May 31st - Pearl Harbour

This morning we make a reasonably early start as we are off to Pearl Harbour to visit the USS Arizona memorial. The Arizona was sunk with all hands in the harbour during the Japanese attack, December 7th 1941, in total 1177 lives were lost when it sank. It sank within a couple of minutes of being hit by a torpedo which ignited the ships main magazine. The memorial we are going to see is built on top of the sunken remains of the Arizona which now serves as a tomb to all those lost with her. The memorial was opened in 1962. To visit the memorial there is no cost, but there are a limited number of daily tickets available, you get there as early as you can and are given your ticket, hopefully the wait from when you get your ticket to when you can visit the memorial will not be too long, all the tickets are time stamped as you can only access the memorial on one of the Navy’s shuttle boats.

We get to the memorial at about 9:30 and it is not too busy, our allotted time is 10:15.

In order to get across to the memorial you have to watch a 20 minute informative film about the attack on Pearl Harbour and the Arizona in particular, Baggage actually found this pretty interesting, though we had been doing a bit of work from the Arizona Memorial website before we visited the memorial, so the film bought a lot of this to life for her.

After the film you take a short, 5 minute ride, on a cross harbour ferry which docks at the memorial, your ferry then returns for the next party and then comes back to get you off, you are supposed to get about 15 minutes on the memorial. We miss the next ferry however and travel back with the 10:30 ticketed party, whoops - sorry!

The memorial is quite moving, it is a strange shaped ‘box’ all in white across the decaying body of the Arizona in the waters beneath, there are a few places you can see evidence of the ship below, but only a few. The Arizona still appeared to be leaking a small amount of oil into the water after all this time, if not then the sunken ship is simply attracting oil spills from elsewhere in the harbour. All 1177 lives lost with the Arizona are listed in the memorial, along with the names of some of the survivors of the attack who have subsequently elected to be interned with their shipmates when they have died. The most recent of these was in 2008. I am not sure if it moved me because I believed it should, if it moved me in the same way as a military cemetery does as you survey all the rows and rows of matching headstones, or if it was something deeper, but there was a great sense of peace in the memorial, a sense that was clearly being respected by all the party who were visiting, probably more than 100 people and hardly a sound being uttered.

When we returned from the memorial we grabbed a bit of lunch then paid a visit to the US Submarine Bowfin which has been retired from service and is moored across the harbour form the memorial. The Bowfin was also well worth the visit, if only to get a feel for what life must have been like on a WWII submarine. In the park there is also a garden of remembrance to the 52 US Submarines that were lost at sea during the war years, more than 3,500 US Submariners gave their lives during WWII, the Bowfin was one of the lucky ships that made it to the end of the war.

After the Bowfin we decided to leave Pearl harbour, we could have visited the USS Missouri, the battleship on whose decks the Japanese surrender, we had seen her from the Arizona Memorial however and Baggage was getting a bit bored with looking at old boats.

One other thing we saw at close quarters in Pearl Harbour, and possibly the most impressive was a US Nimitz Class aircraft carrier the USS John C. Stennis, named after a long serving US Democratic Senator. It is massive, you see pictures of them and know they are big, but until you see one close up you do not really appreciate it. the aircraft and helicopters were lined up on it’s deck and we sailed right past it on both our way out to and back from the memorial, a great opportunity for some photos.

From Pearl harbour we went to the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet, recommended to us as a great place to get gifts by a number of people. I got the obligatory Hawaiian shirt, we got a hand carved Tiki statue, Baggage got a bunch of Lei, and we got a few other odds and ends as gifts for people. As promised the prices were very cheap, my Hawaiian shirt for example was $10. Unlike many markets I have been to there was no pressure from the stall holders for you to buy their wares, and if you decided to they were very happy to serve you, but then the Hawaiian way is a pretty laid back one!

On the way back to the house I picked up a pre-cooked chicken and some salad and we had that for our supper, nice and easy and in this heat a nice refreshing meal.

Only one bottle of Longboard left, so I had a try of the Wailua wheat bear, not sure about the idea of beer with passion fruit, it is refreshing and easy to drink, but a bit like having a lager with a shot of lime in it, you can no longer taste the lager.