Today's sea and sky conditions are ideal. It's impossible to imagine what they were like then, but any number of veterans could probably tell us if we asked. They were headed south to San Pedro, California that year, that month, then to Pearl Harbor, then back to World War II in the western Pacific and Japan. Chances are they'd remember.

New Jersey had been at sea for 18 straight months previous to her return to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for an overhaul. She and her men were directly engaged in the conquest of Okinawa from March 14 to April 16, 1945.

There, she fought off incessant air raids, used her seaplanes to rescue downed pilots, and vigorously defended the Task Force carriers from suicide ("kamikaze") attacks. Reports indicated she shot down at least three attackers, and assisted in the destruction of others. She also dealt Okinawa the blows that all American battleships were prepared for -- bombarding the beaches for eventual U.S. Marine invasions.

So her cruise in these North Pacific waters off the coast of Washington state in 1945 were anything but casual. Perhaps 2,500 men aboard the warship, having just enjoyed their first home liberty in almost two years, were now going back to war.

Little did these men know in July, 1945, that in the next month, it would all be over. How could they know as they glanced at the majesty of the Olympic Mountain Range to the east that on August 6th, an atomic bomb would explode over Hiroshima, and on August 9th, another over Nagasaki?

How could they have been thinking then that on August 14th, Japan would accept surrender conditions, and the most destructive war in world history would come to an end ?

This morning, as the New Jersey trails behind the Sea Victory, pointing her sharp bow southward as stately as ever before, a sense of appreciation and awe overcomes anyone who stops to realize what this ship and her men went through during those years. And what it has meant to everyone else who followed them.

This place is filled with natural beauty in every direction. It is also filled with the image of a battleship, and with distant echoes of what war has done and undone.