Episode 234: I Held History in My Hand

Music The keel of the battleship that would become the USS Arizona was laid on March 16th, 1914. More than a year later, on June 19th, 1915, she launched from the Brooklyn Shipyard to a fanfare consisting of thousands of people people, and a special delegation of Arizona Notables including Governor George W. P. Hunt,

U.S. Senator Henry Ashhurst, and Major General Leonard Wood, who you might remember from our runs of episodes on both the final push to capture Geronimo and on Fort Wachuka. And it would be Hunt's 17-year-old daughter Esther, who would christen the ship, something she apparently practiced in Prescott by swinging syrup bottles full of water against a fence.

Esther, in a long white dress with matching shoes and hat, actually broke two bottles across the Arizona's hole. One was the classic champagne, but the other, as I mentioned in episode 164, was some of the first water to go through the spillway of the Roosevelt Dam.

The US Navy would officially commission the USS Arizona on October 17, 1916, and two Two years later, she would join the Utah and the Oklahoma in England, for eventually being ordered to head out to sea to rendezvous with the USS George Washington. The Arizona would be part of the escort to see the George Washington to France, where

its VIP passenger, President Woodrow Wilson, would propose a treaty in hopes of guaranteeing a final end to World War I. During this mission, the Arizona was part of the fleet that returned to New York City for inspection by the Secretary of the Navy.

Over the next several years, she would serve off the coast of Europe, Asia, the Panama Canal and the US West Coast, before being assigned to Hawaii in 1929. Then, early on the morning of December 7, 1941, a squadron of Japanese planes launched from six aircraft carriers struck the Arizona with a handful of armor piercing shells while

it was anchored at Pearl Harbor. One of these shells appears to have struck the ship's forward magazine, causing a large explosion that brought the death toll up to nearly 1,177 men, approximately half of the American lives taken during the surprise attack.

And unfortunately, many of those killed were trapped in the ship, where their bodies remained to this very day. The fate of the USS Arizona was to sink to the bottom of the harbor, beyond hope of salvage and repair.

And thousands of miles away, news of its sinking sent its namesake state into a state of shock and of action. I'm your host, David Ruckhausen, and you are listening to AZ, the History of Arizona. Episode 234, I Held History in My Hand.

Welcome back everyone. Before we get started with our usual fare, I wanted to give a quick apology for last week's episode going out a day later than usual. It was one of those things where you knew you had to do something, but then you let yourself

get distracted and next thing you know it's a day later and you realize that you never actually did the thing you were supposed to do. Sometimes I feel this podcast is just a way to mass communicate what a fallible human being I actually am.

However, the episode did go out, better late than never, and officially brought our story into the 1940s, as we discussed the ongoing war in Europe and the worry that it might eventually spill over onto America's lap. Arizona was particularly impacted by this pre-war preparation, or paranoia depending

on how you look at it, as the military started placing airbases across Phoenix and Tucson and training pilots of all different nationalities. But remember that all we discussed last week was before December 7th 1941, when the US was in ostensibly neutral country. However, since the 1920s, tensions had been rising between the US and the empire of Japan

over their respective spheres of influence in the Pacific, especially America's support of China, which was then in the process of being slowly beaten and taken over by Japan. I don't feel I really need to say what happened next because, well, December 7, 1941, really is living up to FDRs labeling it as a date that will live in infamy. But what I want to walk you

through right now is the reaction in Arizona to the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor and declaring war on the US. For this, I'm indebted to Jane Eppinga's section in the compilation Arizona Goes to War, as she has some great details and anecdotes to share as the news started to spread. Abe Chanin, a longtime Tucson journalist who was then a student at the University

of Arizona, recounted that he was in the Rialto theater watching a matinee movie when suddenly the lights turned on and an officer stood up to order all soldiers from Davis Monthan to report to the airbase immediately. Shannon was already working at the Arizona Daily Star newspaper by this point, so he ran

to their offices where the news of the bombing was coming over the Associated Press Wire. We also learned that on the morning of December 8th, in what can only be described as a prank made in really bad taste, someone had raised a crude Japanese flag made out of pillowcases and red crayon over the University of Arizona flagpole.

They had also cut the line to lower this makeshift flag, so the fire department volunteered its hook and ladder to take it down. The news about Pearl Harbor also interrupted the Sunday golf game of a certain lieutenant who had been assigned to Luke Air Force Base just three months earlier.

Hearing rumors about an attack, this lieutenant, one Barry Goldwater, quit the links to call headquarters for confirmation that this was real. In coming days the windows at Luke Air Force Base would be covered in tar paper to conceal it from Japanese attack, though we can now say that it was very doubtful the Japanese

would actually be able to get planes that far inland. And it wasn't like Luke Air Force Base was the only place on high alert. In the days following the Pearl Harbor bombing, thousands of volunteers joined the Phoenix Civil Defense Council, which did such things as surveying the city and mapping