[transcript from the NOVA episode, Killer Subs in Pearl Harbor]
KAZUO UEDA: Mr. Kamita, here is your brother. Here is Mr. Dewa who accompanied you to Pearl Harbor.
NARRATOR: A cup full of sand is carefully removed from the seafloor, beneath the sealed control room of the midget sub, and given to Admiral Ueda to take home.
AKIRA IRIYE: The remains or the spirits of the dead, ah, from the submarine would now be reunited with the sand.
NARRATOR: Admiral Ueda presents the sand to Petty Officer Dewa.
He brings it to a memorial service for Japanese sailors who lost their lives in midget submarines.
AKIRA IRIYE: The sand that was brought back from Hawaii is purified now, becomes Japanese soil, so to speak.
NARRATOR: For Kichiji Dewa, the mission is at last over. For Parks Stephenson, it’s always been about bringing the facts to light.
PARKS STEPHENSON: I want their accomplishment known, so that their sacrifice will have meaning.
December 7, 1941 has been compared to September 11, 2001. On both days, America suffered a surprise attack and entered a war. Sixty nine years after the 2,402 American servicemen and women were killed in Hawaii, a publicly funded science television program (NOVA) in conjunction with the U.S. Navy, accompanied the senior surviving Japanese midget submariner, Admiral Kazuo Ueda, 1,000 feet under the sea to the wreckage of a Japanese midget sub used in the attack. The Admiral paid respects to Sadamu Kamita and commander Masaji Yokoyama, holding up photos of their families to the porthole. A robot arm scooped a cup of sand from underneath the wrecked mini-sub, to be brought back to Japan. The program explains how this midget submarine may have torpedoed the USS West Virginia and USS Oklahoma, killing hundreds of Americans.
This is a remarkable and quiet reconciliation. For now, 9/11 is too loud and contentious for any similar mediation. The Obama Administration saw harmony in the move to try 9/11 mastermind K.S.M. in lower Manhattan. Attorney General Eric Holder famously stated, “After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September 11th will finally face justice. They will be brought to New York—to New York—to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks away from where the Twin Towers once stood.” Many Americans were displeased with this plan, a story well told by Jane Meyer’s article in the New Yorker, “The Trial: Eric Holder and the battle over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed”…
“On December 5th, several hundred people gathered in Foley Square, in lower Manhattan, and withstood a drenching rainstorm for two hours in order to send a message to Attorney General Eric Holder. A JumboTron, set up by the protesters, played clips of Holder’s recent testimony before Congress, in which he explained his decision to hold the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—the self-proclaimed planner of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—and four co-conspirators in the colonnaded federal courthouse flanking the square, rather than in a military commission at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Members of the crowd shouted at the screen: “Holder’s gotta go!”; “Arrogant bastard!”; “Communist!” “Traitor!” “Lynch Holder!”
Who knows where or how this trial will play out. I hope that someday a cup of sand will find its way to the right hands.
sad blogerly 3rdarm. Who knows how things will turn out – the medium is the message. The message is that it’s a blizzard of a storm. The weather in your port is blustery but we’ll sail out under clear skies as soon as the wind dies down.