includes Nevada and Pennsylvania.
12:01The two veteran line officers seem to be at the most protected spot,
12:06behind the thick armor and huge guns of the battleship Arizona.
12:11But Admiral Kidd and Captain Van Valkenburgh will never leave their ship.
12:19Beginning at 0600 in the morning,
12:22180 Japanese warplanes launch in two flights from six aircraft carriers some 250 miles north of Oahu.
12:30They speed undetected toward Pearl Harbor in the final minutes of peace.
12:35Arizona is one of 95 U.S. Navy ships in the harbor.
12:40She is just refueled and her bunkers brim with a new 150,000 gallons of oil.
12:47For her crew, it is just another sunny Sunday in the countdown to Christmas.
12:52We got into the mess hall and heard a loud thump.
12:58Hearing the thump, I knew something was wrong.
13:02So one of the cooks looked out the portal and he said,
13:06Andy, there's a plane out there with red balls on its wings.
13:09And he already knew it. I've been in China.
13:12So I took a run outside the hatch to look and see.
13:15And sure enough, this plane dipped down, waved its wings a couple of times,
13:20and I saw the red balls on it, and I knew that we were under attack by the Japanese.
13:26A young fellow by the name of Jastrzemski and I were going to go over to Aiea to play tennis.
13:31So I was standing there with my tennis racket in hand.
13:34I still don't know what happened to that tennis racket.
13:37Forty torpedo planes are descending on Fort Island,
13:40attacking ships on the east side where Battleship Row is, where the Arizona sits.
13:48Lined up at mooring quays two by two, all the vessels on Battleship Row are sitting ducks.
13:55But those inboard seem safest, blocked off from the deadliest threat, aerial torpedoes.
14:02Arizona sits inboard alongside the repair ship Vesta.
14:06Her other flank is protected by Fort Island, only 150 feet away.
14:12Unfortunately, there's nothing but sky between Arizona
14:16and an approaching line of Japanese horizontal bombers.
14:21Each of them carries a 1,760-pound bomb fashioned from a battleship shell
14:27made to penetrate battleship armor.
14:32A Japanese bombardier sets his sight on Arizona and prepares a fatal release.
14:48Caught unaware in the lightning Japanese raid,
14:51Arizona, moored inboard from the repair ship Vesta,
14:55seems safe from the harborside torpedo plane attacks as her crew scrambles to man defenses.
15:00But there's a cost for the security.
15:03Vesta, scantily armed, presents little anti-aircraft firepower against attacks,
15:09and her superstructure blocks Arizona's flat battery.
15:13What had occurred right after the first bombs and torpedoes started to happen
15:18was that adrenaline kicked in to everybody,
15:21and we were doing the job we'd been trained for.
15:24So everything pretty well clicked at that moment.
15:29The only problem was that a lot of the ammunition aboard different ships was locked up.
15:35Peacetime.
15:49The panic just didn't exist.
15:53The confusion factor was there.
15:57But once firing begins and you begin to react,
16:01I think the fear factor goes away to a great extent,
16:05and you're in a survival factor then.
16:11I had to go from the focal deck up to the boat deck,
16:15and then from the boat deck up to the bridge and up to the sky control platform.
16:19Took about ten men to man that battle station,
16:22and we got ready to fire at the planes.
16:26I could look over toward the sub-basin.
16:29I could see the torpedoes in the water.
16:31From my vantage point, I was right up on top of everything.
16:36I seen the Oklahoma capsized.
16:39Just about everything that happened in that harbor that day I seen.
16:42We had 50 rounds of ammunition behind every gun,
16:45and I had to break some of the locks to get the ammunition out.
16:49But we were firing, and we could see our bursts falling short of the high-altitude bombers.
16:54They were too high for us to reach.
16:56In the meantime, we were getting strafed and dive-bombed and whatever.
17:04The Arizona was attacked by ten horizontal bombers.
17:08They were at 10,000 feet.
