Pearl Harbor, 18 Months After

The oily waters of Pearl Harbor still lap the misshapen, rusted hulks of three great warships. They are all that remains of the heart-sickening wreckage of Dec. 7, 1941, when the U.S. suffered the worst naval defeat in its history. Sixteen other vessels hit that day have been scrapped, sent to the mainland for repair, or returned to the fleet.

The battleship Oklahoma, once virtually upside down, is within ten degrees of upside up, but she still squats in the harbor mud. The battleship Arizona went under on an even keel, but her bow is still out of sight, the remnant of her stern only a bit above water. The target ship Utah is still turtle-turned, her big broad bottom hot and bare beneath the sun. Within the three hulks rest the skeletons of 1,509 men.

This was the Oklahoma, as reported by TIME Correspondent Duncan Norton-Taylor from Honolulu this week:

"The superstructure is bent and twisted. Stack and masts are gone. Abovedeck quarters are oil-blackened ruins. Ranges in the crew's galley are thick with rust. The once-elaborate captain's cabin is a mess of shattered furniture, moldering linoleum. The cork-lined deckhead is caving in. ... The wooden deck is pocked with the borings of teredos (shipworms). . . . From her opened hatches comes the nauseating odor of gases. Inside her foul carcass are rotting vegetables, meats, ship's supplies, human bodies. ... In the horrible, blackened wreckage of the crew's quarters you can still see a few grey bones."

They Will Strike Again. Righting the Oklahoma was a long and complicated job: "To roll her back, salvagers patched what holes they could get at, pumped out what compartments they could and lightened her as much as possible. On the shore, some 200 yards away, winches were anchored in the ground and from them steel cables were strung across the water and fixed to clamps fastened along the Oklahoma's bottom. The winches turned, the cables began to pull, and very gradually, inch by inch, the big ship rolled. Week after week the process went on. The clamps were moved up the ship's hull to get a higher pull. Her topsides appeared. She lifted her muck-covered head out of the water, until the cables could be looped around the gun turrets and mast step. They hauled altogether for a total of 69 hours, moving her at the rate of two degrees an hour."

It will be months before the Oklahoma is floated. Some of her deck ordnance has been cleaned up. The Navy is hopeful that her old-fashioned reciprocating engines have been fairly well preserved by the thick, overall film of oil. The Navy has not yet decided what it will do with the ship when she can plow the waves again. The Arizona is being cut up for scrap. Her turret mechanism, main and secondary batteries will be used elsewhere. Even the old Utah may yet deal a blow for revenge : some of her ammunition has been recovered, and her sister ships may fire it at the infamous Jap.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.