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| Burning of the USS Arizona1 |
My uncle swam away on December 7th, but many of his fellows trapped in hulls of sunken ships continued to "tap" until Christmas. In the weeks that followed, he and the few who remained resurrected those hulls, and the sea bleached bones they contained.
One moonless night my 90-something father revealed a latent agony long sanctioned to silence. Some days after the Battle of Buna, he and the few who remained, returned to the beach of Buna in total darkness to retrieve the bodies of their fellows buried in the sand.
1By Photographer: UnknownRetouched by: Mmxx - File:The USS Arizona (BB-39) burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - NARA - 195617.tifThis media is available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the ARC Identifier (National Archives Identifier) 195617.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information.English | Español | Français | Italiano | Македонски | മലയാളം | Nederlands | Polski | Português | Русский | Slovenščina | Türkçe | Українська | Tiếng Việt | 中文（简体） | 中文（繁體） | +/−This is a retouched picture, which means that it has been digitally altered from its original version. The original can be viewed here: The USS Arizona (BB-39) burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - NARA - 195617.tif. Modifications made by Mmxx., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18147474
