- [Narrator] It's an expedition like no other before.
- That's our entry point.
We're going to drop down in there.
Dave will feed the RV.
- Comm check, Scott.
- [Narrator] They are among the world's
foremost underwater explorers.
- V tether.
- Copy that, we got a V tether.
- [Narrator] It's an exploration
of America's most sacred war memorial.
The wreckage of the battleship USS Arizona.
- We want people to understand that
this was a living, breathing ship.
- The ship is a war grave.
1,177 men died.
- There was devastation.
It was unbelievable.
- [Narrator] The attack on Pearl Harbor,
an assault no one saw coming.
- We thought we were invincible.
They were coming right over us.
- And then we caught the big bomb.
- [Narrator] A blow that would sink the Arizona,
and change the course of history.
- [President Roosevelt] December 7th, 1941,
a date which will live in infamy.
- [Narrator] Now, 75 years later...
- That is awesome.
- [Narrator] These explorers are setting out
to bring the Arizona back to life.
- Wow, look at that.
- Unbelievable.
- [Narrator] And for one survivor, it's like a homecoming.
- Kind of interesting to see what all the time
and the sea has done with our old home.
(waves lapping)
- [Narrator] Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii.
The site of the sunken battleship USS Arizona.
A mere shadow of her former self.
- Here we are on the gun, the number one guns.
These three gun barrels extend out
into the gloom of Pearl Harbor some 57 feet.
- [Narrator] These encrusted weapons
were once capable of heaving
a 1,500 pound projectile miles into the air.
- [Diver] The physical remains of the ship are still here.
And along with those remains are artifacts
of the decks all around us.
- [Narrator] Marine growth, mixed with
the Arizona's corrosion, covers the ship like a blanket.
- [Diver] We have this water pitcher
that's been here since the attack of December 7th.
- [Narrator] A fork.
A bowl.
A shoe.
Traces of life on board before the attack.
- [Diver] They stay on the decks, and they're preserved
as a touchstone to the history and the events
that happened here on December 7th.
- [Narrator] 75 years after the attack,
the National Park Service is about to board
the Arizona once more.
- Alright, breath's good.
- The interior investigation of Arizona
really stems out of the Park Service's need
to manage the site, to figure how long it's going to last.
And the only way we can do that is through technology
and figuring out if we can access
some points deep in the ship.
- [Narrator] Researchers and divers prepare
for a high stakes expedition.
- The ship is a war grave.
1,177 men died, and many of them died
right at the location that you're diving at
and that you're looking at.
Knowing that and seeing it up close underwater
is really a moving experience.
We get goosebumps, all of our divers do.
- [Narrator] Little is known about the condition
of the Arizona's interior.
The ship is now a Naval cemetery,
and no diver is allowed inside.
- Now we've got this opportunity
to do it with scientific instrumentation
in a very controlled manner that allows us
to inspect what's there, what's going on, what's changed.
- [Narrator] To gauge the current state of the Arizona,
the team scans the wreckage using
a radio-controlled sonar device.
- That's good.
Stay on that azimuth for...
- [Narrator] The data will be used to create
a 3-D computer model of the ship's exterior.
At the heart of the interior exploration
will be a custom-built ROV
the team has named Eleventh Hour.
Capable of exploring areas of the ship
nobody has seen since the day of the attack.
- We can swim around the ship all we want,
but until we really have an understanding
of what's going on inside, we really don't know
how long the ship is going to last.
- [Narrator] To build and operate this ROV,
the National Park Service has teamed up
with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
- We get to go to places where we're frequently the first
people to ever see something, and I want to share that.
- [Narrator] They are among the world's foremost
underwater explorers, and key in bringing
the Arizona back to life.
- So now for the first time, we have the ability
to remove the water away from the ship
and just look at the ship.
People have the ability to see what the ship looks like
and what's still left in the harbor 75 years later.
(40s jazz music)
- [Narrator] She was called the pride of the fleet,
the flagship of the Navy's First Battleship Division.
Home to more than 1,500 men.
