1,177 Names

Contemplation, USS Arizona Memorial
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
April 18, 2007
(click in the image for a slightly larger version)

War memorials of any sort are always a sobering experience (for me, at least). Especially ones that show a list of names. I look at all those names, pick out one or two,  and try to imagine the person that once answered to that name, or the people left behind who loved them, mourned their death and remembered that person. War memorials compel us to remember these people. And even if we did not know anyone in the long list of names, we probably knew someone like them, Or perhaps we are like them. And, of course, everyone has a mother and a father, and many of us have brothers and sisters, daughters and sons.

Historically Pearl Harbor is a significant date for this country. And the Arizona memorial is especially moving because as you gaze at the columns of names, you are standing above the sunken wreck where many of the dead are still entombed. But there have been worse losses. And other countries have suffered far greater war dead than we have. And in addition to the combatants, there are always the innocents, often uncounted,  who are invariably ground up in the carnage. But the specifics of the numbers are not important. We should remember all battles and all wars, any time when people died as a result of organized armed conflict. We should try and envision a world without war, if such a thing is possible, given the history of our species. A world without smooth polished walls with long lists of names carved on their surfaces.