Jerry Kaufman

Hardcover, 26 pp. 

Seventy years after Japan’s devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, Renewal at the Place of Black Tears explores Hawaii’s most visited public attraction in an entirely new way. The place is the USS Arizona Memorial, and the black tears are the oil droplets surfacing from the sunken USS Arizona. Renewal is a story inspired by three unifying strands from the memorial woven together, first is the Tree of Life, a universal symbol of renewal, designed into the steel and concrete structure of the memorial. Second are the words and deeds of Zenji Abe, former Japanese diver-bomber pilot and Richard Fiske, former Marine bugler on the USS West Virginia, enemy combatants at Pearl Harbor who became friends in the later years of their lives at the memorial. Third and finally is a striking oil-on-water Tree of Life image photographed at the memorial by the author.