Faculty Member's Flight Over the U.S.S. Missouri
Connects him to Father's Experience 60 Years Ago

By Michael McKenzie, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion

Sept. 2 marks the 60^th anniversary of the signing of the Japanese surrender on board the U.S.S. Missouri, marking the official end of World War II. Thanks to an experience that happened to me almost a decade ago, the date and place will forever be engraved in my memory.

Oct. 9, 1996 in Seattle was a day blessed by the fickle gods of weather. The sky was cloudless, the sun warm and friendly, and a light morning wind had blown away any trace of smog. The horizon was dominated by Mount Rainier to the east, the Olympic Mountains to the west. It was a perfect day to take advantage of my wife’s birthday gift of an hour’s flying time in a Cessna 172. 

After my flight instructor and I took off from Boeing Field, we headed northwest, and later found ourselves over Hood Canal, a breathtaking example of an American fjord.  As we flew over the nuclear submarine pens at Bangor (something I would not recommend today), the instructor told me to turn east. 

I was absorbed by the pure beauty of the experience, and before I knew it, we arrived over the naval shipyards at Bremerton. Suddenly, I found myself staring dead ahead at a long row of huge, flat-gray ships standing like massed monoliths—their pennants and battle flags flying, people easily visible on their decks. 

But I was looking for one ship in particular, the “Mighty Mo.” Suddenly, there it was, directly below us, and even today I get chills just thinking about that ship there at anchor. With a huge “63” stenciled on its bow, the U.S.S. Missouri dwarfed its companions. Like many people, I knew what had happened on its decks so many years ago, but until this precise moment, I could make no claim to really understand it. 

My dad died in 1973, and like most WWII vets of that time, he didn’t talk much about where he was in the war, with only three exceptions: Ie Shima (where the famous war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed), Atsugi Air Base in Japan (during the American occupation of Japan), and flying over the U.S.S. Missouri at the conclusion of the surrender ceremonies. Both the Navy’s Third Fleet and the U.S. Army’s Fifth Air Force had been directed to fly in massed formations over the flotilla of ships in Tokyo Bay, to leave no doubt as to the supremacy of American air power.

There in that tiny plane, the power of history and space combined to hit me like the proverbial sledgehammer. In some profound way, I had recaptured what my dad did so long ago and was connected not only to him but to that moment. My aerial view was his, seeing those turrets, those guns, and that teak deck. The feeling was indescribable, almost as if I had traveled back in time, catching the briefest glimpse of something usually hidden. 

But of course, it was not the same. Not only had some of the Missouri’s weaponry been updated since 1945, there were more serious differences. The pilots who flew those planes on that particular September morning were different men, and had been part of a history about which I could only read: gut-wrenching dogfights, watching buddies die all too soon, diseases that would follow them for the rest of their lives. Their stories would be kept silent for years, some never to be told.  Nonetheless, I could not deny the power of the moment, and because of the place, I had connected to their stories and lives. 

The ancient Greeks had two words for place: topos and chora. Aristotle emphasized the former, and from this word we get “topography,” in which place is designated simply by GPS coordinates or lines on a map.  Plato, on the other hand, spoke of chora (from which we get choreography), suggesting that place can exert an almost mystical power, with humans participating in a kind of cosmic dance. 

I had encountered such a sacred space there above the Missouri, and its effects were palpable. My experience is, of course, not unique. People go on religious pilgrimages to visit various “Holy Lands,” and we speak with reverence and in hushed tones at such sites as Gettysburg, the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, and the beaches of Normandy. I suggest that this Sept. 2 would be good day for Americans to find their own sacred spaces, to reconnect with what makes America a great country, and to understand just a little of what such sacrifices mean. It’s the least we can do.