JB
Honorary Moderator Emeritus
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2001
- Messages
- 45,907
I arrived in Hawaii in June, 1954. I was 18 years old, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and assigned to the Flight Planning Office in the tower at NAS Barbers Point.<br /><br />After a few weeks I was on the graveyard shift one night, killing time in the Javalocker, when I struck up a conversation with a slightly grizzled old salt (remember, at 18 anyone over 30 is old).<br /><br />I noted from his 3 hashmarks that he had been in over 12 years, so I asked him where he had been during the war. "I was at Ford Island when it started and right here at Barbers Point when it ended." he said. He was an AC. . .Air Controlman. . .the Navy equivalent of a Tower Operator.<br /><br />I asked him about Pearl Harbor. He looked at me for a full minute, then said quietly, "Buy my breakfast, Boot, and I'll show it to you.".<br /><br />The next day, I got a guided tour of Ford Island, The Arizona and Utah, with very personal recollections and display of a great, long scar on his torso.<br /><br />The Arizona Memorial wasn't there then. We walked out a rickety catwalk to a little platform where a flagstaff bearing 48 stars and 13 stripes and a dress-blues Marine sentry stood. We looked down into the clear water at the great bulk of the Battleship and the one turret base sticking clear. Drops of oil popped to the surface and burst into rainbows of color. He didn't speak. . . he wept. So did I. <br /><br />More people died in the treachery of 9/11/01 than on 12/7/41, but the lesson is the same.<br /><br />Freedom isn't free. We owe it to those who have paid the ultimate price for it to preserve it.<br /><br />Let us all please remember those boys who paid the price on December 7, 63 years ago.
