Mighty Mo's Countdown -- Battleship To Leave Bremerton For New Berth At Pearl Harbor

BREMERTON - The USS Missouri is a ghost ship nowadays. Except for the occasional conversation and clanging of tools by a small team of workers mothballing the gray vessel this week, the famed World War II battleship is morosely silent, its engines quiet. Even its worn teak deck doesn't seem to creak.

On Saturday afternoon, the tugboat Sea Victory will haul the Mighty Mo away from its moorage at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard pier on its way to Hawaii, where it will be docked at Pearl Harbor, just 1,000 feet away from the USS Arizona Memorial.

There are only a few opportunities to see the 887-foot-long Missouri while it still is in the Puget Sound; the ship is closed for tours. It will be towed for three days by tugboat to Astoria, Ore. There, it will stay for a week in the Columbia River so fresh water can kill off marine organisms on the ship's hull.

The Coast Guard will escort the Missouri out of the shipyard and through Puget Sound, where the famed vessel will glide through Rich Passage, and past Port Angeles and Cape Flattery, giving the public a chance to wave goodbye.

The Missouri symbolized, for many, the end of World War II. Japanese Gen. Yoshijiro Umezu surrendered unconditionally for his country on its deck. Today, a simple aluminum box covers a big brass ring that marks the spot where Umezu and U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur signed the papers outside the captain's cabin on the starboard side.

Built in Brooklyn and launched in 1944, the Missouri provided the gun power in some of the most historic battles in the Pacific, and survived several kamikaze attacks.

"Everyone who's ever served on the Missouri has strong emotions for her," says retired Navy Capt. Don Hess, who's in charge of getting the battleship ready to cross the ocean. "You don't feel that way for every ship, only a few. And she's one of them."

For the past six years, the Missouri has been moored at the shipyard, one of the 20 or so vessels in the Navy's inactive fleet. Flanked by aircraft carriers Midway and Ranger, it has been in good company.

Two years ago, after several other port cities made a bid for it, the Navy decided the Missouri should be docked at Pearl Harbor. This month, the Navy transferred ownership of the battleship to the USS Missouri Memorial Association, a nonprofit group that is bringing the ship to Pearl Harbor, where a 40-member crew will maintain it.

Last January, Hess flew here from Hawaii for his first extensive look at the vessel. He found a battleship badly in need of a shine.

"I kept saying, `This is wrong, this is wrong, and this is wrong,' " Hess says, pointing to the moss growing on the deck, the tarnished brass portholes and the relentless rust.

"Then I stood on the bow, and looked at how magnificent it truly was. I stopped saying how wrong everything was."

Still, there is much work to be done when the Missouri arrives in Hawaii a month from now. The crew will give the ship a fresh coat of paint, scrub the teak, and polish the brass until it gleams.

"We can't make it look like it was, back in 1945," Hess says. But, somehow, he wishes he could.