Diver Pearl Quotes

Her breast is fit for pearls, But I was not a "Diver" - Her brow is fit for thrones But I have not a crest, Her heart is fit for home- I- a Sparrow- build there Sweet of twigs and twine My perennial nest.

In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth. Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them, where,

Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss.

If the diver always thought of the shark, he would never lay hands on the pearl,’ said Sa’di, a Persian poet from the thirteenth century.

There is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or a woman for their world. For the world of their center where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame. The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls and tendrils and his breath at his breast. Born as a plunger into the deeps he is at one with every swarm of lime-green fish, with every colored sponge. As he holds himself to the ocean's faery floor, one hand clasped to a bedded whale's rib, he is complete and infinite. Pulse, power and universe sway in his body. He is in love. The love of the painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great colored surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry on his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes' handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in Love. The rich soil crumbles through the yeoman's fingers. As the pearl diver murmurs, 'I am home' as he moves dimly in strange water-lights, and as the painter mutters, 'I am me' on his lone raft of floorboards, so the slow landsman on his acre'd marl - says with dark Fuchsia on her twisting staircase, 'I am home.

The little boy had wandered away from his mother, tacking across the grass to the play structure. His mother watched him go, proud, tickled, unaware that every time they toddled away from you, they came back a little different, ten seconds older and nearer to the day when they left you for good. Pearl divers in training, staying under a few seconds longer every time.

A small step forward is better than one back.

Struggle toward the capital-T Truth, but recognize that the task is impossible—or that if a correct answer is possible, verification certainly is impossible. In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth. Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete. And truth comes somewhere above all of them, where, as at the end of that Sunday’s reading: the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For here the saying is verified that “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of that work.

Fear no more," said Clarissa. Fear no more the heat o' the sun; for the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made the moment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the river-bed feels the shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered. Millicent Bruton, whose lunch parties were said to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her. No vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard. But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton's face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they just turn over the weeds with pearl.

Then, at a meeting, Petal Bear. Thin, moist, hot. Winked at him. . . . Grey eyes close together, curly hair the color of oak. The fluorescent light made her as pale as candle wax. Her eyelids gleamed with some dusky unguent. A metallic thread in her rose sweater. These faint sparks cast a shimmer on her like a spill of light. She smiled, the pearl-tinted lips wet with cider. . . . As she spoke she changed in some provocative way, seemed suddenly drenched in eroticism as a diver rising out of a pool gleams like chrome with a sheet of unbroken water for a fractional moment.

His mother watched him go, proud, tickled, unaware that every time they toddled away from you, they came back a little different, ten seconds older and nearer to the day when they left you for good. Pearl divers in training, staying under a few seconds longer every time.

But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton's face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they just turn over the weeds with pearl.

Fear If the diver always thought of the shark, he would never lay hands on the pearl. SA’DI

It was an odd habit, I thought, this insistence on driving a car in cities with public transportation.

Her breast is fit for pearls, But I was not a “Diver” – Her brow is fit for thrones But I have not a crest. Her heart is fit for home – I – a Sparrow- build there Sweet of twigs and twine My perennial nest

Imagine that the correct words had been chosen by those people who are in charge of our lives. A few well-though-out words and things might have been different. Unfortunately, they have chosen all the wrong words.

My cough is much worse at night and often prevents me from sleeping. It is not so much the daytime tiredness that I resent, but the inability to proceed uninter- rupted with my dreams, to run and play with my fancies, and, at last, in the early hours of the morning, to be visited with visions like a holy madman. The dreamer is like a Delian diver, fishing for pearls from the depths of our inner sea of knowledge; and I must have solved, or rather resolved, many more problems in my sleep than in my conscious hours.

ROSES UNDERFOOT The sound of salaams rising as waves diminish down in prayer, hoping for some trace of the one whose trace does not appear. If anyone asks you to say who you are, say without hesitation, soul withing soul within soul. There's a pearl diver who does not know how to swim! No matter. Pearls are handed him on the beach. We lovers laugh to hear, "This should be more that and that more this,"coming from people sitting in a wagon tilted in a ditch. Going in search of the heart, I found a huge rose under my feet, and roses under all our feet! How to say this to someone who denies it? The robe we wear is the sky's cloth. Everything is soul and flowering. --------------------------------- I open and fill with love and other objects evaporate. All the learning in books stays put on the shelf. Poetry, the dear words and images of song, comes down over me like mountain water. ---------------------------------- Any cup I hold fills with wine that lovers drink. Every word I say opens into mystery. Any way I turn I see brilliance.

