OVER the past few years we have witnessed hundred-year anniversaries for the Great War and seventy-five-year anniversaries for the Second World War. 2018 marked the centennial of the conclusion of the War to End Wars, while all over the Pacific, historic dates such as the attack on Pearl Harbor, the invasion of the Philippines, the destruction of Hiroshima, and the battle of Saipan have been commemorated.
Given the passage of time, very few people who participated in those events are still with us. Veteran’s Day parades feature fewer and fewer old soldiers and sailors. But there is another way those events maintain their relevance.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature has been keeping an eye on all those shipwrecks that litter the Pacific. The period of 75-100 years means something dreadful to them. Steel rusts and ships disintegrate at a given pace, and it is just about time for all those wrecks to give up what is inside them.
The IUCN estimates there are somewhere around three million sunken vessels in the ocean, and around 8,500 of them are potential polluters. Most of them date back to the two world wars and contain chemicals, munitions, and an estimated six billion gallons of heavy fuel oil.
To get a handle on that number, it is over 500 times the oil released by the Exxon Valdez in 1989 and 30 times the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010. Imagine 500 oil tankers crashing around the Pacific. We remember what the Deepwater Horizon did to the Gulf of Mexico. Imagine 30 of those around the Pacific and we start to get a sense of the magnitude of the problem.
Yes, shipwrecks from the world wars have reached the point of disintegration where they will start to lose integrity. Fuel tanks with thousands of gallons of oil will start to rupture.
Since we know this, surely we can do something about it. While it is true that technology exists to pump out the oil trapped in many of these wrecks, what is not so certain is whose responsibility it is, under whose authority it falls, and who is expected to pay for all this. It is estimated that the cost of removing oil from a shipwreck will cost between $2,300 and $17,000 per ton, depending on a host of factors.
Legally speaking, naval shipwrecks are considered the property of the country for whom they sailed. England still owns the Prince of Wales and Repulse, for example. Sunken vessels are considered war graves and are off limits to anyone not authorized by the owing country. So, who would pay for extracting the oil from the Prince of Wales? It is an English vessel, sunk by the Japanese, in Malaysian waters. Or what about the Arizona, the American battleship sunk by the Japanese during the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii? Should the United States pay the bill, or should Japan share in the expense?
Should a larger, multinational organization, perhaps under the direction of the United Nations, take oversight of the situation? Should all nations pay into a fund that goes to cleaning up the wrecks? Should landlocked countries be expected to pay? While we answer these questions, the time bomb keeps ticking. The IUCN estimates that many of these wrecks will rupture over the next 10 years. Tick, tick, tick.
BC Cook, PhD lived on Saipan and has taught history for 20 years. He currently resides on the mainland U.S.