17:11Each plane carried a 784-pound bomb, armor-piercing.
17:17They came in two echelons, flying slightly away from each other
17:21as they came down a row of battleships.
17:24As they came down, one of the aviators in the middle plane of the five
17:29raised a white flag up through the canopy,
17:32and when his bombardier said, drop, he pulled it down.
17:35That way, all five bombs dropped at the same time.
17:38The second of the five bounced off a number four turret and went below decks,
17:44went off down there.
17:46Years later, divers had a precise look at the path and type of the weapon.
17:52We were in the port side of the ship, about midships,
17:57and we have a very dramatic feature.
17:59This is a hole in the middle of the ship.
18:03If it was one of the 16-inch ones, it would have been about this diameter,
18:08although the reports indicate it might have been a 500-pound bomb.
18:12In any event, it went decks down through the executive office's office,
18:19which is right here,
18:21where the commander of the executive office,
18:25decks down through the executive office's office,
18:30which is right here, into a meat locker and detonated.
18:41Suddenly, with the first hits, fire is everywhere.
18:45The reeling crew of Arizona respond to their training
18:48and break out equipment to battle the flames.
18:51The sad evidence is found years later.
18:56This is a particularly poignant reminder of the morning of December 7, 1941.
19:02This is a coiled fire hose,
19:07remnants of the futile effort of the men to fight the fires
19:11in the deck of the Arizona after the explosion.
19:14We got to get out there and get on the anti-aircraft guns
19:17because when we were out on battle practice yesterday,
19:21they didn't have enough anti-aircraft battery people
19:24to handle all those stations at one time.
19:28Well, I knew that meant there was a whole lot of empty guns up there on the real battle,
19:33and we didn't have enough hands.
19:35But I knew how to handle these things, so I wanted to get up there and get on one.
19:44A bomb is penetrated in between gun turrets number one and two.
19:51It goes down four decks in an instant. It ignites.
19:58We're talking microseconds here, but as the expansion came out,
20:03it hit the thwart or across-the-ship barrier of 10-inch steel,
20:11went on down and exploded the port powder room.
20:15So a little better than 800 tons went off.
20:19It raised the ship out of the water and settled it down,
20:22and that's what broke the ship all apart.
20:26From the docks outside the harbor,
20:29submariners watch in disbelief as the main line of battleships is now ablaze.
20:37The historic blast sets off years of conflicted testimony and underwater forensics,
20:44all dedicated to unwinding details of the fury that twisted a 38,000-ton battleship like a tin can,
20:53obliterating almost all of her crew.
21:06Even today, government divers investigating the fate and condition of Arizona
21:11are astonished at the underwater evidence of the great explosion,
21:14a power that resulted in the greatest single-ship loss of life in the history of the United States Navy.
21:21This area in the bow probably speaks most eloquently of the force of the magazine explosion that destroyed Arizona.
21:32Look at this wild tangle of hull, deck beams, bulkheads,
21:39all compressed into a small area.
21:42Some of these have been facing fore and aft, some of thwart the ship originally.
21:49Look at here, these valves do all of the tubing that carried steel, steam, water, oil.
22:00All of these were at one point totally facing in a different direction.
22:06They've been twisted around into this wild configuration.
22:15Underwater examination would discover an incredibly massive fracture.
22:19Arizona's hull is almost completely severed between gun turrets one and two.
22:25The deck has buckled down beneath number one's weight.
22:31Gun turret number one was thought to have been vaporized.
22:37But instead has been found to have collapsed to the bottom of the hull.
22:48Here we're at the muzzles, the 14-inch guns of the Arizona.
22:55These were all capable of even a projectile of approximately 1,800 pounds 20 miles.
23:02The irony of it is, when we first started work on this vessel in 1983,
23:10the memory of these guns and this whole turret being here,
23:15the primary armament of the ship, had been lost to history.
23:20It wasn't until those dives that we were met with the surprise of these guns being here.
