Pearl Harbor - Into the Arizona

NARRATOR: It's an expedition like no other before.

MAN: That's our entry point, we're gonna drop down in there.

Dave will feed the ROV.

MAN: Com check, Scott.

NARRATOR: They are among the world's foremost underwater explorers.

MAN: We gonna feed tether.

WOMAN: Copy that, we are feeding tether.

NARRATOR: It's an exploration of America's most sacred war memorial.

The wreckage of the battleship USS Arizona.

MAN: We want people to understand that this was a living, breathing ship.

MAN: That's the door.

MAN: The ship is a war grave.

1,177 men died.

[airplane roaring] [explosions] MAN: It was devastating.

It was unbelievable.

NARRATOR: The attack on Pearl Harbor, an assault no one saw coming.

MAN: We thought we were invincible.

MAN: They were coming right over us.

MAN: And then we caught the big bomb.

NARRATOR: A blow that would sink the Arizona and change the course of history.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy... NARRATOR: Now, 75 years later... MAN: That is awesome.

NARRATOR: These explorers are setting out to bring the Arizona back to life.

MAN: Wow, look at that.

MAN: Unbelievable.

NARRATOR: And for one survivor, it's like a homecoming.

MAN: Kind of interesting to see what Father Time and the sea has done with our old home.

ANNOUNCER: This NARRATOR: Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii, the site of the sunken battleship USS Arizona.

A mere shadow of her former self.

[breathing regulator bubbling] BRETT SEYMOUR: Here we are on the gun, the number one guns.

[regulator hissing] These three gun barrels extend out into the gloom of Pearl Harbor some 57 feet.

NARRATOR: These encrusted weapons were once capable of heaving a 1,500-pound projectile miles into the air.

SEYMOUR: The physical remains of the ship are still here.

And along with those remains are artifacts on the decks all around us.

NARRATOR: Marine growth mixed with the Arizona's corrosion covers the ship like a blanket.

SEYMOUR: Here we have this water pitcher that's been here since the attack on December 7th.

NARRATOR: A fork... a bowl... a shoe... traces of life on board before the attack.

SEYMOUR: They stay on the decks, and they're preserved as a touchstone to the history and the events that happened here on December 7th.

NARRATOR: 75 years after the attack, the National Park Service is about to board the Arizona once more.

MAN: Alright, Brett's good.

SEYMOUR: The interior investigation of Arizona really stems out of the Park Service's need to manage the site to figure out how long it's going to last.

And the only way we can do that is through technology and figuring out if we can access some points deep in the ship.

NARRATOR: Researchers and divers prepare for a high-stakes expedition.

SCOTT PAWLOWSKI: The ship is a war grave.

1,177 men died.

And many of them died right at the location that you're diving at and that you're looking at.

Knowing that and seeing it up close underwater is really a moving experience.

We get goose bumps, all of our divers do.

NARRATOR: Little is known about the condition of the Arizona's interior.

The ship is now a naval cemetery, and no diver is allowed inside.

PAWLOWSKI: Now we've got this opportunity to do it with scientific instrumentation in a very controlled manner that allows us to inspect what's there, what's going on, what's changed.

NARRATOR: To gauge the current state of the Arizona, the team scans the wreckage using a radio-controlled sonar device.

OPERATOR: That's good.

Stay on that azimuth right there.

NARRATOR: The data will be used to create a 3D computer model of the ship's exterior.

At the heart of the interior exploration will be a custom-built ROV the team has named 11th Hour, capable of exploring areas of the ship nobody has seen since the day of the attack.

SEYMOUR: We can swim around the ship all we want, but until we really have an understanding of what's going on inside, we really don't know how long the ship is going to last.

MAN: ...two, three.

NARRATOR: To build and operate this ROV, the National Park Service has teamed up with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

MAN: Oh, look at that.

EVAN KOVACS: We get to go to places where we're frequently the first people to ever see something.

And I want to, I want to share that.

NARRATOR: They are among the world's foremost underwater explorers and key in bringing the Arizona back to life.

SEYMOUR: So now, for the first time we have the ability to remove the water away from the ship and just look at the ship.

People have the ability to see what the ship looks like and what's still left in the harbor 75 years later.

NARRATOR: She was called the pride of the fleet, the flagship of the navy's first battleship division.

Home to more than 1,500 men.

One of them, Ensign Carl "Bud" Weeden, reporting for duty in the summer of 1940.

For 75 years his family has kept his memory alive and held on to the treasure trove Ensign Weeden left behind.

KATHLEEN WOOD: This is my uncle's 8-millimeter movie film from the '40s.

And these are the letters that he wrote home.

Then we also, we also have a few photos.

Here he is real casual on a sailboat.

He really enjoyed his life.

Then he got into Annapolis and spent about four years there and graduated in 1940.

He was very proud.

[gun fires] NARRATOR: Also signing up for service on board the vessel that year, Seaman Don Stratton.

DON STRATTON: For an old country boy like me, you see the Arizona sitting there tied up to the dock, it's immense.

How can 35,000 ton of steel float, you know?

NARRATOR: Stratton's battle station-- the sky control platform one deck above the bridge.

NARRATOR: 75 years later, Don Stratton returns to his ship to be a part of the exploration.

CAPTAIN: At this moment, I would like to let everybody know to be aware of the fact that we do have Mr. Donald Stratton with us.

He is an Arizona memorial survivor.

[applause] STRATTON: Kind of interesting to see what Father Time and the sea has done with our old home.

Gonna be like a homecoming, I guess, maybe, after all these years.

[applause] Thank you very much.

SEYMOUR: You know, to have Don back here and be able to participate in our project, in our research, it really means a lot having him be able to experience the ship again like he's never experienced it since he was there, you know, 75 years ago.

NARRATOR: As one of the few Arizona sailors still alive, to this day he wonders why he was spared.

STRATTON: Some of the personnel did survive, and I was one of them.

You think about it every day, how many people didn't make it that day.

Why the good Lord saved us, well, who knows?

[distant ship horn blows] NARRATOR: After weeks of preparation, the team is ready to field test their custom-built ROV.

SEYMOUR: There's a certain amount of anxiety that we have this narrow timeline that we need to hit in time for the anniversary, plus we have Don Stratton coming, so there's a fair amount of pressure to make sure that the ROV works.

That's our entry point, we're gonna drop down in there.

Dave will feed the ROV.

We'll stay in the second deck and make sure everything works, that you guys have control, cameras, all that.

KOVACS: Cool.

PAWLOWSKI: They created this really cool solution, which is essentially a big spool that pays out the cable as you go in, and then picks the cable back up as you go out, and the advantage there is you're not always pulling on the cable to get it further into the vessel.

MAN: Oh, I'm sorry, dude.

NARRATOR: The new self-spooling tether is designed to prevent the ROV from getting snagged inside the ship-- a problem that has plagued previous Arizona expeditions.

SEYMOUR: You'll handle the ROV.

MAN: Okay.

SEYMOUR: I'm gonna do some in-water filming.

NARRATOR: The team hopes the new tether system will allow them to look deeper inside the ship than ever before.

SEYMOUR: We're gonna go slow, first dive, first day.

We're gonna go in an area we know where we can get it out, should we have any problems.

It's pretty accessible.

So we're gonna take it slow, we're gonna head in there and see what we get.

So, yeah, I'm psyched.

We're ready to go.

PAWLOWSKI: The mission does rest on the ability of the ROV and the tether system to work.

When we go in there, we need to be effective, and we need to be successful, because we may not get another chance for another 15 years.

[radio chatter] MAN: We are gonna feed tether.

NARRATOR: The self-spooling tether works flawlessly.

[whirring] [sporadic whirring] But there are problems with the thrusters, and issues with the electronics cause the video feed to go down.

[radio chatter] MAN: One set of motors went down.

MAN: Copy.

KOVACS: Let the vehicle sit for 10 minutes.

We're opening up the controller now.

Let's just get that right there.

NARRATOR: The source of the problems are proving elusive.

The team is forced to cut the test short for the day.

NARRATOR: Despite the technical glitches, the team hopes they can still keep to their schedule.

KOVACS: We all want this to succeed, and, you know, for numerous reasons, for the guys that lost their lives here, for the guys that survived this, you know, the USS Arizona is ground zero for the American involvement in World War II.

NARRATOR: It was a war America didn't want any part of.

In 1941, the world is consumed by aggression.

Adolf Hitler's armies had already marched across Europe.

In the Pacific, Japan is fighting a brutal war in China and trying to expand its own empire further south.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: The Japanese believe in making an invasion pay for itself.

NARRATOR: Pearl Harbor survivors recall what life was like at this time.

JACK HAMMETT: We saw the newsreels about that, but you know, that didn't mean much to us, that's 4,000 miles away.

NARRATOR: With the world on fire, serving on the remote islands of Hawaii seemed a good choice.

[horn honking] STERLING CALE: They said, "Well, Cale, you have your choice of worldwide assignment."

I said, "Hell, send me to Pearl Harbor."

HAMMETT: It was idyllic.

There was always a lot of music and a lot of dancing and things like that.

STRATTON: It was just beautiful.

NARRATOR: Ensign Weeden also enjoys life on the island.

He writes his sister... ACTOR AS CARL WEEDEN: "I've been taking a few movies.

I've been doing the usual things in port this time-- going swimming, sunbathing, and sightseeing around the island."

HAMMETT: We enjoyed it very much till the rude awakening, of course.

NARRATOR: The US Navy prepares itself for a possible war with Japan.

Ensign Weeden writes home... WEEDEN: "We were out for nine days.

The quicker we realize that we are no longer a peacetime navy, the better we will be, better off for everything.

All we do from now on is train, train and more training."

NARRATOR: Standing in the way of Japan's ambitions in the Pacific-- America's naval fleet in Pearl Harbor, ready to disrupt any invasion.

[speaking Japanese] HARUO YOSHINO [TRANSLATED]: We started torpedo training in shallow water in September.

It was quite hard.

All we were told was that there would be targets in shallow water.

NARRATOR: Secretly the Japanese empire gathers the Pearl Harbor attack fleet.

YOSHINO: The fleet was heading for Hawaii for an attack, we were told.

But there were still peace negotiations with America, and if the negotiations worked out, then the attack would be cancelled.

So we could turn around at any time.

But if the negotiations didn't work out, we would declare war.

NARRATOR: December 7th.

In Oahu, the crew of the USS Arizona is waking from their slumber.

STRATTON: Well, we got up around 5:30.

On a Sunday morning we just cleaned sweep-down.

We didn't holystone or we didn't scrub down or we didn't do any painting.

NARRATOR: 230 miles north of Oahu, the Japanese carriers are in position to launch their attack.

But weather conditions are not good.

YOSHINO: The sea was extremely agitated.

The Northern Pacific is often called the devilish Pacific, but it was actually a three-headed devil Pacific.

There were waves big as mountains.

[alarm sounds] NARRATOR: On board the carriers, 342 airplanes-- Zero fighters, high-altitude bombers, and torpedo planes are being readied.

It is 6: 20 AM when the first wave of the strike force takes off.

YOSHINO: There didn't seem to be a reason to be worried, because it looked like we would make a surprise attack.

NARRATOR: At Pearl Harbor, it's time for morning colors.

Across from Battleship Row at Hickam Airfield, Seaman Rodrigues has just ended his watch.

ALFRED RODRIGUES: At 7:45, I got relieved from my watch and went and had breakfast.

I had just sat my tray down when we heard a lot of rumblings, and we thought nothing of it.

[airplanes roaring] Well, I never had breakfast that morning.

[airplanes roaring] [explosions] NARRATOR: The first casualties on this morning-- 35 servicemen who are having breakfast in the Hickam Airfield dining hall.

[air raid siren] On board the Arizona, Don Stratton steps onto the main the deck, when suddenly he hears his fellow sailors shouting.

NARRATOR: The Japanese first attack the airbases with dive bombers and then set their sights on the primary target-- the battleships anchored around Ford Island.

[speaking Japanese] YOSHINO: We went down quickly.

Then, when we were only 10 meters up, we could aim for the target.

NARRATOR: Battleship Row proves an easy target for Japan's pilots.

[artillery fire, air raid siren] [air raid siren] NARRATOR: Back at the site where he fought for his life, Don is curious to see what's left of his ship.

The team presents Don with the new sonar scans of the wreckage.

They reveal a complete image of the sunken vessel in incredible detail.

MAN: And then we can rotate it in 3D to kind of give anyone who sees it that context.

STRATTON: Yeah.

MAN: So, from the sonar data, we have tools that can create a solid model... like this.

MAN: It's a really emotional place down there, too.

SEYMOUR: Don, is this the area that you were, the number six?

STRATTON: Yes.

I was in one deck above the bridge in the port anti-aircraft director.

NARRATOR: Don can hardly believe what he sees.

MAN: When we saw this data for the first time, it sort of put the entire ship in context, right?

Because when you're in the water, you can only see a little part at a time.

But now we sort of have this overall look.

STRATTON: This is kind of really super.

MAN: So you can see all those open hatches.

STRATTON: That's super, super, super, yeah.

MAN: Yeah?

NARRATOR: The damage sustained in the attack is not what Don has thought it to be for the past 75 years.

STRATTON: It's very surprising that the starboard side isn't more blown away like this side, because that's where the explosion was.

[air raid siren, explosions] NARRATOR: Just minutes into the attack, Battleship Row is engulfed in fire and smoke.

High-altitude bombers attack the Arizona.

STRATTON: A bomb bounced off our number three turret into the water, went through, went right through the fantail into the water.

[explosions] And then we caught the big bomb.

[air raid siren, explosions] NARRATOR: 10,000 feet above the harbor, a Japanese B5N2 bomber has Stratton's ship in the crosshairs.

At 8: 10 AM, the Japanese commander releases the deadly freight-- a 2,000-pound bomb.

[boom] STRATTON: The fireball probably went about 1,000 feet in the air.

[boom] NARRATOR: Close to a million pounds of gunpowder detonates, tearing the ship apart.

STRATTON: It was just so devastating, it took so... so many men.

MAN: Over 1,000, right?

STRATTON: 1,177.

MAN: Yes.

NARRATOR: The sonar image of the wreckage reveals the extent of the destruction.

MAN: Here's a great look at that steel and how it just flowered out.

STRATTON: Just like paper.

People don't realize how it just tore that metal out.

It was a bad day.

A terrible day.

MAN: A terrible day.

NARRATOR: What's left of the Arizona is doused in flames.

STRATTON: All of us got pretty well fried up there.

I lost part of my ear, and my hair was gone, and the skin on my arms just was hanging down like a sock, and I just pulled it off and threw it down, because it was in the way.

NARRATOR: The blazing fire reaches Stratton high up in the gun director, burning 70% of his body.

He is one of the few survivors topside.

STRATTON: Another fire controlman, he and I were the only two survivors from that platform.

One of the gentlemen on the opposite side of my director where I was at, something hit his head and busted him open.

Below deck people were fighting the water and the fires.

The water just come in, and you couldn't stop it, and it just sunk.

The ship just sank.

NARRATOR: For the past 75 years, Don Stratton has been eager to see inside his ship again.

KOVACS: You know, with somebody like Don who has done, you know, so much and given so much, you know, to be able to give anything back to him is an honor and something that, that we hope to be able to achieve.

NARRATOR: But the custom-built ROV still isn't ready for operation.

Thankfully the team has a backup plan-- two smaller ROVs will provide Don with the opportunity to have a peek inside the ship.

KOVACS: If we can give him the gift of being able to see in his old ship one last time, in real time, that's, that's meaningful for everybody.

NARRATOR: After weeks of work, the expedition team sets its sights on exploring the second deck of the Arizona.

SEYMOUR: Working inside the Arizona is obviously a very sensitive issue with the loss of life there, and people always ask about human remains and the people that lost their lives in the Arizona.

NARRATOR: Due to the sediment accumulation over 75 years, the National Park Service doesn't believe they'll observe any human remains inside the ship.

SEYMOUR: We want to pan and fly left.

PILOT: So keep left, then?

SEYMOUR: Yeah, keep going left.

The wall right in front of us, we want to follow that.

NARRATOR: As these ROVs drag their tethers behind, their reach is limited.

PAWLOWSKI: You can't travel all that far into the vessel, because you need to be able to turn around and come back out, it might get snagged as you go around a corner, you know, all sorts of different things can happen once you're in the ship.

SEYMOUR: Okay, so go forward here.

Go down that, go that way.

PILOT: Oh, you want me to the right?

SEYMOUR: Go, no, go right, straight.

PILOT: Okay, great.

[radio chatter] SEYMOUR: Yeah, so, go, you want to go left.

NARRATOR: The ROV enters the area where the officers lived.

SEYMOUR: We can go through there.

What have we got there?

NARRATOR: The officers wardroom on the starboard side of the vessel.

PILOT: We're going to move pretty slowly in here.

We're trying to not stir up too much.

NARRATOR: The wall cabinet with soap dishes.

SEYMOUR: That's pretty cool.

STRATTON: That is something, that's really, really something.

SEYMOUR: The soap dish looks white, so it must be a porcelain.

In the past, we've seen that cups, things that are porcelain in nature, don't collect marine growth.

They stay white.

NARRATOR: Everything the way it was left on the morning of December 7th.

SEYMOUR: Cool.

And you can see in this particular cabin, the sink looks like it's on the floor because of the high sediment load.

PAWLOWSKI: So this is another way to allow the survivors to remember what it was like... ...to see what their shipmates endured, and to strengthen that bond.

STRATTON: It sure brings back a lot of memories.

NARRATOR: With the custom-built ROV still not ready, Don will miss the exploration of the deeper decks.

STRATTON: A bulb.

SEYMOUR: A lightbulb.

STRATTON: A lightbulb.

NARRATOR: But for him, just this first look inside has brought his old home back to life.

STRATTON: The phone was there on the desk, and the lightbulb was in the socket.

Just kind of eerie.

Who'd ever think that you'd see something like that 75 years later?

NARRATOR: By the end of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 21 US ships have been sunk or damaged.

2,403 people are killed, 1,177 on the Arizona alone.

The fires on the ship rage for more than two days.

CALE: We were in blackout conditions in those days.

Nobody could have any lights on their houses or anything.

The only light you could see on the whole island was the burning of the Arizona.

NARRATOR: After the fire subsides, Seaman Sterling Cale is assigned to lead a group of ten sailors to recover bodies from the wreckage.

CALE: I think about the first thing we saw in the Arizona was a bunch of ashes blowing off of the ship.

And so I just sort of sank down on my coat and shed a few tears.

We saw a bunch of helmet liners lying across the ship.

Nobody around close to them.

Many of the men were in ashes behind the big guns on the ship.

A lot of the men had burned right down to the deck.

We also found a bunch in the aft fire control tower that got caught by the flames.

They had been reduced to charcoal.

NARRATOR: After the recovery of more than 200 bodies, the navy is forced to stop the retrieval effort because of increasingly dangerous conditions.

Salvage of the ship's superstructure above the waterline continues for another year.

The decision is made to leave the Arizona where it lays, creating a lasting memorial to the fallen that remain entombed in the ship.

Now, 75 years later, the expedition team has a chance to see inside the ship like never before.

It appears their new ROV is finally operating as expected.

KOVACS: It works, it's just a question of whether or not it'll, it'll work flawlessly, you know, the first time going in the wreck.

[radio chatter] SEYMOUR: So basically what we'll do is we'll drop the ROV down and we'll investigate the second deck and find access points or stairwells or hatches that go down and drop the ROV down in the third deck.

Below the second deck, onto the third deck, we get into an area that we don't really know what's there.

[radio chatter] NARRATOR: The ROV enters the Arizona's second deck at the stern of the ship.

SEYMOUR: Go to the right... and down.

Nice.

Oohh.

Aw!

That was awesome.

We're in.

[ROV whirring] KOVACS: Ten feet?

PILOT: Ten feet.

KOVACS: Give us ten feet of tether, please, ten feet.

NARRATOR: This area, known as officers' country, was not impacted by the blast.

SEYMOUR: Could we go forward and left?

PILOT: Okay.

NARRATOR: Here, much of the ship's structure has remained intact.

It's the world Ensign Weeden documented with his home movies just a few months before the attack.

[ROV whirring] The crew carefully maneuvers the ROV from the stern of the ship towards the cabins on the left side.

PILOT: Get me ten more feet.

KOVACS: Can we get ten feet of tether?

Ten feet, give us ten feet, please.

NARRATOR: Entering the ship's ladies' room, for the guests of the ranking officers.

SEYMOUR: That is amazing, wow.

Let's go to the left, pilot out and maybe make a hard turn.

So let's go through there.

NARRATOR: The admiral's cabin, the splendor still visible.

SEYMOUR: That is awesome.

NARRATOR: The ghostly outline of a table.

SEYMOUR: That's very cool.

PAWLOWSKI: What do we have going here?

SEYMOUR: We're just flying over that table that we see from that open porthole... PAWLOWSKI: Right.

SEYMOUR: ...with the light fixture, and we're moving towards the aft of the ship, towards this cabinet back here.

NARRATOR: In August of 1941, Ensign Weeden writes to his sister... WEEDEN: "Things have been really great, for we ate dinner with the admiral and showed the girls the ship.

The girl I escorted is the cutest.

So, Bernadine, everything is turning out swell now.

Don't you worry, for I am on one of the safest ships afloat."

PILOT: I need another five feet of tether.

KOVACS: Five more feet, please, give us five feet.

NARRATOR: With fresh, oxygen-rich seawater constantly flowing through, all but the most durable traces of life on board have deteriorated on the second deck.

But deeper down in the ship, conditions might be different.

[ROV whirring] SEYMOUR: Really, the push is to get below the second deck.

Because we think the third deck holds the key to the environment of Arizona, information about the microbiological environment, about the dissolved oxygen.

We think the third deck really holds the keys to a lot of those questions.

NARRATOR: Searching for a passage to the third deck, the team steers the ROV forward, closer to the blast area where the wreckage is torn open, in hope to find a way down to the third deck.

SEYMOUR: I'd like to see if we can get forward a little bit and start to look at where the blast damage starts to occur.

NARRATOR: The blast zone is a startling reminder of the power of the explosion.

With the decks collapsed, it is difficult to maneuver the ROV here.

SEYMOUR: So let's see, let's see if it goes down, and we can penetrate down in, you know, in below decks.

PILOT: Yeah, looks like there is an opening there, but... SEYMOUR: There is, but it looks like...

PILOT: We can go look down there and see if it's an opening, not go too far.

SEYMOUR: Okay, okay.

PILOT: And if not, we'll back out.

NARRATOR: They can see the third deck, but there is no safe passage to get there.

[ROV whirring] SEYMOUR: If an ROV goes inside the Arizona and gets hopelessly entangled, then the ROV will stay there forever, we'll never send divers in to go get it.

So, there's that to consider in terms of how far you explore, how far you push the edge of what you need to access.

PILOT: There we go.

SEYMOUR: Alright, okay.

PILOT: That did it.

SEYMOUR: Alright.

PILOT: That's good.

KOVACS: We are heading out, so, as soon as you see us, go ahead and extract us, but we're gonna continue driving.

NARRATOR: After investigating the wreckage for more than three hours, the team decides to call it a day and to pull the ROV back out.

Tomorrow they will look for a better access point down to the third deck.

It won't be easy.

Resting at the bottom of the harbor, the wreckage is still a behemoth-- 608 feet long and 97 feet wide.

When launched in June of 1915, she was the US Navy's biggest battleship.

A so-called super-dreadnought-- a class of its own.

Constructed over six decks, the Arizona was a labyrinth of compartments-- crew quarters... storage rooms... boiler rooms... powder magazines... and dozens of fuel compartments.

With a displacement of over 35,000 tons, she would be able to reach a top speed of 20 knots and have a range of 8,500 miles.

STRATTON: I didn't really know what to expect, but nobody can imagine how big a ship is out of water like that.

NARRATOR: With the war looming, the battleship was overhauled in the winter of 1940.

STRATTON: They put it in dry dock, and we went over the side and scraped the side and scraped the bottom and painted it, and that was quite an experience, I'll tell you.

SEYMOUR: With your first few dives on the Arizona you're actually kind of struggling to figure out where you are.

It's a tangled disarray of metal and iron and steel.

NARRATOR: With the new day comes another attempt to explore deeper inside the sunken giant.

MAN ON RADIO: Okay, copy that.

SEYMOUR: I mean, it's the USS Arizona.

It deserves everything that we can do to try to understand what's happening to what's there, so that we, you know, we can have it last for future generations.

NARRATOR: The divers have identified a hatch on the second deck, which the team believes will lead them down to the third deck.

[radio chatter] SEYMOUR: If we move left, we should run into the hatch.

[ROV whirring] NARRATOR: The hatch appears to be unobstructed.

SEYMOUR: So let's go in and take a look and see what we see here.

NARRATOR: But steering the ROV down to the lower deck is a challenge.

SEYMOUR: It's dark, I mean, there's no light inside the ship, it's complete black.

So the only light that you have is light that's on the ROV itself.

We're in, awesome.

[ROV whirring] NARRATOR: Here on the third deck, the environment looks much different.

They begin their search for evidence of the lives of those who once served here.

SEYMOUR: If we're navigating down a hallway, and there's a door, that becomes a judgment call.

Is it large enough for the ROV to fit through?

And if it fits through, do we think we can turn around the ROV on the other side of that door and fly it back out?

PAWLOWSKI: Oh, wow.

NARRATOR: A cabin nobody has seen for 75 years.

PAWLOWSKI: Is that like a footlocker there?

SEYMOUR: It looks like some kind of square, doesn't it?

NARRATOR: Completely undisturbed.

Everything still in its place.

[ROV whirring] A bed as it was left on the morning of the attack.

They travel on, deeper into the ship, entering another cabin.

SEYMOUR: Kind of want to peer... KOVACS: Peer around it.

SEYMOUR: Like, you want to peer around the side of the monitor to get a better view.

[radio chatter] It's angled, so it looks like we're at the hull.

So, come back up.

PILOT: Yeah, I have no vertical.

SEYMOUR: You have no vertical?

Whoa.

What's that?

Hang on, stop spooling.

PILOT: Hold on.

SEYMOUR: What is that?

PILOT: I'm trying to hold it there.

SEYMOUR: It's a button of some type.

KOVACS: That's a hat.

SEYMOUR: No way.

KOVACS: Totally, absolutely.

Look, it had a strap.

MAN: Yeah.

SEYMOUR: You're right.

NARRATOR: It's like opening a time capsule.

SEYMOUR: That has to tell us, you know, about the interior condition.

This must not have oxygen, I mean, it must be really low on oxygen.

NARRATOR: Low oxygen concentration slows the decomposition of organic matter.

[ROV whirring] SEYMOUR: It's like--what is it?

It looks like it's cloth, metal?

No.

KOVACS: No.

SEYMOUR: No, it's... KOVACS: Wow, look at that.

SEYMOUR: It's a jacket!

PAWLOWSKI: Are you kidding me?

SEYMOUR: Oh, my word.

NARRATOR: A complete uniform.

SEYMOUR: Look at that!

KOVACS: It's got like a vest or pants.

SEYMOUR: Pants or something in it.

PAWLOWSKI: Unbelievable.

SEYMOUR: That is amazing.

It's suspended, hanging there.

KOVACS: For 75 years just hanging there perfect.

I mean, it looks like it's pressed.

NARRATOR: It's an unexpected find.

A reminder of the men who lived and died here, and of the world Ensign Weeden documented with his camera in 1941.

While there is still much left to be explored, the crew ends the day with a feeling of success.

SEYMOUR: You're staring at somebody's suit.

It's been there for 75 years, and it's, I mean, it's hanging on a hanger in an officer's cabin.

I mean, it's...

I mean, it's hard to... it's hard to be kind of objective about science when you're staring face to face on a uniform that's been there for 75 years on the USS Arizona.

It's, it's pretty... it's pretty remarkable, actually.

It's unbelievable.

NARRATOR: 1,511 crewmen served on board the USS Arizona on the morning of December 7, 1941.

Only a few survived.

1,177 men died in the explosion and ensuing fires.

Ensign Weeden... was one of them.

WOODS: It was a Sunday, and my mother was setting the table, and the doorbell rang, and she went to answer the door, and it was the neighbor.

And she just said, "Bernadine, turn on your radio, Hawaii's under attack."

And that's how they found out.

NARRATOR: He had big dreams.

WOODS: His goal was to have his own ship.

He had a mission; he knew what he wanted to do.

And his ultimate goal was to be admiral of the navy.

NARRATOR: Ensign Weeden's body was never found.

But now, at last, his family can see the world the young officer lived in.

The devastating attack united a nation.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: In the explosions at Pearl Harbor, there was forged the will for complete and absolute victory over the forces of evil.

ROOSEVELT: With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.

[applause] NARRATOR: One day after the attack the United States declares war against Japan, and subsequently against the empire's European allies, too.

Today, Japan and the United States are allies.

[officer shouts command] Japan's navy pays their respects to the departed at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific on Oahu.

The war that cost the lives of over 400,000 US servicemen has faded into history.

SEYMOUR: The Arizona offers us an opportunity to keep history alive.

We want people to understand that this was a living, breathing ship.

This was manned by people who lost their lives in a blink.

NARRATOR: For Don Stratton, the exploration has brought closure.

STRATTON: I'm glad they've been able to do that.

I don't want the United States to forget about this and that it could happen again.

But my shipmates that are still there, they're really the heroes.

It's been a long time.

ANNOUNCER: Pearl Harbor: Into the Arizona is available on DVD.

To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

This program is also available for download on iTunes.