The Battleship That Still Weeps — Pearl Harbor, 80+ Years Later @TravelwithJamesW

More than eighty years after December 7, 1941, the USS Arizona is still weeping. Drop by drop, oil rises from her hull — sailors called them the black tears of the Arizona.
We visited Pearl Harbor to walk the deck of the USS Missouri, where World War II ended, and to stand above the Arizona, where it began for America. This short film is our tribute to the 2,403 Americans killed that morning — 1,177 of them aboard the Arizona, more than 900 of whom remain entombed in her hull today.
What you’ll see:
0:00 The attack — December 7, 1941
0:14 The USS Arizona — full of fuel and powder
0:39 The surrender — Tokyo Bay, September 2, 1945
0:52 The USS Missouri today, standing watch
0:59 A grave, not a monument
1:16 The black tears — oil still rising after 80+ years
1:48 Remembering
Out of respect for the fallen, we took no photographs inside the shrine room of the USS Arizona Memorial. The last living Arizona survivor, Lou Conter, passed away in 2024 at age 102; over the decades, dozens of survivors chose to have their ashes interred within the ship’s hull by Navy and Park Service divers, rejoining their shipmates.
Our intention with this video is education and remembrance — to help keep the memory of these men alive for another generation.
If you visit: the Pearl Harbor National Memorial is free to enter (Arizona boat tour requires a timed reservation), and the Battleship Missouri Memorial and Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum are on Ford Island. Please remember it is an active military cemetery — hats off at the memorial.
Note: The narration in this video is AI-voiced, and two still photographs of the oil sheen have been animated. The music is an original score. All historical facts were researched and verified.
Filmed on location at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii.
#PearlHarbor #USSArizona #WWII