“The Pearl Harbor Songs”
Various artists
(Island Viking IVCD116)
Keith Haugen — prolific island songwriter, recording artist and record producer — is the first Hawaii resident to mark the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor with commemorative music. The album is an anthology: At least one of the songs dates from the 50th-anniversary observances in 1991; some of the others date from 2001. Four of the 13 tracks are about the attack and its aftermath.
One of them, “Peaceful Arizona,” was written by Gordon Freitas and first recorded by him as a winning entry for Ron Jacobs’ “Homegrown ’97” song contest. It is the best song written to date about the iconic battleship USS Arizona; the ship exploded and sank during the attack, and the wreck remains in place at Pearl Harbor as a war memorial.
“BB 39,” another Freitas composition, imagines the thoughts of a young member of the battleship’s crew on the evening before the attack; it reminds us of the human cost of the disaster. (The service number BB-39 indicated that the Arizona was the Navy’s 39th battleship.)
Haugen earns his spot in the vocal spotlight on several other selections. Don Humphrey is the featured vocalist on three more, and the late U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye is the voice of a spoken-word selection, “Yes, We Remember.”
Haugen expands the album with songs about the USS Missouri (service number BB-63) and the men who fought in World War I, the Korean War and Vietnam. “Cease Fire, A Christmas Song” has nothing to do with Pearl Harbor or World War II as such, but Haugen’s call for an end to war is as relevant in 2016 as it was when he first recorded it. To borrow a line from an older song, popularized by the Kingston Trio in 1961, “When will they ever learn?”
It is indicative of the modern norms of political correctness that with the single exception of a 1941-vintage sound bite from a speech by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, no mention is made in the songs, the liner notes or the cover art of who it was who attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Lest we forget, Hawaii was attacked by units of the Imperial Japanese Navy almost four months to the day after President Roosevelt enacted a worldwide 100 percent embargo on the sale of oil to Japan.
Haugen dedicates the new album to “all those who gave their lives at Pearl Harbor.” In theory that includes the nine Japanese submarine crewmen and 55 airmen who died in the attack, as well as the 2,403 personnel who were killed.
For more information, email hakumele@aol.com.
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Correction: The battleship USS Missouri was designated as BB-63, not BB-69, as reported in an earlier version of this story and in a Friday’s TGIF section.