Mohammed ignored the abuse. What did Ahmed know? It had been years since anyone had studied music in Paris or Seville on a scholarship paid for by the country's oil profits. The only knowledge people mastered these days was how to steal copper wire and load a gun. Mohammed felt like a relic from a lost civilization, buried in the muck of the Tigris. Sassanid, Seleucid, Sumerian. Achaemenid, Assyrian, Akkadian. He sometimes thought he was the only one who remembered. For what it was worth, he could sing the ancient songs of the pearl divers.

can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth. Human

But she feared time itself... the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how, little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they just turn over the weeds with pearl.

In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth.

The little boy had wandered away from his mother, tacking across the grass toward the play structure. His mother watched him go, proud, tickled, unaware that every time they toddled away from you, they came back a little different, ten seconds older and nearer to the day when they left you for good. Pearl divers in training, staying under a few seconds longer every time.

No vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard. But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton’s face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they just turn over the weeds with pearl.

In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth. Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.

Miriam admired the statue of a beautiful youth, a pearlfisher; who had got entangled in the weeds at the bottom of the sea, and lay dead among the pearl-oysters, the rich shells, and the seaweeds, all of like value to him now. “The poor young man has perished among the prizes that he sought,” remarked she. “But what a strange efficacy there is in death! If we cannot all win pearls, it causes an empty shell to satisfy us just as well. I like this statue, though it is too cold and stern in its moral lesson; and, physically, the form has not settled itself into sufficient repose.

Struggle toward the capital-T Truth, but recognize that the task is impossible—or that if a correct answer is possible, verification certainly is impossible. In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth. Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them.

You must always remember to check beneath the layers of things to find the truth.

Words are the most important thing we have. A few words, one word, can change history.

If you ever go there, go to the Philosopher's walk. Away from all the tourists and crowds. It's a place that smells of that most beautiful smell, the smell of thought.

Her breast is fit for pearls, But I was not a «Diver» — Her brow is fit for thrones But I have not a crest. Her heart is fit for home — I — a Sparrow — build there Sweet of twigs and twine My perennial nest.

When the pitch-blackness of the night blanketed the island, none of us ventured outside our tents. The only exception to this rule was when the call of nature was very strong. When it was necessary to sit down and answer the call, we had to walk approximately 500 feet in the darkness to the latrines. During this journey, we would be challenged by roving sentries demanding the password to identify ourselves. Our passwords changed daily and always had the letter L in them because the Japanese couldn't pronounce the "ell" sound. It always came out sounding like an R.

{2} Neither did I but vacant seasons spend In this my scribble; nor did I intend But to divert myself in doing this From worser thoughts which make me do amiss. Thus, I set pen to paper with delight, And quickly had my thoughts in black and white. For, having now my method by the end, Still as I pulled, it came; and so I penned It down: until it came at last to be, For length and breadth, the bigness which you see. Well, when I had thus put mine ends together, I shewed them others, that I might see whether They would condemn them, or them justify: And some said, Let them live; some, Let them die; Some said, JOHN, print it; others said, Not so; Some said, It might do good; others said, No. Now was I in a strait, and did not see Which was the best thing to be done by me: At last I thought, Since you are thus divided, I print it will, and so the case decided. {3} For, thought I, some, I see, would have it done, Though others in that channel do not run: To prove, then, who advised for the best, Thus I thought fit to put it to the test. I further thought, if now I did deny Those that would have it, thus to gratify. I did not know but hinder them I might Of that which would to them be great delight. For those which were not for its coming forth, I said to them, Offend you I am loth, Yet, since your brethren pleased with it be, Forbear to judge till you do further see. If that thou wilt not read, let it alone; Some love the meat, some love to pick the bone. Yea, that I might them better palliate, I did too with them thus expostulate:-- {4} May I not write in such a style as this? In such a method, too, and yet not miss My end--thy good? Why may it not be done? Dark clouds bring waters, when the bright bring none. Yea, dark or bright, if they their silver drops Cause to descend, the earth, by yielding crops, Gives praise to both, and carpeth not at either, But treasures up the fruit they yield together; Yea, so commixes both, that in her fruit None can distinguish this from that: they suit Her well when hungry; but, if she be full, She spews out both, and makes their blessings null. You see the ways the fisherman doth take To catch the fish; what engines doth he make? Behold how he engageth all his wits; Also his snares, lines, angles, hooks, and nets; Yet fish there be, that neither hook, nor line, Nor snare, nor net, nor engine can make thine: They must be groped for, and be tickled too, Or they will not be catch'd, whate'er you do. How does the fowler seek to catch his game By divers means! all which one cannot name: His guns, his nets, his lime-twigs, light, and bell: He creeps, he goes, he stands; yea, who can tell Of all his postures? Yet there's none of these Will make him master of what fowls he please. Yea, he must pipe and whistle to catch this, Yet, if he does so, that bird he will miss. If that a pearl may in a toad's head dwell, And may be found too in an oyster-shell; If things that promise nothing do contain What better is than gold; who will disdain, That have an inkling of it, there to look, That they may find it? Now, my little book, (Though void of all these paintings that may make It with this or the other man to take) Is not without those things that do excel What do in brave but empty notions dwell.

