Pearl Harbor to Baghdad

Dec. 7, 2006

Dear Patty,

Most people live in a dorm room or an apartment when they leave home for the first time. My father has an engraved picture of his first home -- the USS Maryland. He had 2,500 roommates.

He had just turned 16 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Children must have thought the world had turned upside down that Sunday. The worry in the adults' voices must have sounded strange and new like the sound to the young sailors in Pearl Harbor of planes dive bombing their ships.

My father weighed 118 pounds when he entered the Navy two years after Pearl Harbor. He was assigned to the USS Maryland, a World War I battleship that was alongside the capsized Oklahoma during the attack on Pearl harbor. The Maryland survived two bomb hits at Pearl Harbor.

My dad started out working in the ship's magazine, one of the most dangerous places on earth. He soon became a radio operator. He still knows Morse code.

While my father was aboard, the Maryland twice was torpedoed and twice rammed by kamikaze planes. Off Saipan, a plane launched a torpedo that blew off the ship's bow. Dad was stationed directly above the explosion.

The USS Maryland, was targeted by a kamikaze shortly after the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Thirty-one men died. The plane hit between two gun turrets. The ship battled on for a couple of weeks before heading back to Pearl Harbor for repairs. Two months later she headed back to the western Pacific. Most of this information is gleaned from World War II histories. My father seldom talked about his war experiences. War isn't an experience to reminisce about. It's one to mourn.

The anniversary of Pearl Harbor makes me think of this e e cummings poem:

I thank You God for most this amazing

day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

I who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any -- lifted from the no

of allnothing -- human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

A new generation is engaged in the rite of war, a passage that never seems to end.

The Maryland, nicknamed "The Fighting Mary," was sold for scrap in 1959. A monument to the ship that includes its bell is in Annapolis. My dad keeps his picture of the battleship in a closet. He knows where it is.

Bombs fell on Pearl Harbor so long ago. Today they're exploding in Baghdad. Innocence again along for the ride.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.