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Published: October 4th 2008
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Pearl Harbour Saturday 4th October 2008
Pearl Harbour was worth the hour and a quarter bus ride. It was quite moving. We did feel a bit regimented by the US Navy personnel who take visitors out to the Arizona monument. One cannot take anything on the tour and drinking, even water, is FORBIDDEN, in respect to the thousand plus crew whose bodies were never recovered from the wreckage!!!??? However, the memorial is a sobering and fitting tribute to those poor souls and the documentary film pays due tribute to the genius (as well as the horror) of the Japanese attack, probably the most successful air attack in WW2.
One thing bothered me greatly, however and that is that oil is still seen escaping from one of the hatchways of the wreck (which lies in very shallow water); notices and commentaries almost proudly announce this fact. As one stands in the memorial building looking down at the wreck one sees a puddle of oil about two feet in diameter, ooze upwards and float away on the tide about every two minutes; very colourful and very dramatic. The cynic in me wondered if it was “Disney” oil and not real at
Watery tomb
USS Arizona which sank 7th December 1941 all. I’ve snorkelled over a German WW2 wreck in the Caribbean and there was no oil polluting those waters. Would oil still escape at this rate (after ten minutes there was quite a rainbow-coloured river of the stuff) after sixty seven years? If this is true then it begs the question “Why?” Why hasn’t the leak been plugged? There are notices telling people not to throw anything in to the water to protect the marine life. People throw commemorative leis of flowers in there sometimes but they have to remove the petals from the string because the string could be harmful to living creatures. Absolutely true but oil isn’t exactly good for their health either! I found this quite disturbing but I couldn’t find anyone to ask “What’s with the oil? What is this all about?” Nobody else seemed bothered about it.
In the evening we sat on Waikiki beach and watched a glorious sunset. It is the best thing about Waikiki because it faces due west. Every cloud has a silver lining and the cloud that masked the final drop of the sun had a stunning golden one.
NOTE TO ALL FRIENDS IN SPAIN: Movistar (Telefonica) are
Tight security
...and no water bottles either! acting in a most deplorable manner and upon our return to Spain next year we’ll change our mobile provider as well as our Telefonica landline and broadband. We have been without the use of our mobile phone since 1st September, we cannot access our account on line, they have failed to answer our emails asking for help and our son, Nick, has made several calls to them and they refuse to help, saying that we have to contact them ourselves. Well we have spent a fortune trying to do so. One phone call cost 54 dollars to listen to their music as we were kept on hold. We were told to go to a Movistar shop to sort it out!!! Before leaving home we checked that we had international roaming and the mobile worked ok in the UK. Now, when we go online we get a message that tells us that our details do not match their records (but they did match when we were in England). If any friends can give advise please email us; we are desperate to get this sorted because when we get to Fiji in a few weeks time we’ll have very limited internet access
and there is no other way for family to get in touch in an emergency.
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