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Pearl Harbor
relic pulled
from auction

A purported piece of the
USS Arizona's smokestack
had been offered on eBay

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By Treena Shapiro
Star-Bulletin

What was billed as a piece of the USS Arizona was put up for sale on eBay.com until the online auction provoked protests from the National Park Service and the U.S. Navy.

A piece of the ship is sacred, said National Park Service historian Daniel Martinez. "It can never be sold or traded. It's not that kind of item."

When the auction closed yesterday, bidding reached $1,000. But after the seller was contacted by the park service and the U.S. Navy, he said he decided not to go through with the sale.

Howard Schellenberg of San Antonio told the Star-Bulletin by email: "I don't believe the piece will actually sell. I anticipate an offer to house the piece in a museum at no cost to the facility, which seems like it may be a better option for all concerned."

Navy spokeswoman Lt. Commander Jane Campbell said it is illegal to sell pieces of the ship, which is government property.

Campbell said she had been surfing eBay last week when she discovered the auction. "I was pretty much repulsed by the comments," she said.

According to the Internet auction description, the piece is a fragment of the smokestack -- one of twelve the U.S. Park Service awarded in 1994 to six Boy Scouts who helped clean up around the Pearl Harbor storage yard.

The Arizona Memorial belongs to the Navy but is managed by the National Park Service.

Martinez disputed the authenticity of the piece, saying the park service would not have conducted a cleanup on Navy property, nor would any pieces of the ship be dispensed to private individuals.

"The idea of dispensing two to each individual is to me absurd," he said.

Martinez also noted that the fragment could not be a piece of the smokestack, which was blown apart when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. All wreckage is from the ship's deck and galley, he said.

The Navy's USS Arizona relics program distributes pieces of the ship to qualified veterans groups and educational and historical organizations which display the relic to the public. Applications "are reviewed for museums, for research, but not for individual purchase, much less selling," Campbell said.

Campbell said she contacted both the seller and the single bidder by email and advised them that selling a piece of the final resting place of 1,177 crewmen "is inappropriate, misguided and possibly illegal under United States code and the Historic Preservation Act."

At this point the Navy cannot confirm whether the ship piece is authentic and has nothing to indicate the ship piece was not obtained as the seller described, Campbell said.

Chris Donlay, spokesman for eBay, said buyers and sellers on eBay are subject to the same laws regarding sales offline, and the company will investigate by contacting the seller with questions about this auction.

Further action will depend on what the Navy wants to do. "EBay is not an enforcement agency," he said. "That's why we work closely with those agencies who are."

The auction was allowed to close because there was no evidence that the auction was fraudulent or illegal, Donlay said. "We cannot just take listings down without proof that something is against policy or against the law."