Adventures of a Sea Hunter Read Online Free PDF

beneath the water. Today, they lie just a few feet below the surface and nearly half the hull is buried in the mud. But on the evening of December 7, even as fires blazed forward, the stern was not touched and the ship’s huge American ensign hung off the jackstaff. One
of Arizona’s
officers, Lieutenant Kleber S. Master son, was ashore during the attack. He returned to assist with first aid and muster the surviving crew members. “There weren’t many,” he later said. “Out of eight-four men in my fire control division, I think there were only five survivors.”
    After being temporarily reassigned to the battleship
Maryland
, Masterson decided to return to
Arizona
to take down the flag. “It was the big Sunday ensign flying from the stern, and it was dragging in the water and getting all messed up with oil.” With another
Arizona
survivor, Ensign Leon Grabowsky, Masterson motored over to the still-burning ship in a launch. Jumping aboard, they found only an eerie silence. “We heard no noises, because there were, of course, no survivors under that little bit of deck we could walk on.” As the sun set, Grabowsky lowered the flag while Masterson gathered up the oily cloth in his arms. They returned to
Maryland
and handed over the flag to the officer of the deck, who sent it off to be burned. Drifting over the spot where the two officers performed that final ceremonial duty, I think not only of Masterson and Grabowsky but of all the men who died that day.
    Backing up, I drop down to look at the fantail. A buoy chained to the wreck here marks the stern to passing boats. The buoy’s mooring chain drags across the steel hull, back and forth, scraping off corrosion and marine growth. The thick steel letters that spell out the name ARIZONA are bright and shiny, polished by the incessant movement of the chain. They reflect some of the sunlight that drifts down through the water, and for brief moments, the name of the ship blazes as if onfire again. It is an awe-inspiring sight, and I hang there listening to the beat of my heart and the air moving through my regulator.
    Swimming back to the edge of the deck, we follow it along the starboard side, coming up to an open hatch near the No. 3 turret. I hover over it, looking down into the darkness, my light picking up the tangle of debris that blocks it. Then, to my surprise, I see something rising up to meet me. It is a blob of oil, no bigger than a child’s marble. It passes the edge of the hatch and floats to the surface, where it turns into an iridescent slick. Six seconds later, another globule of oil follows it, and I, like so many others who have watched this phenomenon, am struck by the fact that
Arizona
still bleeds.
    The light-filled warm waters on the shallowly submerged deck give way to darkness as we pass beneath the memorial. I look up through the water and notice visitors staring down, some of them seeing me, others gazing out and a few tossing their offerings of flower leis into the sea. We pause here for a drop over the side, past the empty mount for a 5-inch gun, and drop down to the top of the torpedo blister. The blister, a late addition to the ship’s armored sides, was supposed to protect
Arizona
from submarine attack by absorbing the impact of a torpedo. The defenses of Pearl Harbor were focused on a submarine attack, not an aerial assault.
    The hatches that line the top of the torpedo blister are open, but what we are looking for should be resting atop the blister. In April 1982, the widow of an
Arizona
survivor who wished to rest with his shipmates dropped his urn from the memorial onto the wreck. With the decision to place urns in the open well of No. 4 turret, the National Park Service has just received her permission to relocate his urn from the blister. I think I see the urn, but it lies inside a corroded section of hull that cuts deep into my thumb when I try to pull it free. We leave the urn there. It is wedged in too deeply, so this is where it