Peal Harbour

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Today we took the bus to Pearl Harbour and visited the USS Arizona memorial, a pretty somber sight as you can imagine.

The story of Pearl Harbour has always facinated me, so many stories, myths etc so we wanted to check it out for ourselves.

There were tours from the hotel but a wifee told me we could get a direct local bus for $2, sorted, it was an hour on the bus but an interesting ride through downtown Honolulu, not the sort of images you see on the postcards, quite seedy really.

Anyway we arrived at the memorial and had to check in all our bags and that, nothing is allowed in, I find these rules bizarre as there is no personal search so if you wanted to do anything you just strap whatever to your body, America is security crazy which I'm fine with but they also seem to overlook some obvious threats, anyway it's not my boggle.

There was a 90 minute wait for the boat to the memorial but there was a museum so we took a look at the history of Pearl Harbour and the attack itself.

The USS Arizona was the final resting place for 1177 of it's crewman after the Japanese attack on December 7th 1941, all in all there were 1999 American casualties and 64 Japanese losses on that day, mental, and the thing that amazed me was that the Americans new there was an incoming flight of planes but just assumed it was some of there own.

The history behind it was that the Japanese had been getting a little bit tastly in Asia, invading China, taking over a lot of the French and Dutch colonies in South East Asia as they were busy fighting against Nazi Germany to defend there foreign interests.

America wasn't happy about this so after a few verbals they banned American Oil to the Japs, the Japs didn't like this so signed up to the Axis powers with Germany and Italy, and this really pissed of Russia so they had to start arming up to keep the Japs out of the Motherland, Japs from one side and the Nazi's from another, not a pleasent though, and those pappy Italians making pasta for everyone, dooshbags.

Anyway, American seen it as protecting it's Asian interest (China) and Japan saw it as America trying to bully them so although they were chatting at the White House to resolve the conflict the Japs were planning to attacker for ages, and when the time came they got it spot on.

All the boats in Peal Harbour were all lined up opened for a military inspection the following day, they'd all just been painted so all the ammunition chambers etc were open to dry, you see where I'm going with this huh?

So the Japs attacked with 350 planes in two waves and the Yanks didn't know what hit them, "Tora, Tora, Tora" was the Japanese cry, they couldn't believe that they could hit the Americans with such an element of surprise, the Arizona was the first to sink, followed by the Oklahoma, California and West Virginia, the Utah capsized and the Maryland, Pennsylvania and Tennessee all drowned. The Nevada tried to fight back but had suffered so much damage that they had to sink themselves to save the men.

9 American pilots managed to get into the air and shot down 12 'enemy' planes, this was, and is, the single greatest defeat in US Naval history. The Japs moved on to all the other air bases in Hawai'i and inflicted so much damage that the Americans couln't retaliate for months.

That is the reason why the Americans entered WWII and there war was ulimately won when the Japanese surrendered to them aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo bay some 4 years later.

I thank you.

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Photos

Wall of memories
names of all those who perished

USS Arizona Memorial
floating over the sunken wreck

Sunken vessel
oil still leaks from it

Arizona Survivors
Interred with their shipmates

Wreck
As it was then, and now