Arizona, an unforgettable War memorial

The history of World War II has an unforgettable place for Arizona. The USS Arizona Memorial is situated at Pearl Harbor, Hawai. It marks the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors killed on the USS Arizona during the Attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 by Japanese imperial forces and commemorates the events of that day. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the island of Oahu was the action that led to United States involvement in World War II.

This WWII memorial, dedicated in 1962 and visited by more than one million persons annually, spans the sunken hull of the battleship without touching it. Since it opened in 1980, the National Park Service has operated the USS Arizona Memorial Visitor Center associated with the memorial. Historical information about the attack, boat access to the memorial, and general visitor services are available at the center. The sunken remains of the battleship were declared a National Historic Landmark on 5 May 1989.

The Book of World War II has a giant casket, the rusted remains of the Arizona still entomb 1177 bodies of men [son, father, or a sibling]; leaving behind family members numbering into the tens of thousands. I could not begin to imagine the heartrending emotions relatives just experience who visit the location... a location no doubt sacred to every one of them. The WW II story explains them well.

The silent, rusting remains of that sunken battleship symbolize an extended tragedy: the millions upon millions earth wide who were massacred in that ‘World War II;’ as well as those who lost loved ones, mates, parents and children. Still others who were permanently disabled, starved to death or tortured in this senseless slaughter, this most heinous of wars in human history!

Fifty years after the World War II, a UN official, considering the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi, made a chilling comment that proved to be so tragically true during World War II: “People can be transformed into hating and killing machines without too much difficulty.”