In Hawaii related news, Arthur Herriford, 87, is the national president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. After learning part of a silver-plated serving set salvaged from the USS Arizona shortly after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor will be auctioned, said “It’s sacred material. Anybody who would pull that kind of stuff, I got no use for.” Many who have felt the overwhelming emotion of the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor probably share Herriford’s feelings. Sadly, 24 pieces from the set are due to be auctioned Dec. 9. Some saucers, one candlestick, and a teapot from the officer’s mess will be sold. It is estimated that they may bring up to $20,000. Christie Wilson, staff writer for the Honolulu Advertiser newsppaer in Hawaii wrote in her piece, Pearl Harbor: Artifacts retrieved from USS Arizona up for Bid, which appeared November 10, 2009, that “Herriford was a 19-year-old fire control man third class aboard the light cruiser USS Detroit when he saw the USS Arizona blown apart by a 1,760-pound armor-piercing bomb dropped by a Japanese warplane.” Herriford said that he was looking at the ship when it took the attack. He said he saw “a flash and a column of flames and smoke shooting up above it.”
The catalog for the auctioneers, Cowan’s Auctions, indicates that the silver relics are came into the possession of a Navy diver, Carl Webster Keenum. While salvaging ammunition, weapons, and items belonging to the dead crewman of the Arizona, Keenum, who died in 1964, came into possession of the items between 1942 and 1943. More detail at Hawaii News blog.
1,177 crewmen who died in the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese that day, and were aboard the Arizona, remain in the ship. For most, this makes the ship sacred ground.
The Honolulu Advertiser’s writer, Christie Wilson, writes that the superintendent of the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, Paul DePrey, who oversees the USS Arizona Memorial, said although the National Park Service would like to have the items to be auctioned, they will not be bidding on it.
Paul DePrey said that when the park service finds that there exist “artifacts of interest,” that the owners are usually made aware that they can donate the items to a repository for objects from the attack at Pearl Harbor, and encourages them to do so.
The silver-plated items look like some other pieces already in the monument’s collection, and may well be from the same set, Paul DePrey said.
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