The Pearl Harbor Wrecks: Salvage or Not?

Captain Homer Wallin walks the docks of Pearl Harbor through the acrid smell of fuel oil and silt. Before him, the battleships of the Battle Line lie partly submerged: the Oklahoma has capsized, the Arizona lies gutted, the West Virginia and California have settled at their moorings. December 7 transformed the heart of the Pacific Fleet into a graveyard of twisted metal, mixed with ammunition, fuel, and the remains that divers are still bringing up by the dozens.

Wallin knows that American shipyards are already working beyond capacity, that Japanese submarines patrol the harbor entrance, and that every week matters. The question facing him is not purely technical: launch a full salvage operation with divers, massive pumps, hull patching, and refloating from the mud — tying up hundreds of men for months — or limit the effort to stripping out steel, artillery pieces, and reusable equipment while abandoning the most badly damaged hulls.

A third path exists: ignore the wrecks entirely and channel all resources into expanding base facilities and arming the new vessels coming out of East Coast yards. Wallin has preliminary reports from his divers: several hulls are structurally sound beneath the silt. But every day lost at the bottom is one fewer combat unit available to slow the Japanese advance.