One of them, Ensign Carl Bud Weedan,
reporting for duty in the summer of 1940.
For 75 years, his family has kept his memory alive,
and held on to the treasure trove Ensign Weedan left behind.
- This is my uncle's 8 MM movie film from the 40s.
These are the letters that he wrote home.
Then we also, we also have a few photos.
Here he is, real casual, on a sail boat.
He really enjoyed his life.
Then he got into Annapolis,
and spent about four years there, and graduated in 1940.
He was very proud.
- [Narrator] Also signing up for service onboard
the vessel that year, Seaman Don Stratton.
- For an old country boy like me who had,
you see the Arizona sitting there,
tied up to the dock, it's immense.
How can 35,000 ton of steel float, you know.
- [Narrator] Stratton's battle station,
the sky control platform, one deck above the bridge.
75 years later, Don Stratton returns to his ship
to be a part of the exploration.
- At this moment, I would like to let everybody know
to be aware of the fact that we do have
Mr. Donald Stratton with us.
He is an Arizona memorial survivor.
(crowd applauding)
- Kind of interesting to see what all the time
and the sea has done with our old home.
It'd be like a homecoming, I guess maybe,
after all these years.
(crowd applauding)
- You know, to have Don back here
and be able to participate in our project,
in our research, it really means a lot
having him be able to experience the ship again,
like he's never experienced it
since he was there 75 year ago.
- [Narrator] As one of the few Arizona sailors still alive,
to this day he wonders why he was spared.
- Some of the personnel did survive, and I was one of them.
I think about it every day, how many people
didn't make it that day.
Why the Good Lord saved us but, who knows.
- [Narrator] After weeks of preparation, the team is ready
to field test their custom-built ROV.
- There's a certain amount of anxiety.
We have this narrow timeline that we need to hit,
in time for the anniversary.
Plus, we have Don Stratton coming.
So there's a fair amount of pressure,
to make sure that the ROV works.
That's our entry point, we're going to drop down in there.
Dave will feed the ROV, and we'll take the second back,
make sure everything works, that you guys
have control, cameras, all that.
- Cool.
- They created this really cool solution,
which is essentially a big spool
that pays out the cable as you go in,
and then picks the cable back up as you go out,
and the advantage there is you're not always
pulling on the cable to get it further into the vessel.
- Oh, I'm sorry, dude.
- [Narrator] The new self-spooling tether
is designed to prevent the ROV
from getting snagged inside the ship,
a problem that has plagued previous Arizona expeditions.
- You'll handle the ROV.
- Okay.
- I'm going to do some in-water filming.
- [Narrator] The team hopes the new tether system
will allow them to look deeper
inside the ship than ever before.
- We're going to go slow, first dive, first day.
We're going to go in an area where we know
we can get it out, should we have any problems,
it's pretty accessible.
So we're going to take it slow.
We're going to head in there and see what we get.
So, yeah, I'm psyched, we're ready to go.
- The mission does rest on the ability of the ROV
and the tether system to work.
When we go in there, we need to be effective,
and we need to be successful,
because we may not get another chance
for another 15 years.
(indistinct talking over radio)
- We are going to feed tether.
- [Narrator] The self-spooling tether works flawlessly.
But, there are problems with the thrusters,
and issues with the electronics
cause the video feed to go down.
- One set of motors went down.
- Copy.
- Let the vehicle sit for 10 minutes.
We're opening up the controller now.
Let's just get more right there.
- [Narrator] The source of the problems are proving elusive.
The team is forced to cut the test short for the day.
Despite the technical glitches,
the team hopes they can still keep to their schedule.
- We all want this to succeed,
and, you know, for numerous reasons.
For the guys that lost their lives here,
for the guys that survived this.
The USS Arizona is ground zero
for the American involvement in World War II.
- [Narrator] It was a war America didn't want any part of.
In 1941, the world is consumed by aggression.
Adolf Hitler's armies had already marched across Europe.
In the Pacific, Japan is fighting a brutal war in China,
and trying to expand its own empire further south.