Three bodies were found in a completely dry storeroom. They were dressed in blue uniforms. The three had emergency rations stored at their battle station, and they had ample water, since they had removed the cover to an adjacent freshwater tank... Two of the men wore wristwatches, and one of them carried a wallet-size calendar, which had the days checked off from 7 December to 23 December. It was believed their deaths were due to lack of oxygen. The discovery of these three men in an unflooded compartment caused a profound sense of anguish among our divers. Especially shaken were Moon and Tony, who had sounded the West Virginia's hull on 12 December and reported no response from within the ship.

Help me. Oh God, help me. ... I can't feel anything. But I know I'm hurt bad. I can't move my body and I can't feel my legs. ... I'm scared. Please don't leave me. ... I wish there was some light. I hate the darkness. ... I'm getting sleepy. I don't want to fall asleep. Keep talking to me, will you?

mats perfectly picks up the color of the chairs?” “Honey, it’s my restaurant. I’m the one who

Sometimes we so unnecessarily believe that the thing we can see is best for us. But, it is only because we are not willing to see beyond it. When a diver gets into sea, he deserves the pearl, not the pebbles. If he satiates himself with the pebbles, due to fear of drowning, someone else will take the pearl. You have gotten into this life. Do not get disheartened with the pebbles, you deserve the pearl.

One of my uncles grew up in New York and he used to tell me about diving for condoms in the Hudson. There was one stretch where you could dive down, holding your breath like a Polynesian pearl diver, and pick them off the river bottom. They’d dry them out, put them on broomsticks, dust them with talcum powder, roll them up, and sell them for a nickel. This was during the war and there were plenty of sailors in the market.

Since 1982, the Navy has allowed survivors from the Arizona to be interred there, along with a full military service. They can either have their ashes scattered over the wreck, or they can have their ashes put in an urn that a Navy diver will place in the barbette of the No. 2 turret.

Mullen used a careful and thorough search technique designed to locate any survivors on the remaining sunken ships. Beginning at the bow of the ship, the diver was lowered twenty feet under the water. At that point he hammered on the hull three times with a five-pound hammer. He then listened for a response. If there was none, he was moved in intervals of twenty-five feet and the procedure repeated until he finally reached the stern. Upon reaching the stern, the diver was lowered an additional twenty-five feet to the mud line, at which time he repeated the same sounding procedure until he reached the bow. Then the opposite side of the ship was covered in the same fashion.

Generally, the starboard sides of the ships were sounded first, since they suffered the least damage from bombs and torpedoes. We reasoned that if there were any survivors they would most likely be alive on the undamaged side. We also felt that the underwater sounds of our hammering would penetrate the ships hulls more effectively through an intact starboard hull.

Moon and his team were able to sound one battleship during each fourteen-hour day. When they returned at night they were exhausted from the grueling schedule. Moon said it was the only time that the tenders had to work harder than the diver. Holding a diver suspended at twenty feet for three hours at a time strained the muscles of even the strongest among us. We all worked together on the last two ships to give them some relief. The last ship sounded was the West Virginia. We worked the portside first, because the starboard side was partially blocked. The portside hull suffered a gasping torpedo wound three hundred feet long.

We were disappointed that we had not been able to find any survivors on the sunken ships, but after six days of sounding, we were sure no one was alive within them. While our diving crews were occupied sounding the ships and freeing the USS Tennessee, the shipyard constructed two diving barges, each one twenty feet wide and thirty feet long. Buoyancy was provided by three cylindrical pontoons. Wooden planks formed the deck, while corrugated sheet metal on the roof provided protection from the elements. A long pipe spanned the upright stanchions along the side of one barge, which provided an area to hang the divers’ rubberized canvas dresses. Along the opposite side were hangers for the four sets of lifelines and air hoses. A large workbench was situated in the middle of the barge. Installed at one end was a wooden diving ladder that led down to the water four feet below. Next to the ladder was a table that held the diving telephone equipment. Four dressing stools were neatly stacked near the table.

