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INTERRED ON THE ARIZONA
Arizona survivor joins
By Gregg K. Kakesako
his shipmates undersea
Star-Bulletin
Francis Falge
He joins comrades entombed in
the Arizona's watery grave
On the afternoon of Dec. 4, 1941, Navy Lt. Francis Marion Falge stood watch on the bridge of the battleship USS Arizona as it maneuvered in Hawaiian waters just a few miles off of Pearl Harbor. A few decks below, an ensign in charge of a 5-inch gun battery reported sighting an enemy submarine and requested permission to fire. His request was denied.
Three days later, 1,104 officers and sailors and 73 Marines of the Arizona were killed after the battleship was hit by at least two bombs during the Japanese surprise attack on the Navy's Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor.
Yesterday, Falge's cremated remains joined the 14 other Arizona survivors who chose after the end of World War II to be buried with their shipmates. National Park Service divers, acting as an honor guard, placed the 8-inch urn containing Falge's ashes in Gun Turret 4, located underwater near the stern of the sunken battleship.
Falge's name also was added to a special bench that lies beneath the marble panel in the memorial's shrine room which lists the 1,777 officers, sailors and Marines who were killed on the Arizona on Dec. 7, 1941.
Seventeen family members and friends along with members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association attended the burial ceremony aboard the 184-foot alabaster memorial, which now spans the midportion of the sunken battleship.
Falge, the oldest member of the USS Arizona Reunion Association, was 96 when he died Jan. 21 in Carmel, Calif.
Piped aboard for last time
Earlier in the ceremony, Petty Officer Jay R. Walter piped Falge aboard the Arizona for the last time from the launch provided by Rear Adm. John Townes III, commander of Navy Region Hawaii. Three rifle-fire volleys from seven sailors of Pearl Harbor's ceremonial guard broke the afternoon silence ending the ceremony.Roger Falge then gave the metal urn to two male and one female diver who swam to the stern of the 608-foot battleship as taps resounded.
Some 945 sailors remain entombed in the Arizona, and were never taken off of the battleship following the Dec. 7, 1941, attack.
The Arizona sunk in less than nine minutes while still tied up at Ford Island after a 1,760-pound armor-piercing bomb ignited the ship's forward ammunition magazine at 8:10 a.m.Ten Navy warships were sunk during the bombing raid. Eleven others were heavily damaged. Two warships -- the Arizona and the Utah -- were never salvaged. During the attack, 2,388 men, women and children were killed.
Of the 334 sailors from the Arizona who survived the attack only 50 are believed to be still living today.
On Dec. 7, 1941, Falge was on shore leave attending Catholic Mass in Kailua, where he had moved his family after being recalled to active duty nine months earlier.
"I heard a lot of explosions," recalls his son Roger, "but we didn't think much of them since there had been a lot of explosions at Bellows earlier in the week where a lot of work was being done."
Roger Falge, who at 12 was the eldest of Falge's three sons, recalled seeing "a lot of strange planes in the sky" as the family drove back to their home in Lanikai.
"When we got back, the phone was ringing. My father answered it and said that they were war games going on and that we were going to Pearl Harbor. ... As we drove toward the Pali, we came across sailors who stopped us and told my dad: 'It's the real McCoy. Take us to Pearl Harbor and get rid of your family.'
"My father drove us to a gas station where a Japanese man drove us back to Lanikai."
Roger Falge said he did not see his father until three days later.
"He later told me that as he arrived at Pearl Harbor, the second wave of Japanese attackers were coming in and there was destruction all over."
'Great love for the Navy'
As damage control officer, Roger Falge said his father was involved in rescue work after the Japanese attack and supervised the blackout at Pearl Harbor. By March 1942, Falge was assigned to the battleship USS Massachusetts and participated in the North Africa campaign.He later served on the USS West Virginia, Maryland and Colorado and participated in Pacific campaigns in the Marianas, Carolinas, Leyte Gulf, Mindoro, Surigao Straits and Iwo Jima, leaving active duty as commander before he joined the Naval Reserves. He retired as a captain in 1951.
But it was not until 1991 and the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack that Francis Falge began considering being entombed in the Arizona.
"He always had a great love for the Navy," said Roger Falge, referring to his father, who graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1924.
"He was very moved -- as was I -- at the 50th-anniversary observance, his last visit to Hawaii. That's when he became aware that his shipmates who had survived the attack had been buried there."
About a year ago, Roger Falge said, his father decided to join his shipmates.
"This is very scared ground," Roger Falge commented after the 25-minute ceremony.
"It ties everything together. ... Now it's going to be here for his great-grandson," referring to 18-month-old Noah, who studied his great-grandfather's name in the marble bench.
Then three generations of Falges -- Roger, his son Ben and Noah -- walked to the well of the memorial's shrine and dropped a red anthurium into the ocean.
"It's going to be here for his great-great-grandchildren."
Only those who served aboard the USS Arizona during the attack on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, are eligible for interment in the hull of the ship, according to the National Park Service. Terms of interment eligibility
for USS Arizona MemorialThis includes those who were away on leave, school and temporary assignment.
Since 1982, 15 officers and sailors have been interred in Gun Turret 4 near the stern of the Arizona.
Before today, the last ceremony was in 1999. The USS Arizona Memorial is the only National Park Service memorial to offer such services.
Officers and sailors who served in the battleship between the time of commissioning in 1916 and the time of the sinking, but not actually assigned to the ship in 1941, are eligible to have their ashes in the waters over the ship.
Requests must be made in writing to Superintendent; USS Arizona Memorial; 1 Arizona Memorial Place; Honolulu, HI 96818-3145.
Gregg K. Kakesako, Star-Bulletin
