Pearl Harbor Memories
Bloch Arena, and the night before
Today is the 81st anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. During my three year assignment at Pearl Harbor ('83-'86) my family and I took in many of the sites associated with that attack, that morning. We saw the USS Arizona Memorial and the USS Utah, which was sunk on the opposite side of Ford Island from Battleship Row. You could still see the damage done to the flight tower on Ford Island, which has been preserved as a historical site. There are similar damages to be seen still, I'm sure, at Hickam, Wheeler and Kaneohe air bases.
The most poignant site for me was Bloch Arena, where sailors were enjoying a "Battle of the Bands" between bands from USS Arizona and USS Pennsylvania the night of December 6th.
Bloch Arena was brand spanking new on December 6th, 1941. The sailors enjoying themselves that night probably knew things were tense with the Empire of Japan. After all, most of them were recent arrivals, the Pacific fleet having been beefed up because of rising tensions with Japan. And the sailors knew what was happening in Europe, and on the Russian and Ukrainian steppes, and of the horrors visited in China by Japanese forces. But December 6th was a night of fun and relaxation. The ships’ bands had been competing for a couple of months and were down to the semi-finals. Elsewhere in Honolulu, officers were partying at the Moana and Royal Hawaiian hotels and many of the sailors’ shipmates were taking in the pleasures of Hotel Street and Waikiki beach, joined by soldiers from Army and Army Air Corps bases on Oahu.
They had no idea what the morning would bring.
In the mid-80s, Bloch arena looked very much as it did 40 some years before. And you could feel the ghosts of those young sailors still present, as they were before their--and our--world changed forever.
This link will take you to Scotty Moore’s history of Bloch Arena. It’s worth the reading.
(Photo courtesy of the USS Arizona Memorial Association)