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Show juice and doughnuts. Dedicated to all submariners who lost their lives on duty, Subase Chapel sits on a quiet corner of the Pearl Harbor Naval Base. Each of the stained glass windows contains tiny submarines among the brightly colored pieces. You have to hunt for the black subs, though; they lurk, as in real life, at the edges. In the back of the church, hanging in the stairwell leading up to the balcony, is a giant picture of a yellowed Jesus hovering over a submarine, rays of light almost lifting the boat to heaven. The picture is entitled "Our Lord of the Deep," and I was always scared of it. Jesus never looked happy and the oranges and golds made me worry for the safety of the boat. Each Sunday we would pray for those under the sea. And each Sunday I would envision Mr. Kaup when I sang the words, "O hear us when we cry to thee/For those in peril on the sea!" At these moments, encouraged by the exclamation point and the welling of the music, I pictured the Tunny imploding from pressure, crashing against a reef, sinking into blackness, or taking enemy fire. I had seen the movies. I had watched the soldiers and sailors on base as they practiced for war, running in platoons with guns at the ready, saluting my father on the sidewalk or saluting the sticker on the windshield of our car, a sticker indicating the possibility that my father might be inside when more often it was my mother hauling us to soccer practice. Subase Chapel sat twenty yards away from a giant tower that dominated Pearl Harbor. You could see it from almost anywhere on base. Red and white-stripped like an enormous peppermint stick, the tower was a training site for submariners. As their final stage in earning their dolphins, men had to enter at the bottom of the tower, pass through a chamber, and then swim the hundreds offset to the top. It was an exercise meant to 174 |
