The Machinery of Night

Posted 8:14 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Day of Infamy

OK, I'm going to cheat now, and give you a photo that I've published before, but not as a Friday Foto. Appropriate to the day, here are the Arizona and the Missouri:

USS Arizona Memorial from the USS Missouri
Pearl Harbor, HI, Jan. 2002

That's from this post. But, to make up for the repetition, here are some fresh images:

Forward guns of the USS Missouri

If you want to know about those guns, don't ask me -- go to Wikipedia (WARNING! etc) and look at the waaaay cool photo of the Iowa's guns firing.

The main thing I remember about the Missouri was the definite impression that it must have been damned uncomfortable in the tropical heat, considering that the interior walls are all metal and it was cramped and humid and held 3,000 men, each of whom probably sweated out his body weight weekly.

There's a plaque in the deck to mark the spot where the surrender instruments are signed, covered with a layer of thick acrylic(?).

And there is also, bizarrely, a memorial Pepsi machine:

Pepsi Machine, USS Missouri

Yes, that's right on the ship, not on the dock next to the gift shop. I'd have bought a drink if it came in commemorative cans, but that didn't seem to be the case. (The highest-resolution version of the image suggests that it didn't hold cans -- or Pepsi -- at all, but bottles of orange drink and fruit punch and water. $1.75, in case you're wondering.)

That is just the coolest graphic. They should've had it on a postcard; I assume it belongs to Pepsi.

USA Today has an interesting article on the dwindling ranks of the Pearl Harbor survivors who man the museum. When I was there in 1989 I met one of those guys. He had one of those ubiquitous stories of having something in his pocket (a lighter? a quarter? an iPod? -- well, OK, not that) that stopped a bullet that would have otherwise killed him.

He also said that he had to leap from his sinking ship into the water, which was on fire.

Fox has the perspective of the civilian population.

And on that note, I'll close by pointing to this post from five years ago.

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii