Too often we forget that the biggest part of the battle at Pearl Harbor came after the Japanese were sailing away.
By 0915 on 7 December, Navy divers and salvage teams were hard at work.
Throughout 1942 and part of 1943, Navy divers worked on salvaging destroyers, supply ships, and other badly damaged vessels.
An oil covered US Navy diver after working on one of the sunken ships, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 7th December 1941.
The divers faced extraordinary dangers: poisonous gas, unexploded ordnance, as well as the unknown of the destruction that awaited them below. Through the course of the Pearl Harbor effort, Navy divers spent approximately 16,000 hours underwater, during 4,000 dives.
Contract civilian divers contributed another 4,000 diving hours.
In this video, Navy diver, Petty Officer Melissa Nguyen-Alarcon, of Winthrop, Maine, shares how their toughness, accountability, integrity and initiative has influenced her.
