A partial silver-plated serving set salvaged from the USS Arizona just months after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor is being withdrawn from auction, according to the Ohio auction house that was planning the sell the artifacts.

A spokeswoman for Cowan’s Auctions Inc. said today the company “has no intention of selling the silver” at its Dec. 9 auction and is waiting for official notification from the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps that the artifacts cannot be sold.
Cowan’s estimated the potential value of the lot comprising 24 pieces at up to $20,000.
The company received them on consignment from a heir of Navy diver Carl Webster Keenum, who collected the pieces sometime between May 1942 and May 1943 while salvaging ammunition, weaponry and personal items from the devastated U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. Keenum died in 1964.
U.S. military veterans and others were dismayed that items from the USS Arizona might be sold to the highest bidder, because the Pearl Harbor shipwreck is considered hallowed ground. Many of the 1,177 crewmen who died that day aboard the ship are entombed in its rusting hull.
The auction catalog says Keenum was serving as a construction battalion master of arms aboard the USS Oklahoma during the Pearl Harbor attack and helped saved the lives of 37 crewmates in the hours after the ship was sunk by Japanese torpedoes.
The lot of 24 pieces includes the candlestick with a raised Navy seal, a pedestal bowl, sauce boat and two lids, a salver, seven saucers marked Gorham, six bowls, a teapot marked Reed & Barton, a cruet stand, and several pieces of silver burners.