I was stationed at Pearl Harbor for over four years, and I learned a lot about that day when I was there.
The bombed-out structures are still there, rebuilt and obviously so. There are plaques up everywhere that was built up back then, and I saw the gouge where the USS Nevada was purposefully run aground, the captain knew he wasn't going to make it out of the harbor, so to avoid a complete sinking and blockage of the harbor entrance, he tried to take his ship onto land, a wise choice as the Nevada was salvaged and put into service before war's end:
[quote=wikipedia]Subsequently salvaged and modernized at Puget Sound Navy Yard, Nevada served as a convoy escort in the Atlantic and as a fire-support ship in four amphibious assaults: the Normandy Landings and the invasions of Southern France, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nevada_%28BB-36%29[/quote]
The final fate of the Nevada is sort of sad and funny, in a strange way.
Bombed at Pearl, got underway with
counter-flooding to keep it upright**, salvaged and re-floated the following February, placed in service as a convoy escort, used in four amphibious assaults, two in the Atlantic and two in the Pacific, and then used for occupation duty in Tokyo harbor ... quite a story, and that doesn't even mention service in WW1!
After WW2, however, the strangeness starts. The Nevada was too old to keep in service, and for some reason wasn't "historic" enough to keep as a museum (I disagree, obviously!) ... so it got designated as a target vessel ... for atomic bombs off Bikini Island. After getting nuked
twice, it still wasn't sunk ... heavily damaged, painted orange for visibility for the bomber crew, and now radioactive.
Finally, she was used for Naval gunnery practice, and still wouldn't sink! Final sinking was accomplished by aerial torpedoing of the damaged ship, sending her to the sea bottom SW of Pearl Harbor.
**(exactly what it sounds like, you compensate for one big hole by punching another big hole in the other side of the ship)
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After I got out of the USN, I stayed on Oahu, and a random side benefit of the cheesy job I worked was access to the top of a 33 story building overlooking Pearl - I got to talk to a Japanese film crew that was there doing a documentary, they were getting area shots for a story on a recently-found mini submarine that was sunk and lost during the attack. They were the enemy, but the
men carrying out the attack were on orders no matter how sleazy the overall plan they were wound up in. I cannot imagine the courage it would take to bring a mini-sub into an enemy harbor while it was already under attack, but I have to respect the men who did it even though I'm glad they weren't successful.