Our first safety measures began after my near brush with death when the yard maintenance people came out to the Arizona and removed my air compressor. We placed metal plates on the diving compressor after that which forbade anyone from touching it unless they checked with us first. As an added safety feature, we acquired a large high-pressure air flask that held enough air to allow a diver an extra twenty minutes of bottom time if the compressor failed. We also required that a standby diver be fully dressed so he could tend the working diver at the entrance to the ship. This precaution was used whenever a dive was more than one hundred feet inside the ship.

Diving operations on the Nevada began in mid-December as a joint effort with units in Pearl Harbor who had divers attached. Divers from submarine rescue vessels Widgeon and Ortolan excavated mud from under the stern and dynamited and removed sections of her bilge keel in an effort to attach a large patch over the forty-eight-foot-long, twenty-five-foot-high torpedo hole. The patch was made by the shipyard, and the bottom of the Oklahoma was used as a pattern because she was a sister ship of the Nevada. The divers from the Widgeon and Ortolan tried to secure the patch for more than a month before a halt was called to the work. After the Nevada was dry-docked, it was discovered that the torpedo blister on the side had blown outboard about two feet, which explained why the patch would not fit. Eventually, the patch was aborted and diving efforts were concentrated on isolating and making watertight all interior bulkheads contiguous to the hole. This required closing watertight doors and fittings, welding or caulking split seams, and driving wooden plugs in small holes. Our crew from the Salvage Unit was assigned this work. At the same time, Pacific Bridge civilian divers fitted and secured wood patches over bomb holes in the Nevada’s outside hull.

A second major problem appeared early in the work on the Nevada. It was the discovery of a deadly gas, generated within the ship. This poisonous gas was hydrogen sulfide. It was formed from a mixture of salt water, paper products, and other organic materials. In low concentrations it produced an odor much like rotten eggs, but in high concentrations it was odorless and highly toxic.

One morning two of the surviving crew members on the Nevada, Lt. Lawrence Gray and CPO Daniel Folsom, came aboard and opened a compartment test cap which allowed the poisonous gas to escape into an unventilated access trunk space. They were overcome by the gas and died almost immediately. Four other crew members came to their aid. They, too, were poisoned but managed to survive the dose of toxic gas. Although the Japanese planes were long since gone, the aftermath of their vicious attack was still killing American sailors.

Despite the widespread damage to the first two hundred feet of the bow section, the starboard side aft of number two turret was largely undamaged in the area where four 5-inch antiaircraft guns were located. These rifles were accessible for salvage.

The guns were in carriages, and each was secured to the deck of the Arizona by thirty-two threaded studs and nuts. Each stud was two inches in diameter. At high tide the nuts and studs were covered by six feet of water.

We borrowed a heavy-duty pneumatic impact wrench from the shipyard and started work to remove the guns. As each gun carriage was unbolted, the Maryann, a crane barge, came alongside. We rigged wire straps to the carriages, and they were hoisted aboard the barge and delivered to the yard ordnance shop for reconditioning.

Since our arrival in Pearl Harbor on 8 December we had worked fourteen-hour days, seven days a week. The stress and strain of the job was beginning to tell on us. Pearl Harbor offered no rest and recreation facilities. There was nowhere we could go and nothing we could do to recuperate from nerves rubbed raw from the strain of facing the hidden dangers within the ships. Being surrounded by filthy conditions was a debilitating experience to endure without respite. Divers and tenders were covered with oil and slime, while the stench of decaying bodies and the putrid smell of hydrogen sulfide gas permeated the water and air.

By allowing an average of three minutes per trick, an enterprising prostitute could rack up her quota in five or six hours. This would net her about three hundred dollars a day after paying the madam her cut. By assuming a twenty-two-day work month, a hard-working girl could earn seventy or eighty thousand dollars a year, tax free. Also, every whore in Honolulu was guaranteed a full day’s work for as long as her stamina held up. The long lines of fighting men patiently waiting their turns was assurance of this. The lines started forming shortly after 7 A.M. when liberty began, and as the day wore on, the lines grew longer and longer and tempers grew shorter and shorter. The men at the end of the lines became edgy and concerned that they would not gain entrance to the house before their liberty expired at 5 P.M. This would mean five long days before they could come ashore again, if in fact they were not shipped out in the meantime. Only the vigilance of the military police kept fights from erupting.