- [Newscaster] The Japanese believe in making
an invasion pay for itself.
- [Narrator] Pearl Harbor survivors recall
what life was like at this time.
- We saw the newsreels about that,
but that didn't mean much to us.
That's 4,000 miles away.
- [Narrator] With the world on fire, serving on
the remote islands of Hawaii seemed a good choice.
- They said well, Cale, you have your choice
of worldwide assignment.
Said hell, sent me to Pearl Harbor.
- It was idyllic.
There was always a lot of music
and a lot of dancing and things like that.
- It was just beautiful.
- [Narrator] Ensign Weedan also enjoys life on the island.
He writes his sister.
- [Carl Voiceover] I've been taking a few movies.
I've been doing the usual things in port this time,
going swimming, sunbathing,
and sightseeing around the island.
- We enjoyed it very much,
til the rude awakening, of course.
- [Narrator] The U.S. Navy prepares itself
for a possible war with Japan.
Ensign Weedan writes home.
- [Carl Voiceover] We were out for nine days.
The quicker we realize that we are no longer
a peacetime navy, the better we will be.
Better off for everything.
All we do from now on is train, train, and more training.
- [Narrator] Standing in the way of Japan's
ambitions in the Pacific, America's naval fleet
in Pearl Harbor, ready to disrupt any invasion.
(speaking in Japanese)
- [Translator] We started torpedo training
in shallow water in September.
It was quite hard.
All we were told was that there would be
targets in shallow water.
- [Narrator] Secretly, the Japanese empire
gathers the Pearl Harbor attack fleet.
- [Translator] The fleet was heading for Hawaii
for an attack, we were told.
But there were still peace negotiations with America,
and if the negotiations worked out,
then the attack would be cancelled,
so we could turn around at any time.
But if the negotiations didn't work out,
we would declare war.
- [Narrator] December 7th.
In Oahu, the crew of the USS Arizona
is waking from their slumber.
- Well, we got up and around 5:30.
On a Sunday morning we just cleaned, sweeped down,
we didn't holy stone or we didn't scrub down,
or we didn't do any painting.
- [Narrator] 230 miles north of Oahu,
the Japanese carriers are in position
to launch their attack.
But weather conditions are not good.
(speaking in Japanese)
- [Translator] The sea was extremely agitated.
The northern Pacific is often called
the Devilish Pacific, but it was actually
a three-headed devil Pacific.
There were waves, big as mountains.
- [Narrator] On board the carriers, 342 airplanes,
Zero fighters, high-altitude bombers,
and torpedo planes are being readied.
It is 6:20 a.m. when the first wave
of the strike force takes off.
- [Translator] There didn't seem to be
a reason to be worried, because it looked like
we would make a surprise attack.
- [Narrator] At Pearl Harbor, it's time for morning Colors.
Across from Battleship Row at Hickam Airfield,
Seaman Rodrigues has just ended his watch.
- At 7:45, I got relieved from my watch,
and went to have breakfast.
I had just set my tray down when we heard
a lot of rumblings, and we thought nothing of it.
Well, I never had breakfast that morning.
(planes flying past)
(bombs exploding)
- [Narrator] The first casualties on this morning,
35 servicemen who were having breakfast
in the Hickam Airfield's dining hall.
Onboard the Arizona, Don Stratton steps onto
the main deck, when suddenly he hears
his fellow sailors shouting.
- [Narrator] The Japanese first attack the air bases
with dive bombers, and then set their sights on
the primary target, the battleships
anchored around Ford Island.
(speaking in Japanese)
- [Translator] We went down quickly,
then when we were only 10 meters up
we could aim for the target.
- [Narrator] Battleship Row proves
an easy target for Japan's pilots.
- [Narrator] Back at the site where he fought for his life,
Don is curious to see what's left of his ship.
The team presents Don with the new
sonar scans of the wreckage.
They reveal a complete image of the sunken vessel
in incredible detail.
- Now we can rotate it in 3-D to kind of
give anyone who sees it that context.
