Looking for a Place of Honor

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii - He was looking for a place of honor.

"My dad was really a very honorable man, and he was looking for a place of honor to be early in his life," Lynn Cory Price said, speaking about her father, the first Marine to be buried aboard the USS Arizona since World War II. "I think he was looking for friends who held the same values, and he found that in the Marine Corps."

James Evans Cory came to his final resting place during a Memorial Ceremony and Interment Monday at the USS Arizona Memorial.

In his youth, Cory loved the ocean. The Dallas native was infatuated with the stories of Horatio Hornblower. He read them all and longed for the romance of the sea. He attempted to join the Merchant Marines but was turned away because he wasn't old enough. Cory suspected America's involvement in World War II was imminent. With U.S. embargos in place against Japan, and little more than a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Cory enlisted in the Marine Corps June 13, 1940.

"He could see the war was coming," said Carol Cory Brown, Cory's second youngest daughter. "So he wanted to position himself in place for when it broke out."

Cory was able to answer the call of the sea when he was assigned to USS Arizona Marine Detachment, Combat Division 1 as a private first class. He found the camaraderie he was looking for in his brothers in arms. Finally finding the fraternal bond he had been missing in his life from the men stationed on the Arizona only made the Pearl Harbor attack all the more difficult for him.

"Losing the officers who were his mentors had a profound impact on him," Boone said. "He had no male mentors in his life until he joined the Marine Corps, and he loved them dearly. Losing them really devastated him."

On the day of the attack, Pfc. Cory was stationed in the secondary fire-control station located in the aft tripod mast of the Arizona. At 7:56 a.m., two explosions rocked the ship.

"The bridge shielded us from flames," Cory said in an Oral History Report given before his death. "Around the edges in these open windows came the heat and the sensation of the blast. We cringed there … I think that at this moment I wanted to flee, but this was impossible. You're on station; you're in combat."

The explosions caused the ship's midsection to open up. Cory and the men inside the compartment were ordered to head to the main deck below and then abandon ship. Heat from fires on the ship caused the magazine and forward oil storage to explode. Thousands of gallons of burning oil poured into the harbor. Cory was separated from the group but managed to make it to the quarterdeck before diving into the flaming sea and swimming to nearby Ford Island.

"Our own oil was bubbling up and congealing," said Cory. "People who have never seen this at sea cannot imagine what oil is like once it is exposed to cool seawater … It was catching fire slowly and was incinerating toward us."

Cory survived the attack that day, but would never forget the memory of what he experienced. It was emblazoned in his mind, like burning oil on water.

In his life after the attack, Cory never took a day for granted. Even after leaving the service, he never stopped being a Marine.

"The thing about the Marine Corps for Dad - it wasn't just the one event, Pearl Harbor," Price said. "It was everything that helped shape him as a person. The discipline, the values, even the way he folded his clothes."

Cory never returned to Pearl Harbor. The memory was enough for him. He didn't need to face it again.

"It was too painful," Brown said. "He wasn't ready to go back."

Although he didn't return to the site, he did continually revisit the event. He was a huge advocate of sharing the history, Price said. During anniversaries of the attack, or whenever requested, Cory would speak to his daughters' class, their teachers and later in life, their professors.

"Dad really took responsibility for sharing that part of the history he experienced personally, and he was very generous with his time in sharing it," Price said. "He was a history major. He loved history, and he loved the fact that he could share [his experience]."

Cory was a brazen man. He was the kind of man who corrected others people's children. The kind who sang the national anthem so loud and off key, his daughters dreaded standing alongside him at football games.

He was the kind of man who proposed on a blind date, and although the girl declined, he was the kind of man who would keep asking until she accepted six months later. They were happily married for 30 more years until his death.

In the years before his death, Cory spoke with his wife about what to do with his ashes after he passed. He told her to put the ashes wherever the family thought was best.

"He was very open to letting us do what we needed to do to be at peace," Boone said.

Cory passed away peacefully July 9, 1978, in his hometown. Cory's youngest daughter, like all of his daughters, shared a passion for history; she herself is a history major. For thirty years Boone tried to convince her mother to lay Cory to rest aboard the Arizona.

Former crewmembers of the Arizona who survived the attack have the opportunity to be buried aboard the vessel along with their former shipmates if they so choose. It was a dream of Boone's for her father to be the first Marine laid to rest on the ship. Finally, with the approval of her mother, her dream came true.

The memorial normally buzzes with sound during the day as visitors are boated in and out. Although patrons are asked to keep noise down out of respect for the fallen below, the whispers of dozens of tourists fill the vast space with an audible hum reverberating off the white walls.

An uncommon afternoon silence fell over the memorial during Monday's ceremony when following a Two Bell Ceremony, Committal Service and Rifle Salute, the world seemed to stand still except for the steady wave of the flag above and the 24 tender, yet powerful notes of Taps that blared from the bugler in the rear of the memorial.

"Daddy would be honored by this memorial," said Kay Cory Boone, Cory's youngest daughter. "He would love it. He would think we brought him home."

Cory's wife, Estelle, said her final goodbyes to her husband that day. He was a man she loved and was married to for 30 years, whose ashes she kept with her for 30 more. She walked through the respectful silence of the memorial. She walked past her family and guests, many teary eyed from the remembrance. She walked past the rows of Marines lining the memorial walls and by the rifle detail standing proudly outside the memorial entrance. She walked down the ramp leading to the dock of the memorial where divers waited to put her husband to rest. There, she watched as her husband - ashes in a bronze cube topped with an Eagle, Globe and Anchor - was given to the dive team.

The diver who took the ashes held Cory up, facing Estelle. The dive team steadily swam out to position, the entire time holding Cory above the water, facing his wife. As the team submerged into the abyss, only a set of hands and the cube remained above the harbor's blue-green shimmer. Slowly the sea collapsed around the cube as Cory went down into the harbor forever. Estelle watched him go.

The interment rejoined Cory with the Arizona: a part of history, a part of his memories, and now, by choice - his tomb. He rejoined the brothers he lost on the "day of infamy," a day that will forever echo in history, a day that pushed America and the "greatest generation" into World War II. He never forgot that day. He never forgot the "heat and sensation of the blast" he felt as the ship was hit. Nor did he forget the bravery and honor shown by the men along his side, the men of Pearl Harbor, and his brothers on the Arizona.

"Dad had made a comment, when speaking at a funeral, that you get to know your buddies when you're in the foxhole with them," Price said. "Pearl Harbor was Dad's foxhole experience. I think laying dad to rest with the mentors he loved, who had significant impact on him - those buddies of his, is the right thing to do. I think dad would be very pleased with this whole event."

James Evans Cory has become a part of Pearl Harbor and the Arizona forever, even though he always was. He answered his call to the sea.

He rests eternally in a place of honor.