The USS Missouri

Statton Wilson

For a Christmas present my family and I went to Hawai’i. While there we visited Pearl Harbor and the USS Missouri battleship. We learned a few interesting facts about it during a tour where we were able to walk its decks and go to different places on the ship. The enormous battleship weighed 59,000 tons fully loaded and 40,000 tons unloaded. Mighty Mo, as it is sometimes called, is 887 feet long and 108 feet wide. There are nine guns, all 16 inch, 50 caliber guns, that can all fire two times per minute. They have a range of 23 miles and it takes 90 seconds to reach its farthest target. Each of the guns fire a projectile faster than the speed of sound. The USS Missouri also features the surrender deck which is the only time the Japanese have surrendered. Japan surrendered after we dropped two Atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On the day of the surrender the Japanese Generals were 4 minutes late but General Douglas Macarthur would not start until they were there.

A tour guide told us a story about a kamikaze pilot, or suicide bomber. He was flying in low, aiming to hit the ship, and the gunners were firing the anti-aircraft guns and one of the shells hit, he was still able to fly but not very well. The pilot managed to get a dent and the plane broke into pieces, the plane was on fire when it hit and the fire spread onto the deck of the missouri it was so big neighboring ships radioed in that the USS Missouri was sinking. The ship did not sink and the fire was put out. As the sailors were pushing the remains of the plane off the deck of the ship they found the body of the Japanese kamikaze pilot. They decided to ask General MacArthur what to do with it and he said the Japanese soldier needed a proper military burial. One problem occurred, in order to have a proper burial at sea you need the flag of the country that the soldier was serving The United States was at war with Japan so it wouldn’t make sense to have their flag That night three Navy sailors stayed up stitching a Japanese flag and that morning the burial at sea took place.

This Iowa class battleship has a very long history. It was ordered to be built in 1940 and was finished in 1944. After that, the Missouri was commissioned on June 11, 1940. It served in World War II and then was decommissioned. Fast forward to 1984, the Missouri was modernized for two years. Then in 1986 the ship was recommissioned and from 1987 to 1991 the battleship served in the Gulf War. Next, in 1992, it was decommissioned for the second and final time. In 1995, it was then removed from the Navy’s ship registry. Then, in 1999 it was opened to the public as a National Memorial.

I loved exploring the big battleship Mighty Mo. When we first got to Pearl Harbor an aircraft carrier was coming in to port and all of the sailors were on deck. On the top of the ship I loved seeing the massive guns. It was so cool to see the documents that the Japanese signed to surrender and declare peace with the U.S. The steering room is surrounded with 17 inches thick of cast iron. PICTURE.It was a very hot day, so when we got to the bottom deck that was air conditioned it felt so nice. The machine shop is on the second deck where metal parts were made to fix the ship out at sea. All of the sailors bunks are down there and the bunks are so tiny I think I would be very claustrophobic. It was so cool to see a U.S. battleship, and learning about the kamikaze pilot and seeing the surrender documents.