War Graves and Background Noise.

War is a messy business.

Historically, our nation tended to bury her fallen heroes fairly close to where they fell.
We reserved or were given a small piece of the soil that we liberated - or conquered for that purpose.
Modernity and cultural changes now direct that our war dead are brought home in a flag-draped aluminum box when it is possible to do so.
In the US, Memorial Day, originally called 'Decoration Day," came about as a national celebration of a tradition of maintaining war graves.
In late spring families would gather, sometimes picnic, and spend the day beating back nature, often as not picking some spring flowers to 'decorate' the grave markers.
Sometimes?
There IS no grave to decorate or if there is one it serves only as a place-holder for remains that have yet to be returned. In modern warfare air crew and ship drivers sometimes get a much more expedited return to the basic elements from which we all come, and no remains, remain.

During the 20th century, sailors sometimes died on huge battlefields consisting of water and steel.
Those ships surviving a battle would clean things up a bit, and toss their fallen heroes overboard, sometimes with a few nice words and a weighted canvass bag covered by a flag.
Sometimes not.
Other ships were less fortunate, and became what we sometimes legally refer to as 'war graves.'

SO.....
We're a little selective as to which ships are worthy of being designated as a 'war grave.'
More than one German Unterseeboot has been used by sport divers for souvenir collecting.
Were we to uncover a shipwreck from the Revolutionary War, or even our own US "civil-war' it would probably NOT be left in-situ.
Other ships ARE allowed to remain peacefully asleep, protected by sentimentality, and international law.

OR ARE THEY???

War is a messy business, and the last really big war - called a 'World War' was ended, in part, by dropping two nuclear bombs on one of the belligerent nations.
The necessity of that action has been discussed and debated every since, but one of the most poignant justifications for ending WWII the way that we did lies in a cursory examination of the Battle of Okinawa.

Okinawa is Japan's 'Mississippi.'
Many Okinawans see themselves as Japanese and Okinawan, and more than a few question their underprivileged position in relation to mainland Japan.
Still, Mississippi IS sovereign by-gawd US soil, and I suspect that foreign invaders would be somewhat unwelcome, and since Japan is accurately described as "just like all the other countries, only MORE so" they fought for Okinawa with all of the intensity and ferocity with which they are justifiably credited.
AND THEN SOME!!
It was a horrible battle.
Some say that up to a quarter million souls were lost in 80-something days - most of them Japanese and most of THOSE Okinawans.
One of the things that surprises many Americans is that, like Guadalcanal, we lost three times as many SAILORS as we did soldiers and Marines in Okinawa- mostly due to ineptitude in the case of the former but very MUCH due to Kamikazes in the case of the latter.
I read an article from CNN about one little-bitty, picket destroyer (USS Mannert L. Abele DD-733) that was the first US ship sunk by, LITERALLY, a virtually unstoppable rocket propelled Kamikaze, or human guided missile.

Opinion: On Memorial Day, the discovery of a WWII destroyer downed by a kamikaze helps honor the fallen | CNN

Buried deep inside this article was a mention of ships like this being lost to "underwater development"

-huh?

So I bit....and learned something completely new to me.
Remember....we stopped WWII with nukes.
Nuclear weapons are war's 'messiest weapon.'
Nuclear releases cause radiation, and atmospheric detonations cause this radiation to be widely distributed, and very long lasting.

How Much?
How Widely?
How long?

Enough that a certain nation that I will NOT name spends a lot of time, effort, and money committing...."The World's Biggest Grave Robbery!"
They do this partially because of their base transactionalism, but also in part due to yet another reverberating background noise from that long-ago time.

The world's biggest grave robbery: Asia’s disappearing WWII shipwrecks | World news | The Guardian


HAPPY Memorial Day!

 

Rumors abounded that Argentine Ballester-Molina (.45 ACP) pistols were made form the salvaged armor plate of the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee.
HOWEVER (comma!)
This vessel hardly counts as a 'war grave' since she was scuttled, against orders, just off-shore with no KIAs unless you count the Captain who IIRC put on his dress uniform, wrapped himself in an old Imperial German Flag (an insult to the Nazis) and took his own life in his hotel room.

 

Not all day.
Not unless you have a submarine or submersible wrapped around you.

I'm thinking that sharks usually eat their dinner closer to the surface......