23:25The modern divers began to visually relive the events seared into the memories
23:30of the few Arizona men who survived the post-explosion inferno.
23:35When it blew up, all the decks below the weather deck were, you know, just shattered.
23:45The explosion just traveled the length of that ship.
23:48Most of the forward part was pretty much exterminated, almost liquefied.
23:54There was nothing to support it.
23:55The turret, number one, number two turret dropped down below decks.
24:00And the forward tripod with the bridge and other associated stations
24:06leaned forward at about a 45-degree angle.
24:10Admiral Kidd and Captain Von Valkenburg were on the bridge.
24:13At the fatal blast, Admiral Kidd's widow would get a grim package.
24:19And it was what few effects they had been able to salvage from the Admiral's cabin,
24:27plus his naval academy class ring.
24:31The heat had welded it to the conning tower near the bridge,
24:36and that was all that was left of Admiral Kidd.
24:38I think they found a few brass buttons from the uniform of Captain Von Valkenburg.
24:44Both of those men were awarded the Medal of Honor.
24:48It just had to be terrible for those who were still surviving at that point,
24:55especially all the way up on top of the foremast, which was just engulfed in flames.
25:01So that was the only way that Admiral Kidd could survive.
25:05So that was the terrible choice of those men up there.
25:08They could either stay or be burned up or come crashing down and be killed.
25:16Very few people were lucky enough to escape from there,
25:21Don Stratton and Russ Lott being two of the fortunate few.
25:25Like a million pounds of ammunition, which exploded,
25:29along with about 200,000 gallons of aviation gasoline and fuel oil.
25:35A firebomb went about probably 500 or 600 feet in the air
25:40and just engulfed us up there where we were at.
25:43And we were kind of fortunate, I guess, to be inside the director.
25:49The director protected us a little bit, but we all got burned pretty bad.
25:53So we tried to get attention of a sailor on the vestal, on the after deck of the vestal.
25:59He threw us a heaving line and we pulled across the heavier line
26:03and we tied it off on the Arizona.
26:06And we proceeded to go across that line hand over hand to the vestal,
26:11which I would say probably was like we were 40, 45 feet in the air
26:15and we were probably 55, 60 feet, 70 feet across.
26:19And that was after we were all burned.
26:22I just pulled the skin off my arms and threw it down.
26:28It was right in the way.
26:30With the help of the good Lord, we made it.
26:33All six of us.
26:35But two of them passed away that night.
26:38I don't think maybe over about 30 of us are still alive.
26:42It was out of the whole ship complement, which was over 1,600 people.
26:46And I'm the only one from that sky control platform.
26:51Of all the ships that were in port, the Arizona suffered the heaviest loss of life.
26:58Of her crew of 1,500, 1,177 men perished, which was about 80% of the crew.
27:06And it's the largest ever lost from one ship in any battle in the Navy's history.
27:12We had put 150,000 barrels of fuel oil aboard
27:18because we were readying to go back to the States.
27:21And that's why she burned for three days.
27:24Three days and three nights before they got the fires up.
27:28The harbor was only 35 or 36 foot deep and the battleships drew 34.
27:34So they didn't have to go very far to be on the bottom.
27:37Of course, all the superstructure was showing.
27:39With their ship devastated, the Arizona sailors begin a tougher, longer battle
27:45to save themselves and their injured shipmates.
27:57The Arizona's war is over, but she is just one of 21 wounded American ships
28:04in the harbor struggling to survive.
28:0621 wounded American ships in the harbor struggling to fight back.
28:12Among Arizona's battling sailors were twin brothers, John and Delbert Anderson.
28:19My twin, who was up on the boat deck, was an anti-aircraft gun captain.
28:25And he was exposed to machine gun fire and explosions and shell fire.
28:31The gunner who was on the boat deck at the time,
28:35had all the gunners and gun captains and guns under his jurisdiction on the boat deck.