My dive that day would be the first salvage dive inside the sunken hull. An external survey revealed what appeared to be a hole below the mud line on the after port side, presumably made by an unexploded torpedo or bomb. My mission: find the missile and attach a lock on the propeller to prevent it from arming itself and exploding. The submarine base assigned a chief torpedoman to provide technical assistance if we needed help to disarm the torpedo. No salvage work could begin until the missile was rendered safe. This is a simple task for a trained diver. But as it turned out, there was nothing simple about it.

We determined that the external hole below the mud line placed the missile in the vicinity of the general workshop located on the third-deck level. There was no visible damage to the main deck above that area, so we were confident the missile had not exploded.

With exaggerated deliberation, I climbed down the wooden ladder and entered the oil-covered water. My helmet was barely awash as I walked aft on the battleship’s main deck, skirting wreckage. The dense floating mass of oil blotted out all daylight. I was submerged in total blackness. Only a line of air bubbles that popped to the surface marked my path for topside observers as I traveled the thirty-five feet to the Arizona’s entrance.

I pulled down my coupled lifeline and air hose, coiling them at my feet. My lifeline contained a quarter-inch-diameter wire built to withstand a strain of three thousand pounds. Telephone wires were wrapped around it and encased in rubber. There was a watertight telephone connection attached to the rear of the diving helmet. Telephone wires ran inside the helmet to the transmitter-receiver located in the top of the helmet. The other end of the telephone wires and lifeline connection were attached to the telephonic transmitter-receiver box on the diving barge. The diver could transmit and receive messages. The telephone talker could receive the diver’s messages continuously. When the talker wanted to communicate with the diver he depressed a transmitter key and sent his message. The diver could not transmit until the key was released.

At three-foot intervals, the air hose was tied to the lifeline with waterproof twine, creating small loops in the air hose so that any strain in lifting and lowering the diver remained on the lifeline.

After weeks of indecision by the Navy Department, a salvage plan was approved to cut off the badly damaged bow section of the Arizona and raise the stern portion of the ship. Our orders were to seal off the interior and make it watertight.

Before we could start salvage efforts, we had to investigate a reported hole in the after port side of the hull below the mud line, presumably made by a torpedo or bomb. Since no other damage had been discovered in the area, the consensus was that it had not exploded and was armed and dangerous inside the general workshop located on the third deck.

The Pearl Harbor salvage engineers argued convincingly to Washington that the salvage efforts should be directed to raising less damaged ships first, such as California and West Virginia. Otherwise the available salvage equipment and manpower would be diluted on Arizona, Utah, and Oklahoma. Admiral Nimitz concurred with this argument.

Lieutenant Haynes then gave us our diving assignments: dynamite the concrete quays that pinned the Tennessee against the West Virginia, and sound the hulls of the sunken ships to insure that no one was trapped within them. He indicated that the rescue of any possible survivors took precedence over every other operation.

Bosun Calhoun then launched into an account of the attack the day before and reviewed the damage suffered by the sunken battleships. He said the USS Nevada was berthed astern of the Arizona when she was struck by a torpedo in her bow. She managed to get under way with her guns blazing, the only battleship able to do so. As she rounded the southern tip of Ford Island, she was smashed with an avalanche of bombs, which started intense fires. When the thick, pungent smoke from the fires poured into the machinery spaces, the black gang, or engineers, headed for topside and fresh air. This forced abandonment left the pumping machinery inoperative. The forward ammunition magazines were purposely flooded to prevent explosions from the fires, but the after magazines were also flooded by mistake, which caused the ship to sink lower and lower in the water. In addition, ballast tanks were flooded on the starboard side to correct a port list. As more water entered the ship, many fittings that passed through watertight bulkheads began to leak, flooding all machinery spaces and causing loss of all electrical and mechanical power. Nevada was sinking in the ship channel.

Admiral William R. Furlong, senior officer afloat, ordered tugs to take her in tow and beach her before she sank and bottled up the only entrance and exit to Pearl Harbor. She was grounded with her stern near the shore and her bow in deep water. The Nevada’s wounds alone were not serious enough to sink her; rather it was the loss of her watertight integrity, combined with progressive flooding, that doomed her.

