A Japanese bullet hole remains in a glass windowpane in a Hickam AFB hangar. The glass has never been changed…a reminder of the Japanese attack on Oahu in 1941.
As the world remembers 9/11 on the tenth anniversary, Hawaiian dreams drift me back towards Pearl Harbor, December 7th. The surprise roar of motors buzzing over the harbor. Torpedoes like hornet stingers piercing steel and flesh. Explosions rocking hillside homes around the base. Smoke filling the skies. A world changed.
Then silence. The sound of fire and smoke all around. Black, billowing clouds of burning oil, flesh and steel.
We were not in NYC when the planes attacked. In Miami, vacationing of all things. We argued about the dates. i wanted to go the following week. We thought nothing of it as South Beach beckoned us to its sandy embrace that mere mortal Tuesday. We awoke in a cheap South Beach hotel. Never figured what laid ahead in the world. We thought a tourist plane slammed into WTC. “Eh… fuhgeddaboutit!” Swam in the green sea. Rolled in the golden sand. Though about the afternoon flight back to Newark. The struggle back on the Path. The struggle to get back home. Never thinking much of what would remain.
Once we got back to Manhattan. We heard silence. Heard the smoke and ash around the Trade Center. No honking. No rudeness. Not really anything. Just shock. What we once romantically looked upon from Exchange Place…was gone.
The hardest part of living in post destruction New York was the reminders all around. I don’t really remember any pictures I have from that time. I didn’t rather i tried not to take any. I just didn’t. I don’t know why. It just wasn’t in me. I probably have film somewhere but its something I just don’t really think about or want to see.
……….
Small reminders dot Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. If you look close enough you can see scars and wounds around the base. In this one particular hangar, bullet holes glare like angry eyes from the past entwined in the wire-meshed windows of the hangar, it’s crooked eyelashes splitting from the brow. Blue faced specters stuck in a Mondrianesque monotone malaise.
At first you don’t notice. You wonder, why don’t they replace those busted windows. Then you realize what those cracks in the glass are…
Pearl Harbor served as a lesson in history. Why we didn’t learn enough is a question we should ask ourselves. Yet past conspiracy theories suggest Roosevelt invited the attack to force the hands of the isolationist into war with Japan. Many modern conspiracy theories point to a new world order after the Towers collapsed. Some suggest they were demolished on purpose. 70 years after the attack on Pearl and we still don’t know what they knew then.
Will we ever know what they knew now?
