The impending auction of a partial silver-plated serving set salvaged from the USS Arizona just months after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor is being condemned by at least one former sailor who witnessed the sinking of the battleship.

The 24 pieces from the set, which include a candlestick, saucers and a teapot from the officer's mess, are due to be auctioned Dec. 9 and may fetch up to $20,000, according to the auction catalog posted online by Cowan's Auctions Inc. of Cincinnati.

"It kind of turned my stomach, you betcha," said Arthur Herriford, 87, national president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. "It's sacred material. Anybody who would pull that kind of stuff, I got no use for."

Herriford was a 19-year-old fire control man third class aboard the light cruiser USS Detroit when he saw the USS Arizona blown apart by a 1,760-pound armor-piercing bomb dropped by a Japanese warplane.

"I was looking directly at it when it got hit," he said. "I saw a flash and a column of flames and smoke shooting up above it."

Herriford, who lives in Sherman Oaks, Calif., said he plans to contact elected leaders and others to stop the auction. He called the artifacts being offered for sale "stolen goods."

The Advertiser was unable to contact Cowan's Auctions yesterday. Company founder Wes Cowans has appeared as an appraiser on the PBS series "Antiques Roadshow" and "History Detectives."

The catalog does not list the owner of the artifacts but suggests they are the heirs of Navy diver Carl Webster Keenum, who apparently 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.

While it's common for military people to collect war souvenirs, the USS Arizona is considered not only a historic site, but hallowed ground because many of the 1,177 crewmen who died that day aboard the ship are entombed in its rusting hull.

AGENCY WON'T BID

Paul DePrey, superintendent of the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, which includes the USS Arizona Memorial, said that as much as the National Park Service would like to own the partial serving set, the agency does not plan to bid for it.

He said it is rare for items that were actually aboard ships sunk during the Pearl Harbor attack to surface at auction. When the park service becomes aware of artifacts of interest, he said, it usually notifies the owners that there is a repository for items associated with the Pearl Harbor attack and tries to persuade them to donate the items to the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, which attracts 1.5 million visitors annually.

In fact, the Cowan's catalog said the auction lot includes a copy of a 1997 letter from the USS Arizona Memorial expressing interest in acquiring the items as a gift from the owner.

DePrey said he did not immediately have a copy of the letter and is trying to track it down.

The silver-plated serving pieces from the USS Arizona look "very similar" to several pieces already in the monument's collection and likely are from the same set, he said.

"Certainly, it has intrinsic value as a silver set from that time period, and there's the invaluable historical component of it being on the ship when it went down," DePrey said.

"If it actually was a set on the ship when it went down — and it looks like it's real — that is something that can never be separated from the ship and the lives that were lost and the events of that day. From that standpoint , this is really something that should be available for the public to view and to appreciate the type of operations on a battleship that included this sort of silver set."

DePrey stopped short of criticizing the Navy diver for his actions in taking the items more than 60 years ago, or the current artifact owners.

"We would hope that anyone who has an artifact related to the USS Arizona would consider talking with the National Park Service on how best to curate those artifacts and preserve them for posterity," he said.

"The shipwreck of the USS Arizona is a reminder of the sacrifices made and the start of the United States entering World War II, so the significance of the ship should never be diminished."

SALVAGE PROHIBITED

Federal laws protect sunken U.S. military vessels and aircraft, as well as the remains and personal effects of their crews, from salvage, recovery or other disturbance without authorization.

However, many of the regulations were established decades after Keenum removed the serving set from the Arizona.

According to the Naval History & Heritage Command, the Department of the Navy considers ship and aircraft wrecks government property until the Navy takes specific formal action to dispose of them.

Such property rights are established in the U.S. Constitution and international maritime law, said the command, the official history program of the Department of the Navy.

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 USN 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.

All are heavily encrusted with lime and other debris, obscuring the manufacturer's mark on all but the two pieces, the catalog said.