28:42His name was Dorothy.
28:46He said he saw my brother get hit by machine gun fire while he was on the gun.
28:51And his gun crew were decimated.
28:55My twin did not survive the attack.
29:01Some people that I picked up, some of the skin on them would peel off when you touch it
29:07and catch hold of their arm, and the other part would burn so much it was crisp.
29:12And they were friends of mine, but I couldn't tell who they were, they were burned so much.
29:17They called me by name and I don't know even who they are.
29:20The name that survivors mention most in the sinking of Arizona
29:24is that of Lieutenant Commander Samuel Fuqua.
29:27In a split second, he finds himself the only officer remaining on the sinking battleship.
29:34He battles brilliantly to organize what's left of the crew,
29:38fight the fires and get all the men he can to safety.
29:43He earns the Medal of Honor.
29:46Commander Fuqua made the decision that the ship could not be saved.
29:51And if the ship cannot be saved, you better get off.
29:54The ship had been sinking naturally all this time,
29:58but you couldn't tell it because we were busy and it was going down pretty level.
30:02So by the time they said abandon ship, I stepped off of the stern end
30:07of the starboard quarter deck into a motor launch.
30:10Normally it would have been about a 16 or 18 foot drop to get down to a boat in the water,
30:15but it sank that much.
30:17And the portholes back at the stern of the ship in the officer's quarters
30:21were just barely above the water.
30:24It was a motor launch and the captain of the boat's name was Alexander.
30:30I never forgot his name.
30:32And he said, drop him in, Andy. Drop him in. He's yelling at me.
30:36So I started dropping the wounded guys into the boat that I could get out of the fire.
30:40Among the few breaks for the Arizona survivors
30:43is the ship's being just 150 feet from Ford Island.
30:46It is a short swim despite oily waters.
30:49With fire in the water, no greater threat than fire on the ship.
30:53Many swimming sailors are already shedding skin from terrible burns.
30:58I saw men walking out of the water and swimming out of the water
31:02and they were all covered with oil.
31:04I found out later that the oil was anywhere from a foot to,
31:08the bunker oil was from a foot to two foot deep.
31:11Because when the ship exploded, all that oil came out.
31:14When the ship exploded, all that oil started coming up from the water.
31:18I actually saw one man walking out of the water, all black,
31:22and the next minute his skin broke away and you could see the red all over his back.
31:29With the ships devastated, the Japanese pour fire into survivors and their rescuers.
31:35They go after the launches and their loads of wounded.
31:39They hit my boat, blew us into the water,
31:42smashed it to smithereens,
31:46and I went swimming again.
31:51And the fire was down there so I had to splash through the fire.
31:55I lost my clothes, my hair was burned off.
31:58As the last wave of raiders returned to their carriers,
32:01an eerie new realization began to settle over the remnants of the Arizona's crew.
32:06The attack ended at 10 o'clock.
32:09It had lasted just under two hours.
32:1221 vessels, including the Arizona, were either sunk or damaged.
32:17They suddenly got very quiet,
32:20and I think that's when I first felt scared and realizing that we were at war.
32:27Up to that point, I don't think I did any thinking about it.
32:31The immense explosion of Arizona posed special problems in the gathering of her dead.
32:37I was having breakfast in the ship, officers morning,
32:42and an officer came in and he said,
32:45is there an officer here from the Arizona?
32:48I knew I was the only one so I had to put my hand up.
32:51And he said, after breakfast, you go down to the dock,
32:55there'll be a motor whale boat, 20 men,
32:58and some sheets and pillowcases.
33:03And you go over to the Arizona and take all the bodies off above the waterline.
33:10So we did.
33:12And 20 sailors got over there.
33:14That's when the ship was all broken up,
33:18mass and a lot of jagged iron handed around,
33:21no lattice to go up to the top to get the people up there.
33:25But it took us two days to do that.
33:28It was a grisly job.
