Photos by RICHARD AMBO | The Honolulu Advertiser
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
FORD ISLAND - As World War II formally ended on Sept. 2, 1945, with Japan's surrender on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri, Gen. Douglas MacArthur would say, "Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won."
Bill Obitz, a seaman 1st class on the Missouri, didn't see the surrender signing. But the history being made wasn't really what he was thinking about, anyway.
"At 19 years old, you just know you are going home, and that's all you cared about," Obitz said yesterday.
The 63rd anniversary of the end of humanity's deadliest war, in which more than 70 million people are believed to have died, was commemorated on the fantail of the "Mighty Mo."
Several hundred people attended the ceremony that included a rifle volley salute and echo taps.
Retired Navy Capt. Michael Lilly, a USS Missouri Memorial Association board member, said MacArthur's words on Sept. 2, 1945, "find expression in why the Missouri battleship is here next to her fallen sister ship, the Arizona."
The two battleships off Ford Island are bookends to the war, with the sunken Arizona representing the tragedy of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack, and the Missouri the triumphant end to the fighting.
Bill Obitz, left, met fellow USS Missouri crew members Walter Lassen, right, and Art Albert, center, after yesterday's ceremony commemorating the signing of the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945, ending the war in the Pacific. All three were aboard that day.
The 82-year-old Obitz, who lives in Ocala, Fla., might not have been there yesterday for the 63rd anniversary had a kamikaze pilot's plane exploded when it struck the Missouri on April 11, 1945, off Okinawa.
The 887-foot USS Missouri, commissioned in 1944, was part of the force that provided firepower in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
"My gun tub was right up there where that plane hit," Obitz said yesterday, gesturing to the rear starboard side of the battleship near the big gun turret. "I only got a glimpse of it before it hit."
The aircraft came in at an extreme angle, striking the side of the ship. Obitz estimates it was 20 feet off the water. Luckily for Obitz, a 500-pound bomb carried by the Zero fighter did not explode.
Asked what was going through his mind as he saw the plane smash into the battleship, Obitz said, "To tell you the truth, you don't think. You are more or less hypnotized for a few seconds, then you drop."
The pilot was killed, and his body ended up on the deck. A photo taken as the aircraft was about to strike the ship gained widespread fame.
A heavy machine gun from the Japanese Zero was thrown with such force it wedged sideways in the barrel of a Missouri 40 mm Bofors gun, but damage to the ship was minimal.
The decision was made by Missouri skipper Capt. William Callaghan to conduct a burial at sea for the pilot, a military custom that was controversial at the time, officials said.
Obitz, one of three Missouri crew members present at yesterday's commemoration, remembers the Okinawa battle to be "in plain words - hell."
"We were there for what, 58 days, and we were at general quarters most of the time," he said. The still spry Obitz, wearing a hearing aid and a USS Missouri Association baseball cap, recalled five Japanese aircraft over the Missouri at one point.
"Even when they weren't attacking, they would have planes fly over in the night and drop aluminum foil, and that showed up on radar as planes - just to keep you awake and on edge," Obitz said.
U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Akaka, D-Hawai'i, and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard commander Capt. Gregory R. Thomas both wove into yesterday's ceremony the threads that took the United States from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the surrender in Tokyo Bay.
Akaka recalled being a senior at Kamehameha School for Boys on Dec. 7, 1941. It was a military school at the time, and along with other classmates, he was ordered to patrol the hills above the campus, looking for Japanese paratroopers.
Thomas noted the Herculean effort shipyard workers put in to get the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown repaired so it could help turn the tide of the Pacific war in the Battle of Midway.
Thomas also said that 23 days after the surrender signing, the Missouri stopped in Pearl Harbor on its way to the Mainland.
"Thousands of Navy yard workers and sailors cheered the Missouri and her crew as she pulled in," Thomas said.
The battleship, which will celebrate 10 years as a memorial and museum in Pearl Harbor on Jan. 29, 2009, is approaching the 4-million-visitor mark.
After yesterday's ceremony, visitors look at displays near the spot where Japan signed surrender papers ending the war in the Pacific.
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.
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A Navy rifle detail fired volleys aboard the USS Missouri yesterday in honor of the Japanese surrender aboard the ship 63 years ago.
