Title: “Ink and Iron: Remembering Savo Island Through a Gunner’s Hands on USS Missouri”

August 1944. The war in the Pacific is reaching a fever pitch, and the U.S. Navy’s newest and mightiest dreadnought, USS Missouri (BB-63), is alive with energy as she embarks on her shakedown cruise. Above her shimmering decks—still unscarred by the later bombardments of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Tokyo Bay surrender—the navy blue-jacketed crew sweats and hustles through a thousand details. There is the rush of salt in the air, the clang of tools, and the determined shuffle of hundreds of men making the ship battle-ready.

In the heart of this industrial ballet, Gunner’s Mate Second Class Charles J. Hansen kneels beside a battery of 40mm Bofors guns, his hands skilled and steady. These are the Navy’s stalwart “pom-pom” anti-aircraft weapons, bristling on all sides of the Missouri to ward off enemy planes. Hansen works methodically, stripping and oiling the machinery, checking the loading trays, and scanning for any tell-tale signs of danger or wear.

But what truly sets this gunner apart is not merely his craft, but the stories written across his skin. Hansen’s forearms and biceps are stitched with tattoos—a tradition as old as the sea, but with a piercing resonance particular to the men who have sailed the Pacific’s battles.

A Canvas of Memory and Loss

Look closer. There, inked in sharp navy lines, is the name “Vincennes“—the USS Vincennes (CA-44), a heavy cruiser lost two years earlier in the furious chaos of the Battle of Savo Island. Above it, the date “9 August 1942” in looping script, and beneath, a roll call of names—shipmates, friends—who never returned from that burning night.

For most, tattoos are decoration, bravado, or whimsy. For Hansen, they are a living memorial and a daily reckoning with the reality of war. Each time his fingers laced around the cold steel of a gun barrel, each time he braced for action, the ink reminders pulsed just beneath his skin: of sacrifice, survival, and the thin line that separates the two.

The Ghosts of Savo Island

The Battle of Savo Island was one of the darkest nights in U.S. naval history—a jagged wound in an otherwise relentless campaign. In the dark early hours of August 9, 1942, a powerful Japanese cruiser force fell upon an unprepared Allied fleet guarding the sea approaches to Guadalcanal. Four Allied cruisers, including the Vincennes, were lost in less than an hour. Over a thousand American and Australian sailors died.

For the survivors, like Hansen, the memory was not history—it was an unhealed scar. Plucked from oil-slicked waters as burning debris drifted in the dawn, then transferred to new ships to fight on, men like Hansen carried the names of the lost not just in their heads, but on their arms—literally inked into their flesh. That grief, that fierce brotherhood, became an invisible bond running like electric current through every new shipboard assignment.

A New Ship, Same Old Sea

By August 1944, the USS Missouri was the pride of the fleet: newest of the Iowas, a place where tradition met innovation. But for her brand-new crew, many were old hands, picked for experience, grit, and nerve. Men like Charles Hansen—seasoned by battle, marked by loss—were the backbone of the Missouri’s firepower.

As he worked to maintain and test the quad 40mm mounts, Hansen may have paused—just for a moment—when his tattooed wrist brushed the cold metal. Maybe he remembered the way the Vincennes shuddered under gunfire, how the deck pitched and rolled as searchlights tore the night open. Maybe he thought of Jim, or Smitty, or the dozens of others whose names curled around his bicep, gone beneath the sea.

The Ritual of Gun Maintenance

It’s easy to romanticize life aboard a battleship, but much of it is steady, ritual work. Checking and re-checking ammunition feeds; oiling gun breeches; swinging turrets in slow, creaking arcs to test their aim. For gunners like Hansen, these routines were sacred—they could mean the difference between life and death when the klaxons sounded.

Crew camaraderie often flourished over such routines. While sailors swapped stories—of home, of lost ships, of the absurdities of navy life—Hansen’s arms would be silent witnesses. Now and then, a shipmate might glance at the ink and, if he’d served on an older, scarred vessel, nod in solemn understanding.

Inked Memories: A Living Legacy

Navy tattoos are nothing new—anchors, swallows, a sweetheart’s name. But in World War II, especially in the Pacific, the practice surged. Ships, battles, and date-of-loss tattoos became bridges between worlds and wounds, a way to enshrine loss and reaffirm identity.

To wear a ship’s name after her loss was, in its way, an act of resistance. It declared that despite the ravages of combat, despite the randomness of fate, those lost would not be forgotten. They would sail on, arm-in-arm, whenever their shipmates picked up a wrench, a mop, or a machine gun.

From Savo’s Darkness to Missouri’s Dawn

On Missouri, Hansen was far from alone in his mixture of hope and haunted memory. The Big Mo would go on to write her own history: shelling Japanese positions in the last days of the war, surviving a kamikaze strike, and ultimately hosting the surrender ceremony that ended the conflict. But in this, her shakedown period, the future was still unwritten—and the past lived on, in ink and in memory.

Hansen’s daily labor at the gun mounts was more than mechanical obligation. It was a conversation with ghosts, a vow that every new fight would honor the old ones. “This ship,” the tattoos seemed to say, “bears more than her own name—she carries all those who fought and fell before her.”

Epilogue: The Man Behind the Guns

History often celebrates ships and battles, but it’s sailors like Charles J. Hansen—men shaped by pain, perseverance, and pride—who form the Navy’s real engine. His tattoos told strangers what mattered most, even before the first handshake. They were history—personal, indelible, and immune to rust.

As the Missouri steamed east into the gathering storm, Hansen’s hands, tattooed and steadfast, folded around his tools. Ink and iron, memory and resolve: the living heart of a battleship, beating beneath the guns.