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METRO DETROIT — The belongings, material and personal, of Michiganders who were at Pearl Harbor on and around that infamous day continue to make their way home.
John Lind, director of the Detroit Arsenal of Democracy Museum, has been able to secure several items from the USS Oklahoma and USS Arizona: a prayer book from either ship and four envelopes from the Arizona postdated Dec. 7, 1941.
The Arizona items come from the estate of a Michigan man, who Lind did not name, who was on his way out of the Navy on Dec. 6.
“This person went to the mail section on the ship and got these envelopes in advance,” Lind said. “The story is this gentleman here was transferred on Dec. 6, the Saturday before, because they conducted no business on Sunday. … He was going back stateside. He was done, his hitch was over, and he reached California and he said, ‘You know what? I’m going back in.’”
The unnamed Arizona sailor joined over 300,000 Americans who showed up to recruitment offices on Dec. 8, 1941. Lind says about 30,000 people volunteered at the Detroit office.
The Oklahoma prayer book, which is in a more fragile state than the Arizona book, was acquired from a separate sailor who reached out to Lind.
“He was on (the USS) Oklahoma,” Lind said. “He came back to the United States, was retrained and then he got on other ships throughout the war.”
Prayer books were commonly taken from ships while the envelopes were postdated sometime before Dec. 7.
The attack on Pearl Harbor is as much a story of what was not lost as it is about what was. While the battleships USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma and USS Utah were scrapped and the aircraft carriers assigned to the base were saved by virtue of being out of port, the lightly attacked support facilities — dry docks, maintenance shops and oil yards — allowed for the other damaged ships to be repaired and returned to service. Lind says that Michiganders were sought out to repair and retrofit the fleet.
“The Navy came to Detroit and took as many skilled trades (as possible) to go to Pearl Harbor to get Pearl Harbor back in shape,” Lind said. “If the Japanese would have concentrated on the rebuilding centers, the fuel farms, the maintenance shops, Pearl Harbor would have come back but it would have been years later. Instead, within six weeks basically, all the dry docks and maintenance shops at Pearl Harbor were back online.”
It is hard to determine how many Pearl Harbor veterans are still alive for the 83rd anniversary, though the number is certainly not many. Anyone serving in the U.S. military at the time would be a centenarian by now.
An Associated Press article about the 2023 commemoration mentions five survivors were in attendance with a sixth unable to make it due to health concerns. The Los Angeles Times reported nine Pearl Harbor survivors attended a ceremony at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans in January 2023. Lou Conter, the last surviving sailor from the USS Arizona, died in April 2024 at 102 years old.
According to NBC’s KNHL local news in Hawaii, at least one survivor was expected to attend this year’s commemoration of the 83rd anniversary of the attack at 104 years old.
The National World War II Museum in New Orleans says that of the 16.4 million Americans who served during World War II, around 66,140 were alive as of 2024. Of that number, 2,520 were Michiganders.
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