So from the sonar data, we have tools
that can create a solid model, like this.
(contemplative music)
- It's a really emotional place down there, true.
- Don, is this the area that you were, the number six?
- Yes.
I was in one deck above the bridge
and the port antiaircraft director.
- [Narrator] Don can hardly believe what he sees.
- When we saw this data for the first time,
it sort of put the entire ship in context.
Because when you're in the water,
you can only see a little part at a time,
but now we sort of have this overall look.
- This is kind of
really super.
- So you can see all those open hatches.
- It's super, super, super, yeah.
- Yeah?
- [Narrator] The damage sustained in the attack
is not what Don has thought it to be
for the past 75 years.
- It's very surprising that the starboard side
has been more blown away like this,
'cause that's where the explosion was.
(air raid siren blaring)
- [Narrator] Just minutes into the attack,
Battleship Row is engulfed in fire and smoke.
High-altitude bombers attack the Arizona.
- The bomb bounded off the number three turret,
went into the water, went through,
went right through the fantail into the water.
And then we caught the big bomb.
- [Narrator] 10,000 feet above the harbor,
a Japanese B5N2 bomber has Stratton's ship
in the cross hairs.
At 8:10 a.m., the Japanese commander
releases the deadly freight, a 1,760 pound bomb.
(ship exploding)
- Fireball probably went about a thousand feet in the air.
- [Narrator] Close to a million pounds
of gunpowder detonates, tearing the ship apart.
- It was just so devastating, it took so...
- So I've been-- - So many men.
- Over a thousand, right?
- 1,177.
- [Narrator] The sonar image of the wreckage
reveals the extent of the destruction.
- There's a great look at that steel,
and how it just flowered out.
- Just like paper.
People don't realize how it just tore that metal out.
It was a bad day.
A terrible day.
(fire burning)
- [Narrator] What's left of the Arizona is doused in flames.
- All of use got pretty well fried up there.
I lost part of my ear, and my hair was gone,
and the skin on my arms, it was hanging down
like a sock, and I just pulled it off and threw it down
because it was in the way.
- [Narrator] The blazing fire reaches Stratton,
high up in the gun director,
burning 70 percent of his body.
He is one of the few survivors topside.
- Another fire control man, he and I
were the only two survivors from that platform.
One of the gentlemen on the opposite side of
my director, where I was at,
something hit his head and busted him open.
Below deck people were fighting the water and the fires.
The water just come in, and couldn't stop it,
and just sunk, ship just sank.
- [Narrator] For the past 75 years,
Don Stratton has been eager to see inside his ship again.
- You know, for somebody like Don,
who has done so much and given so much,
to be able to give anything back to him
is an honor, and something that
we hope to be able to achieve.
- [Narrator] But the custom-built ROV
still isn't ready for operation.
Thankfully, the team has a backup plan.
Two smaller ROVs will provide Don
with the opportunity to have a peek inside the ship.
- If we can give him the gift of being able
to see in his old ship one last time,
in real time, that's meaningful for everybody.
- [Narrator] After weeks of work,
the expedition team sets its sights
on exploring the second deck of the Arizona.
- Working inside the Arizona is obviously
a very sensitive issue with the loss of life there.
And people always ask about human remains
and the people that lost their lives in the Arizona.
- [Narrator] Due to the sediment accumulation
over 75 years, the National Park Service
doesn't believe they'll observe
any human remains inside the ship.
- [Brett] You want to pan and fly left.
- [Woman] So keep left?
- Yeah, keep going left up the wall right in front of us,
and you want to follow that.
- [Narrator] As these ROVs drag their tethers behind,
their reach is limited.
- You can't travel all that far into the vessel
because you need to be able to turn around
and come back out, you might get snagged
as you go around a corner, all sorts of
different things can happen once you're in the ship.
- [Brett] Okay, so go forward here.
Go down that, go that way.
- [Woman] You want me to the right?
- No, go right straight.
- Okay, great.
(divers speaking over radio)
- So go, you want to go left.
- [Narrator] The ROV enters the area
where the officers lived.
- [Brett] We can go through there.
What have we got there?
- [Narrator] The officers wardroom,
on the starboard side of the vessel.
- We're going to move pretty slowly in here.
- Yes.
- We're trying to throw up too much...
- [Narrator] The wall cabinet, with soap dishes.
- [Brett] That's pretty cool.
- That's something, really, really something.
- The soap dish looks white, so it must be a porcelain.
In the past, we've seen cups,
things that are porcelain in nature
don't collect marine growth, they stay white.
- [Narrator] Everything, the way it was left
on the morning of December 7th.
- Cool.
And you can see in this particular cabin
the sink looks like it's on the floor
because of this high sediment load.
- So this is another way to allow the survivors
to remember what it was like,
to see what their shipmates endured,
and to strengthen that bond.
- It sure brings back a lot of memories.
- [Narrator] With the custom-built ROV still not ready,
Don will miss the exploration of the deeper decks.
- A bulb, there was...
- [Brett] Light bulb.
- [Narrator] But for him, just this first look
inside has brought his old home back to life.
- The phone was there on the desk,
and the light bulb was in the socket.
Just kind of eerie.
Who'd ever think that you'd see something like that
75 years later.
(fires burning)
- [Narrator] By the end of the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor, 21 U.S. ships have been sunk or damaged.
2,403 people are killed,
1,177 on the Arizona alone.
The fires on the ship rage for more than two days.
- We were in blackout conditions in those days.
Nobody could have any lights on their house or anything.
The only light you could see on the whole island
was the burning of the Arizona.
- [Narrator] After the fire subsides,
Seaman Sterling Cale is assigned to lead a group
of 10 sailors to recover bodies from the wreckage.
- I think about the first thing we saw on the Arizona
was a bunch of ashes blowing off of this ship.
And I just sort of sank down
on my perch and shed a few tears.
We saw a bunch of helmet liners lying across the ship.
No body around close to them.
Many of the men were in ashes,
behind the big guns on the ship.
A lot of the men had burned right down to the deck.
We also found a bunch in the aft fire control tower.
They'd got caught by the flames,
they'd been reduced to charcoal.
- [Narrator] After the recovery of more than 200 bodies,
the Navy is forced to stop the retrieval effort
because of increasingly dangerous conditions.
Salvage of the ship's superstructure
above the waterline continues for another year.
The decision is made to leave the Arizona where it lays,
creating a lasting memorial to the fallen
that remain entombed in the ship.
Now, 75 years later, the expedition team
has a chance to see inside the ship like never before.
It appears their new ROV
is finally operating as expected.
- It works, it's just a question of whether or not
it'll work flawlessly the first time going in the wreck.
(divers talking over radio)
- So basically what we'll do is
we'll drop the ROV down and we'll investigate
the second deck, and find access points
or stairwells or hatches that go down,
and drop the ROV down into the third deck.
Below the second deck, onto the third deck,
we get into an area that we don't really know what's there.
- [Narrator] The ROV enters the Arizona's
second deck at the stern of the ship.
- Go to the right, and down.
Nice.
Ah, that was awesome.
We're in.
- Ten feet, ten feet.
Give us ten feet of tether please, ten feet.
- [Narrator] This area, known as officer's country,
was not impacted by the blast.
- Can we go forward and left.
- [Narrator] Here, much of the
ship's structure has remained intact.
It's the world Ensign Weedan documented
with his home movies, just a few months before the attack.
The crew carefully maneuvers the ROV from the stern
of the ship towards the cabins on the left side.
- [Brett] Give me ten more feet.
- [Man] Can we get ten feet of tether, ten feet,
give us ten feet please.
- [Narrator] Entering the ship's ladies' room,
for the guests of the ranking officers.
- [Brett] That is amazing, wow.
Let's go to the left, pilot out and then make a hard turn.
Let's go through there.
- [Narrator] The admiral's cabin,
the splendor still visible.
- That is awesome.
- [Narrator] The ghostly outline of a table.
- [Brett] That's very cool.
- What do we have going here?
- We're just flying over that table
that we see from that open porthole,
with the light fixture, and we're moving
towards the aft of the ship,
towards this cabinet back here.
- [Narrator] In August of 1941,
Ensign Weedan writes to his sister.
- [Carl Voiceover] Things have been really great,
for we ate dinner with the Admiral,
and showed the girls the ship.
The girl I escorted is the cutest.
So Bernadine, everything is turning out swell now.
Don't you worry, for I am on
one of the safest ships afloat.
- [ROV Operator] I need another five feet of tether.
- Five more feet please, give us five feet.
- [Narrator] With fresh, oxygen-rich seawater
constantly flowing through, all but
the most durable traces of life onboard
have deteriorated on the second deck.
But deeper down in the ship, conditions might be different.
- Really the push is to get below the second deck,
because we think the third deck holds the key
to the environment of Arizona,
information about the microbiological environment,
about the dissolved oxygen.
We think the third deck really holds the keys
to a lot of those questions.
- [Narrator] Searching for a passage to the third deck,
the team steers the ROV forward,
closer to the blast area where the wreckage is torn open,
in hope to find a way down to the third deck.
- I'd like to see if we can get forward a little bit
and start to look at where the blast damage starts to occur.
- [Narrator] The blast zone is a startling reminder
of the power of the explosion.
With the decks collapsed, it is difficult
to maneuver the ROV here.
- So let's see, let's see if it goes down,
and we can penetrate down below decks.
- Yeah, looks like there is an opening.
Looks like we could go look down there
and see if it's going to open and not go too far.
- [Brett] Okay.
- If not, we'll back out.
- [Narrator] They can see the third deck,
but there is no safe passage to get there.
- If an ROV goes inside the Arizona
and gets hopelessly entangled,
then the ROV will stay there forever.
We'll never send divers in to go get it.
So there's that to consider in terms of
how far you explore, how far you push the edge
of what you need to access.
- There we go, alright, there we go, we're out.
That did it, alright, that's good.
- We are heading out, so as soon as you see us, go ahead
and extract us, but we're going to continue driving.
- [Narrator] After investigating the wreckage
for more than three hours, the team decides
to call it a day, and to pull the ROV back out.
Tomorrow, they will look for
a better access point down to the third deck.
It won't be easy.
- With your first few dives in the Arizona,
you're actually kind of struggling
to figure out where you are.
It's a tangled disarray of metal and iron and steel.
- [Narrator] Resting at the bottom of the harbor,
the wreckage is still a behemoth,
608 feet long and 97 feet wide.
When launched in June of 1915, she was
the U.S. Navy's biggest battleship,
a so-called super dreadnought, a class of its own.
Constructed over six decks, the Arizona
was a labyrinth of compartments,
crew quarters,
storage rooms,
boiler rooms,
powder magazines,
and dozens of fuel compartments.
With a displacement of over 35,000 tons,
she would be able to reach a top speed
of 20 knots, and have a range of 8,500 miles.
- I didn't really know what to expect, but
nobody can imagine how big a ship is out of water like that.
- [Narrator] With the war looming,
the battleship was overhauled in the winter of 1940.
- They put it in dry dock, and we went over the side
and scraped the side, and scraped the bottom,
and painted it, and that was just an experience, I tell you.
- [Narrator] With the new day comes another attempt
to explore deeper inside the sunken giant.
- I mean, it's the USS Arizona.
It deserves everything that we can do
to try to understand what's happening to what's there,
so that we can have it last for future generations.
- [Narrator] The divers have identified a hatch
on the second deck, which the team believes
will lead them down to the third deck.
- If we move left, we should run into the hatch.
- [Narrator] The hatch appears to be unobstructed.
- [Brett] So let's go ahead and take a look
and see what we see here.
- [Narrator] But steering the ROV down
to the lower deck is a challenge.
- It's dark, I mean, there's no light inside the ship,
it's complete black, so the only light that you have
is light that's on the ROV itself.
We're in, awesome.
- [Narrator] Here on the third deck,
the environment looks much different.
They begin their search for evidence
of the lives of those who once served here.
- If we're navigating down a hallway,
and there's a door, that becomes a judgment call.
Is it large enough for the ROV to fit through?
And if it fits through, do we think
we can turn around the ROV on the other side
of that door and fly it back out.
Oh, wow.
- [Narrator] A cabin nobody has seen for 75 years.
- Is that like a footlocker there?
- [Brett] I don't know, it looks like
some kind of square, doesn't it?
- [Narrator] Completely undisturbed,
everything still in its place.
A bed, as it was left on the morning of the attack.
They travel on, deeper into the ship,
entering another cabin.
- Kind of want to peer around,
like you want to peer around the side
of the monitor to get a better view.
(divers talking over radio)
It's angled, so it looks like we're at the hull.
So come back up.
- [ROV Operator] Yeah, there's no vertical.
- We have no vertical.
Whoa, what's that?
Hang on, stop spooling.
What is that?
It's a button of some type.
- It's a hat.
- No way.
- Absolutely, look, brim, you get a strap.
- You're right.
- [Narrator] It's like opening a time capsule.
- That has to tell us about the interior condition.
This must not have oxygen.
I mean, it must be really low in oxygen.
- [Narrator] Low oxygen concentration slows
the decomposition of organic matter.
(tense music)
- It's like, what is it?
It looks like it's cloth, metal, no.
No, it's--
- Wow, look at that.
- It's a jacket!
Oh, my word.
- [Narrator] A complete uniform.
- Look at that.
- It's got like a vest or pants or something in it.
- Unbelievable.
- [Brett] It's amazing.
Suspended, hanging there.
- Yeah, 75 year, just hanging there perfect.
I mean, it looks like it's pressed.
- [Narrator] It's an unexpected find.
A reminder of the men who lived and died here.
And of the world Ensign Weedan documented
with his camera in 1941.
While there is still much left to be explored,
the crew ends the day with a feeling of success.
- You're staring at somebody's suit.
It's been there for 75 years, and it's,
I mean, it's hanging on a hanger in an officer's cabin.
It's hard to be kind of objective about science
when you're staring face-to-face on a uniform
that's been there for 75 years on the USS Arizona.
It's pretty remarkable, actually, it's unbelievable.
- [Narrator] 1,511 crewmen served onboard
the USS Arizona on the morning of December 7th, 1941.
Only a few survived.
1,177 men died in the explosion and ensuing fires.
Ensign Weedan was one of them.
- It was a Sunday, and my mother was setting the table,
and the doorbell rang, and she went to answer the door,
and it was the neighbor.
And she just said, "Bernadine, turn on your radio.
"Hawaii's under attack."
And that's how they found out.
- [Narrator] He had big dreams.
- His goal was to have his own ship.
He had a mission, he knew what he wanted to do.
And his ultimate goal was to be Admiral of the Navy.
- [Narrator] Ensign Weedan's body was never found.
But now, at last, his family can see
the world the young officer lived in.
The devastating attack united a nation.
- [Newscaster] Explosions at Pearl Harbor
that has forged the will for complete
and absolute victory over the forces of evil.
- With confidence in our armed forces,
with the unbounding determination of our people,
we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.
- [Narrator] One day after the attack,
the United States declares war against Japan
and subsequently against the empire's European allies, too.
Today, Japan and the United States are allies.
Japan's Navy pays their respects to the departed
at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific on Oahu.
The war that cost the lives of over 400,000
U.S. Servicemen has faded into history.
- And the Arizona offers us
an opportunity to keep history alive.
We want people to understand that
this was a living, breathing ship.
This was manned by people who lost their lives in a blink.
- [Narrator] For Don Stratton,
the exploration has brought closure.
- I'm glad they've been able to do that.
I don't want the United States to forget about this
and that it could happen again.
But my shipmates that are still there,
they're really the heroes.
It's been a long time.
(contemplative music)