33:29You had to find the body and put it in a sheet and wrap it up,
33:33and then take it down and put it in the motor whale boat.
33:36And with a lot of body parts laying all over the ship,
33:40we put those in pillowcases and put those in the ship.
33:44The stunned Pearl Harbor Command realizes
33:47that the Japanese fleet that has launched this destruction is still at sea,
33:50somewhere within striking distance.
33:53Replacement crews must be gathered from the scattered and injured survivors
33:56to man the few ships undamaged enough to go out and fight.
34:01The commander at that time met us all and said,
34:04you people have got to get out to sea.
34:06I don't know where my brother is and I don't know if he's survived,
34:09but I'm ready to go.
34:11I didn't have a chance to have grief or cry or anything else.
34:15There were so many people damaged and hurt and beat up so bad,
34:20I couldn't see me crying when all these other people were lying there dead.
34:24It will take over 40 years to clear up all the mysteries that lie sunken with the Arizona.
34:39The Arizona burned for two and a half days,
34:43almost three days, out of control.
34:46And when the fires were out,
34:48they couldn't walk upon her because she was still glowing red
34:52for an additional day.
34:54The fleet had suffered heavy, heavy damage to its battleship line.
35:01But the Arizona, it was determined in a survey,
35:04as part of the salvage that would take place in the next months,
35:07that she would never sail again.
35:11Post-attack salvage work concentrates on raising what ships can be raised and returned to battle.
35:17With Arizona a total loss,
35:19the operations on her emphasize cutting away the above water tangle of steel
35:24and recovery of what weapons and equipment might find use.
35:28Took off her foremast and bridge.
35:31Took off her mainmast.
35:33Eventually moved, removed the rifles from turret number two
35:39and then removed the entire guts of turret three and turret four
35:48to make them coastal batteries.
35:50Nine 14-inch guns are salvaged from their armored turrets.
35:54They become part of a plan to ring Oahu with battleship turrets to repel a Japanese invasion.
36:02Along with salvaging the Arizona's 14-inch guns,
36:06the arduous task of reclaiming her deceased is also underway.
36:11The dead picked up by Ensign Langell's team immediately after the attack
36:16are joined by other bodies that have either floated free of the sunken ship
36:21or been recovered by salvage divers.
36:25Another 105 of the crew are removed early in 1942 and buried ashore.
36:32After some 274 bodies have been found, further recoveries are halted.
36:39The bodies are declared medically unrecognizable
36:42and will offer no consolation to families seeking to reclaim remains
36:47in an age before DNA identification.
36:51It is decided to honor the fallen crew in the tomb that was their ship.
36:57Mid-50s proposals to scrap the wreck and bury its dead
37:01in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific
37:04or to build a landscaped park over Arizona come to nothing.
37:08By 1962, a reverence for the sunken Arizona leads to the construction
37:13of a gleaming monument suspended over her cut-down hull.
37:17Under the National Park Service,
37:20it grows to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.
37:26Treated as a tomb as well as a national memorial,
37:30Arizona lies for decades without significant underwater investigation.
37:35It is not until 1981 that a team of underwater archaeological divers
37:41working with the National Park Service as the Submerged Cultural Resources Unit
37:46undertakes the first exhaustive evaluation of the wreck.
37:50They will determine not only the stability of the rusting hull
37:55but as much as they can about Arizona's death wounds.
37:59They will catalog all they find,
38:01as they would the treasures of any museum.
38:04Through the months, Arizona slowly gives up her secrets
38:09and heartbreaking heritage.
38:11Aware of some 900 bodies still in the ship,
38:15divers report reluctance to look in through portholes.
38:19Nothing much more symbolic about being in a ship's galley
38:24than finding cooking pots and cooking pots
38:29and you can see this one's been marked
38:32by the Park Service archaeologists with a tag
38:35just like it was in a museum, but this is an underwater museum.