Haynes explained that the officials of Honolulu requested that the U.S. Army provide them with additional antiaircraft protection. Since neither the army nor the navy had any spare AA rifles available, the Navy Department offered to loan the Arizona’s guns to the army. The guns were scheduled for installation around Pearl Harbor and Honolulu.

Ben rolled the two-thousand-pound shell out of the freezer, and we used a chainfall to lift it aboard the diving barge. It was a fifteen-inch shell that at one time had been used by old U.S. coastal guns, long since obsolete. The U.S. imprint was clearly visible stamped into the base of the shell. Stabilizing fins had been welded to its base in order to give it the characteristics of a spiraling bomb. The old shell had been sold to Japan years before as scrap iron, and it had been returned to the U.S.A. with a vengeance. Ordnance experts came out, retrieved the shell, and sent it back to the Bureau of Ordnance in Washington, D.C., for analysis.

Within a few months after the attack, the navy was pressured by Congress and the White House to bring up the bodies of the men who died on the Arizona. They felt it was imperative that they be given a proper burial. The navy argued long and hard behind the scenes against this proposal. Their primary objection was that none of the bodies, up to that point, had ever been recovered with heads or even finger flesh intact. Individual dog tags that had been worn around the neck for identification had fallen off in the murky water and been lost. Based on this, it seemed impossible to positively identify any of the bodies. It also would have been heartless and cruel to describe the condition of the bodies to their families. There was no kind way to explain that scavenger crabs had devoured the exposed body parts.

The fact that bones placed in a hero’s grave could be those of any one of the 1,177 killed on the Arizona seemed not to be a consideration. Rational arguments were ignored, and as Congress became more and more pressed by grieving constituents to bury their boys in an honorable fashion, nothing could deter them. They were determined to comply with their wishes. The army, responsible for burying the dead heroes, sided with Congress.

There were now three options open to the navy. The first was to sever the forward section of the ship using dynamite. This would take months to accomplish, but would allow the after section of the ship to be floated and probably salvaged. The second was to flatten the ship with dynamite and drive her deeper into the mud. This would clear the quay, allowing other ships to use it. This second option was never seriously considered because the graves of the crew would be desecrated. The third option was chosen. The plan was to cut off the superstructure above water and construct a memorial in tribute to those who lost their lives on 7 December. When the decision was finalized, diving work was suspended on the Arizona. The two barges were moved, and we soon began work on the USS California.

Arizona is the only sunken ship that remains a commissioned vessel of the U.S. Navy. It honors all those who died during the attack on 7 December 1941. Passing honors are rendered to her as warships sail past.

Only a few clouds marred an otherwise clear warm day in New York City. School had just let out in the spring of 1951 and the thought of having the summer off was suddenly shattered by knowing that I would have to go to work washing dishes at my uncle’s restaurant. In my family, there was no such thing as a summer vacation. The only allowance I ever received came from having a job. Well, that’s not completely true, as an aunt would sometimes slip me a few bucks when my parents weren’t watching. Even as children when we were in grade school, my brother Bill and I had to work. Aside from shining shoes at local taverns, we did many odd jobs. This would not be the first time I worked for my uncle. During the last Christmas break, I worked as a “pearl diver” at my uncle’s restaurant on 86th Street and 1st Avenue. It was always on a holiday or during the Christmas season that he needed me to cover for the employees who wanted time off. In the days before mechanical dishwashers, pearl divers made certain that there were always more clean dishes than dirty ones. During the rush hours, this could be a challenge, but I had it down to a science. You might say that I was a professional! One day, I arrived at work and discovered that I was the only one there. That promoted me to the exalted position of chief cook and bottle washer, as well as the counter man!

At the bottom of the sea, most find only stones - except true pearl divers.

Rei Shimura Books in Order The Salaryman’s Wife Zen Attitude The Flower Master The Floating Girl The Bride’s Kimono The Samurai’s Daughter The Pearl Diver The Typhoon Lover Girl In A Box Shimura Trouble The Convenience Boy And Other Stories Of Japan The Kizuna Coast

Sometimes we so unnecessarily believe that the thing we can see is best for us. But, it is only because we are not willing to see beyond it. When a diver gets into sea, he deserves the pearl, not the pebbles. You have gotten into this life. Do not get disheartened with the pebbles, you deserve the pearl.

If you want to live greatly, you must also be willing to risk greatly. To get to the pearls, the diver needs to be willing to go deep and visit the places that the timid souls would never visit.