Pearl Harbor: Into The Arizona Page #3

Because when you're in the water,

you can only see a little part at a time,

but now we sort of have this overall look.

- This is kind of

really super.

- So you can see all those open hatches.

- It's super, super, super, yeah.

- Yeah?

- [Narrator] The damage

sustained in the attack

is not what Don has thought it to be

for the past 75 years.

- It's very surprising

that the starboard side

has been more blown away like this,

'cause that's where the explosion was.

(air raid siren blaring)

- [Narrator] Just minutes into the attack,

Battleship Row is engulfed

in fire and smoke.

High-altitude bombers attack the Arizona.

- The bomb bounded off

the number three turret,

went into the water, went through,

went right through the

fantail into the water.

And then we caught the big bomb.

- [Narrator] 10,000 feet above the harbor,

a Japanese B5N2 bomber has Stratton's ship

in the cross hairs.

At 8:
10 a.m., the Japanese commander

releases the deadly

freight, a 1,760 pound bomb.

(ship exploding)

- Fireball probably went about

a thousand feet in the air.

- [Narrator] Close to a million pounds

of gunpowder detonates,

tearing the ship apart.

- It was just so

devastating, it took so...

- So I've been--

- So many men.

- Over a thousand, right?

- 1,177.

- [Narrator] The sonar

image of the wreckage

reveals the extent of the destruction.

- There's a great look at that steel,

and how it just flowered out.

- Just like paper.

People don't realize how it

just tore that metal out.

It was a bad day.

A terrible day.

(fire burning)

- [Narrator] What's left of the

Arizona is doused in flames.

- All of use got pretty

well fried up there.

I lost part of my ear,

and my hair was gone,

and the skin on my arms,

it was hanging down

like a sock, and I just pulled

it off and threw it down

because it was in the way.

- [Narrator] The blazing

fire reaches Stratton,

high up in the gun director,

burning 70 percent of his body.

He is one of the few survivors topside.

- Another fire control man, he and I

were the only two survivors

from that platform.

One of the gentlemen

on the opposite side of

my director, where I was at,

something hit his head

and busted him open.

Below deck people were fighting

the water and the fires.

The water just come in,

and couldn't stop it,

and just sunk, ship just sank.

- [Narrator] For the past 75 years,

Don Stratton has been eager

to see inside his ship again.

- You know, for somebody like Don,

who has done so much and given so much,

to be able to give anything back to him

is an honor, and something that

we hope to be able to achieve.

- [Narrator] But the custom-built ROV

still isn't ready for operation.

Thankfully, the team has a backup plan.

Two smaller ROVs will provide Don

with the opportunity to

have a peek inside the ship.

- If we can give him

the gift of being able

to see in his old ship one last time,

in real time, that's

meaningful for everybody.

- [Narrator] After weeks of work,

the expedition team sets its sights

on exploring the second

deck of the Arizona.

- Working inside the Arizona is obviously

a very sensitive issue with

the loss of life there.

And people always ask about human remains

and the people that lost

their lives in the Arizona.

- [Narrator] Due to the

sediment accumulation

over 75 years, the National Park Service

doesn't believe they'll observe

any human remains inside the ship.

- [Brett] You want to pan and fly left.

- [Woman] So keep left?

- Yeah, keep going left up

the wall right in front of us,

and you want to follow that.

- [Narrator] As these ROVs

drag their tethers behind,

their reach is limited.

- You can't travel all

that far into the vessel

because you need to be able to turn around

and come back out, you might get snagged

as you go around a corner, all sorts of

different things can happen

once you're in the ship.

- [Brett] Okay, so go forward here.

Go down that, go that way.

- [Woman] You want me to the right?

- No, go right straight.

- Okay, great.

(divers speaking over radio)

- So go, you want to go left.

- [Narrator] The ROV enters the area

where the officers lived.

- [Brett] We can go through there.

What have we got there?

- [Narrator] The officers wardroom,

on the starboard side of the vessel.

- We're going to move

pretty slowly in here.

- Yes.

- We're trying to throw up too much...

- [Narrator] The wall

cabinet, with soap dishes.

- [Brett] That's pretty cool.

- That's something,

really, really something.

- The soap dish looks white,

so it must be a porcelain.

In the past, we've seen cups,

things that are porcelain in nature

don't collect marine

growth, they stay white.

- [Narrator] Everything,

the way it was left

on the morning of December 7th.

- Cool.

And you can see in this particular cabin

the sink looks like it's on the floor

because of this high sediment load.

- So this is another way

to allow the survivors

to remember what it was like,

to see what their shipmates endured,

and to strengthen that bond.

- It sure brings back a lot of memories.

- [Narrator] With the

custom-built ROV still not ready,

Don will miss the exploration

of the deeper decks.

- A bulb, there was...

- [Brett] Light bulb.

- [Narrator] But for

him, just this first look

inside has brought his

old home back to life.

- The phone was there on the desk,

and the light bulb was in the socket.

Just kind of eerie.

Who'd ever think that you'd

see something like that

75 years later.

(fires burning)

- [Narrator] By the end

of the Japanese attack

on Pearl Harbor, 21 U.S. ships

have been sunk or damaged.

2,403 people are killed,

1,177 on the Arizona alone.

The fires on the ship rage

for more than two days.

- We were in blackout

conditions in those days.

Nobody could have any lights

on their house or anything.

The only light you could

see on the whole island

was the burning of the Arizona.

- [Narrator] After the fire subsides,

Seaman Sterling Cale is

assigned to lead a group

of 10 sailors to recover

bodies from the wreckage.

- I think about the first

thing we saw on the Arizona

was a bunch of ashes

blowing off of this ship.

And I just sort of sank down

on my perch and shed a few tears.

We saw a bunch of helmet

liners lying across the ship.

No body around close to them.

Many of the men were in ashes,

behind the big guns on the ship.

A lot of the men had burned

right down to the deck.

We also found a bunch in

the aft fire control tower.

They'd got caught by the flames,

they'd been reduced to charcoal.

- [Narrator] After the recovery

of more than 200 bodies,

the Navy is forced to

stop the retrieval effort

because of increasingly

dangerous conditions.

Salvage of the ship's superstructure

above the waterline

continues for another year.

The decision is made to leave

the Arizona where it lays,

creating a lasting memorial to the fallen

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes