Once Again, Pearl Harbor Is Center of American-Japanese Conflict

For cultural and historical ironies and complexities, it is hard to beat the Navy’s court of inquiry into the sinking of a Japanese fishing vessel by a nuclear-powered U.S. attack submarine.

Three U.S. admirals, with a Japanese admiral acting as an advisor, are judging the conduct of the officers and enlisted personnel aboard the Greeneville as hundreds of Japanese journalists hang on every word and picture.

The U.S. admiral who convened the court hopes that a public and thorough review will help assuage public anger in Japan and avoid a rift in relations between the two countries.

And all of this is taking place in a location whose very name is synonymous in the American consciousness with the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, the “day of infamy” that propelled the U.S. into World War II.

What’s more, the tiny, heavily guarded courtroom where the inquiry is taking place is just a mile from the USS Arizona Memorial, a shrine to 2,403 American military personnel killed in the attack, many entombed in the sunken battleship.

At the same time that the Navy is going to great lengths to accommodate Japanese journalists covering the court, the service also is helping plan a gala premiere in May for the new Touchstone movie “Pearl Harbor,” starring Ben Affleck, Dan Ackroyd and Cuba Gooding Jr.

One of the movie’s features is a realistic special effects-enhanced portrayal of how a bomb from a Japanese high-altitude plane scored a direct hit on the Arizona’s forward munitions magazine.

To a mainlander, it may all be difficult to assimilate, but to residents here, the mix of cultures and historical memories is the everyday reality of modern Hawaii, where World War II history is still vivid and yet the island economy is dependent on tourism from Japan.

“The story of Hawaii is the story of the interplay of cultures, sometimes in very complex and seemingly contradictory ways,” said Dick Baker, retired diplomat and senior fellow at the East-West Center, a research and educational institute at the University of Hawaii. “A lot of that is coming out as the submarine incident continues.”

One-third of tourists to Hawaii are from Japan; more than half of them are on return visits. And a popular destination spot is the Arizona Memorial.

One-fifth of the 1.5 million people who visit the Arizona each year are Japanese, according to the National Park Service rangers who tend the museum and memorial. Street signs and brochures are in English and Japanese.

Sheila Smith, a U.S.-Japan expert at the East-West Center, said her Japanese friends invariably want to see the memorial when they visit Hawaii. “They come back very subdued,” she said.

On a recent Saturday, Japanese and American tourists sat shoulder to shoulder on a launch to the memorial. Many had tears in their eyes.

Near the Arizona is another memorial, the battleship Missouri, the ship where the Japanese signed the unconditional surrender that ended World War II, a scene shown repeatedly in U.S. television documentaries.

The surrender led to an American occupation of Japan and to a continuing military presence. Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, 41, the Greeneville’s skipper, was born in Japan, where his father, an Air Force officer, was stationed.

Waddle, who has offered numerous apologies to the Japanese for the accident, has told interviewers that his first language was Japanese and that he acquired a deep respect for Japanese culture.

The Missouri was brought to Hawaii in 1997. Boosters hope to raise enough money for a memorial and museum.

Except for the Missouri memorial, the collision of the Greeneville and the Ehime Maru might never have occurred.

Of the 16 civilians aboard the Greeneville for a Distinguished Visitors cruise that day, 13 were being rewarded for having raised money for the Missouri memorial.

The honorary president of the Missouri fund-raising effort was former President Bush, a Navy pilot in World War II who was shot down by the Japanese.

In 1991, Bush told a 50th anniversary gathering at the Arizona Memorial that “Americans and Japanese meet here in peace to remember a day of war.”

In that spirit, a former Zero pilot has joined a Pearl Harbor survivor in laying a commemorative wreath at Pearl Harbor in recent years on the anniversary of the attack.

Everett Hyland, 78, a retired teacher who was critically wounded aboard the battleship Pennsylvania on Dec. 7 and is now a volunteer at the memorial, said it is only fitting to include his former enemy.

“The war is over; that doesn’t mean it’s forgotten, just that it’s over,” Hyland said. “In Hawaii, it can never be forgotten.”

Hyland, a student of such things, notes that the Greeneville court of inquiry is much like the 1942 Navy investigation into the actions of Rear Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, blamed by many Americans for allowing Pearl Harbor to be unprepared.

“Lots of things change,” Hyland said. “But some things are the same. When things go wrong, the man at the top has to be held accountable.”