38:42We're here at one of the galley areas of the ship,
38:48a place that when that bomb exploded
38:53men were standing on these tile floors
38:55this is an area that they would have been eating, cooking
39:00December 7th, when all hell broke loose.
39:05And an interesting, ironic statement here
39:10is that now you find coins like this
39:14that have been thrown into the water
39:18from the memorial which is directly behind me.
39:22And here at the stern we have a hatch
39:26that descends into officer's country
39:31the stair is still intact.
39:34It's now populated by surgeon majors
39:39and some surgeon fish.
39:44Beneath the marine growth, the tick-deck planking
39:47polished by generations of holly stone-pushing sailors.
39:52Hatches remain as they were
39:55propped open to allow in the breezes of a warm Sunday morning.
40:01In an especially unearthly penetration into Arizona
40:05the underwater team's remote observation vehicle
40:09swims into an officer's cabin.
40:11It peers at a desk, untouched by the massive explosion.
40:18These and other explorations
40:21put to rest some of the conflicting theories
40:24as to the events, weapons and hits that sank Arizona.
40:30Early speculation that the fatal bomb went down her stack
40:34is discounted when the stack grows larger
40:36Early speculation that the fatal bomb went down her stack
40:40is discounted when the stack gratings are found intact
40:43unpenetrated by ordinance.
40:45Reports of an observed hit by a shallow-running aerial torpedo
40:49that had somehow sneaked in
40:51are judged to be the misinterpretation of a near-miss
40:54alongside the hull by a large bomb.
40:57Altogether, Arizona turns out to have absorbed four aerial bombs
41:02with only the hit into the magazines a mortal blow.
41:07Divers drill out metal cores to determine rates of corrosion.
41:12There is a careful look at the state of the oil
41:15remaining in Arizona's bunkers
41:17leaking slowly but relentlessly since the fatal blast.
41:22What you have is oil coming up from the aft tanks
41:26and collecting in the overheads or ceiling above.
41:31If that deck gives way, then it will allow that oil to escape.
41:36We have about four and a half quarts of oil leaking from the ship
41:40and it comes up in droplets like about the size of a gumball
41:43and makes its way to the surface then breaks apart.
41:47One remarked that this oil will stop flowing when the last survivor dies.
41:53There are 900 men still entombed in that ship
41:57that still serve that ship
42:00that will always be that age they died.
42:05A father and son is out there.
42:08Well over 23 sets of brothers out there.
42:11We just found another set of brothers.
42:16The Arizona crew members that survived,
42:19many of them signed a letter of intent with the superintendent of the park
42:23that their ashes can be brought to the Arizona
42:27and in a formal ceremony an interment occurs.
42:31The ashes are taken by park service divers.
42:35A full military representation of the Navy is present.
42:41Honors are given.
42:43Families stand to watch and weep
42:47saying goodbye to their loved one
42:52while he says hello to his shipmates.
42:57Since the tradition of interment ceremonies
42:59began in 1982,
43:0229 Arizona survivors have gone to rejoin their ship.
43:07Their ashes placed in the well of turret number 4.
43:11So through them
43:14that asked to have their ashes placed upon that ship,
43:20another reminder that the ship is still alive.
43:25Another reminder of the cost of the ship
43:29that cost Pearl Harbor that day.
43:34Another reminder
43:36that the crew that called themselves shipmates
43:39is further bonded by their wishing not to be buried in a traditional way
43:44but to be returned to their ship.
43:47She is part of American history
43:49and I suspect as long as America lives
43:53so will the story of the USS Arizona.
43:55We would hope that the people who follow us
43:59and see what the Arizona did
44:02and what it represents in the way of honor and courage.
44:07It's all in my memory
44:09and it all brings back a lot of stuff that I don't want to think about
44:12but I've seen everything that went on there
44:15and I'll tell you what, there was more courage
44:18and more heroics and more valor and more sacrifices that day
44:22than a human being ought to see in 10 lifetimes.
44:27That's it, that's all I'm going to say about that.