Pearl Harbor: The Hunt for the USS Arizona

On December 7th, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.  This attack caught America off guard.  During this attack the USS Arizona torpedoed and sunk, killing 1,100 sailors on board.  Seventy-five years later a group put together by the National Parks Service is looking to scan the outside and the inside of wreck of the USS Arizona.  This documentary talks about the efforts to document the ship as well as talks with the survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack.
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It is December 7th, 1941, and Pearl Harbor is under attack.  This was an assault nobody saw coming.  Everyone was shocked to see that the Japanese were attacking Pearl Harbor.  It shocked the men on the ground.  Earlier in the day, the Ward had depth-charged a Japanese submarine.  Then there were warnings of planes coming in from the north.  The sailors thought these planes were coming from the United States.  The Japanese also learned that the aircraft carriers were not in Pearl Harbor.  They decided to carry on the attack anyway.  The Japanese retreated back to the aircraft carriers feeling their attack was a success.

Seventy-five years later, divers and researchers look to map the interiors of the USS Arizona.  Before the exploration, little is known about the interiors of the USS Arizona.  It is considered a war grave.  The wreck is scanned externally.  A team works to put together an ROV named the 11th Hour to explore inside the ship.  The National Parks service works with a team of divers to explore the internal corridors of the USS Arizona.

The world is at war during 1941.  Adolph Hitler has torn Europe apart.  While Japan is invading Southeast Asia for materials.  It looked as though the Axis powers are going to win.  The Americans did not want to get involved in another war.  The plumb assignment for the soldier or sailor was Pearl Harbor.  Life was good for the soldier or sailor in Hawaii.  At least until the summer of 1941, when Japanese invaded Indochina.  President Roosevelt ordered an oil embargo against Japan to stop Japanese expansion.  This made Japan even more aggressive.  The Japanese saw the fleet in Pearl Harbor as a threat to their expansion and decided to attack.

Even though the Navy did not believe that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor they still ran air drills and had the ships practice shooting.  For the sailors it did not make any sense, but they dutifully practiced.  Then the attack on December 7th, 1941 happened and changed this ideal world for the sailors and soldiers.

A group of explorers looks to bring the USS Arizona back to life.  These explorers will look through the ship to try to understand what life was like aboard the ship.  The USS Arizona was the pride of the Naval Fleet.  It was sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor.  The first initial external scans are produced and a survivor from the USS Arizona takes a look at these first scans.  These scans show a badly damaged ship that was torn apart during the attack.

What will the expedition find?  What will the expedition learn about the USS Arizona?  How does the survivor react to seeing his ship for the first time in seventy-five years?  Continue to watch this documentary to find out.

This is a good documentary to show to a history class.  The survivors tell their stories about Pearl Harbor as well as the attackers tell their stories.  The exploration in the USS Arizona was neat to see.  It did start out slow with the lead up to Pearl Harbor but slowly it gradually built up to both the survivors’ tales and the scanning and the exploration of the wreck.