To Be Alive is a Blessing

Our suitcases rumbled over the tarmac. Up ahead, a metal staircase climbed into the waiting jet. It felt strange to walk right up to our airplane with none of the usual pomp and circumstance of a boarding process. But then again, when it’s only a 20-minute flight, you don’t need much organization. We were departing Maui and heading for the island of Oahu. New adventures, here we come!  

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Featured photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/VHCtzZUVBQDA1Qoj8

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December 31st, 2023- Hawaii Day 5

The majority of our day was centered around visiting Pearl Harbor. There are times where pictures speak louder than words, and this seems like one of those times. I expect that this blog post will be short. Take an extra minute to look through the photos instead. History is important. Viewing it permits us to remain humble. It helps prevent us from making the same mistakes twice. 

Following the advice of several friends, our day began with a visit to the USS Arizona Memorial. Because the memorial is located in the bay, a reservation is required for the brief boat ride over to the site. We were unable to make a reservation in advance, but Tyler made sure we were quick in line for the day-of tickets as soon as the line opened. We only waited for about 45 minutes, so it really wasn’t bad! 

Hovering above the sunken remains of a battleship, the USS Arizona Memorial is a ghostly homage to the lives lost during the attack on Pearl Harbor. 900 bodies still lie unrecovered in the skeleton of the USS Arizona. There was something unnerving about the tranquility of the water around the shipwreck. Tropical fish swam around a tile floor that would have been an upper deck. Rainbows danced over oil slicks that still oozed from the ship. Just across the bay, an active military base hummed with activity. I found my gaze returning to the military base again and again. Just beneath our feet were the rocking waters of a mass grave. Within eyesight were other soldiers who might face the same fate.

It was sobering. 

When we returned to land, we visited a battleship similar to the sunken Arizona. On the USS Missouri, we stood in the exact spot where the Japanese signed their terms of surrender at the end of World War II. Our tennis shoes shuffled over the same deck where General Douglas MacArthur once stood tall. The wooden deck was polished by decades of footsteps. Ladders creaked from hundreds of people who’d climbed it before us. Nearly all of those people are probably dead now. 

We are still alive.

In a submarine named Blowfin, we crouched in claustrophobic hallways to gape at soldiers’ cots resting on top of torpedoes. I imagined the young man who might lay in one of those cots, his nose inches from the ceiling. As the submersible’s walls  vibrated around him, did he struggle to sleep? As he lay atop explosives, did he ponder his life? 

In a museum, a woman cried quietly as she read farewell letters written by Japanese pilots to their families. I, too, wanted to cry. There is an overwhelming awareness of humanity in the midst of war. A theologian once wrote that war ought to be conducted with the greatest of sorrow. To do anything less is to mock reality. We ought to mourn our lost brothers and sisters. And for the lost enemy? We must mourn them too. 

We finished our day in the vastness of an airplane hangar. Like a cathedral, the interwoven beams drew our eyes upwards in a worshipful gaze. A massive flag hung in the front. In the windows behind, bullet holes pieced the glass. Outside the sliding doors, fighter jets quietly perched on the tarmac in an orderly line. Their guns and engines were still. It made me think of a religion professor I had in college. He had once used an illustration that buried itself in the recesses of my mind. With fumbling fingers, I’ll do my best to recreate the novelty of his thought.

My professor asked us an interesting question. What is the nature of a bomber plane? To drop bombs, of course. A bomber plane flies high above a hot desert landscape, carrying incendiary loads of destruction in their bellies. Yet is this what the plane is truly meant to be? Perhaps the bomber plane longs for a more idyllic destiny instead. In a world without war, perhaps the nature of the bomber plane could be one of mercy instead. In the hottest days of summer, the bomber plane could fly to the highest reaches of the mountains and retrieve the glistening snow lying there. Then, with a great roar of its mighty engine, it could swoop down over the sweltering villages and deliver to them the welcoming coolness of ice. In a world without war, a bomber plane could be a joyous sight. 

In our world, the pointed bodies of fighter planes are harbingers of death. 

We went to sleep in Honolulu that night. It was New Year’s Eve. In the entire city, jubilant fireworks ignited the night sky. Yet after a day at Pearl Harbor, I couldn’t help but hear cannonfire in the fireworks. It wasn’t that long ago that a very different kind of explosion echoed off the hills.

It made me feel blessed to be alive.