Rainbows through
war and peace

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I don't know how the National Park Service manages to pull it off, but every year, during commemoration ceremonies on the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, it sprinkles for a few minutes and then a magnificent rainbow appears, arching over the USS Arizona Memorial like a stairway to heaven.

Makes you think.

Rainbows are just refractions of light, photons passing through droplets and haze, the spectrum of white light broken down into various colored wavelengths. It's an optical delusion, just between your eyes, the water and the sun. But rainbows are so spectacular that they are revered in every culture. It's impossible to view them in ways other than mystical.

On the morning of the Pearl Harbor attack, the air was filled with dust and smoke. Gigantic geysers threw water hundreds of feet into the air. Bomb bursts, bullets and shrapnel raking the harbor filled the air with clouds of shimmering droplets and mist.

Which means that, even in the midst of horror and carnage, everywhere you looked -- there were rainbows dancing in the sky.

--Burl Burlingame

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