Arrived here yesterday after a great adventure in Japan. Will post details later. Would love to go back and explore further. Hope you are all well. Now it's time to explore Honolulu. CAL... read more

The Okinawa Peace Memorial Museum is located on the southern tip of the island. In 1945 the bloodiest battle in the Pacific began. It started with 90 consecutive days of bombing a “typhoon of steel” that disfigured mountains; leveled cities, destroyed the cultural and changed the topography forever. The Japanese military had sent large forces to fight a battle of attrition to gain time to fortify the Japanese mainland. Civilians were conscripted and the propaganda machine continued to tell of barbaric treatment if one was captured by the Americans. One particularly tragic consequence is fathers killing their daughters to spare them the brutal rapes they were suffer at the hands of the American soldiers. Imagine how devastating it would be when they found out the reality of the treatment of POWs. Casualties are estimated to ... read more

We approach Iwo Jima just after dawn. The peak of Mt. Suribachi rises from the sea. The weather is appropriately cloudy with rain predicted later in the day. Pads of whales greet us both port and starboard. As we sail closer, the rest of the island appears looking like a flat plain to the east. But that is an illusion. The island has terraced ridges in the east, is flat in the middle with Mt. Suribachi on the West. It is currently a military base for the Japanese and we were lucky to receive permission to cruise within five miles of shore. Normally the Japanese enforce forty-mile territorial waters. It is in the flat middle where the invasion began on 2/20/45. The island had strategic value being equidistance from Manila and Tokyo. But it’s emotional significance ... read more

While Saipan’s culture has been influenced by the US, it is less developed than Guam. The northern end of the island has neither electricity nor water infrastructure and is maintained much like a national park. Despite pressure from developers, the locals have repeatedly voted to keep it that way. It is on the north end that my tour was concentrated. The first stop was the Blue Grotto, a collapsed cave when divers can experience one of the great cave dives. One enters the water in a turbulent shore side pool and swims through one of three tunnels to the sea. Turtles, sharks and other marine critters make their home there. It is a dive for only the most experienced. There are 112 steps down to the pool. Six Chinese tourists who were taking pictures during a ... read more

Think about your first imaginings of a romantic Pacific island and you are probably seeing Yap. It lies low in the water, surrounded by a reef and lagoon. It is not dramatic like Hawaii or Bora Bora but it so natural and beautiful it’s like you are Robinson Caruso landing on a deserted island. The island is part of The Federated States of Micronesia, a republic, but legislative decisions must be approved by the tribal chiefs, there are fourteen, and by the head chief. Movements to open the islands to development have so far been resisted by the Chiefs. Only the Yapese can own land. Our guide who was born here but to parents from Palau cannot own land or fish the waters off someone else’s land. If he wants to fish, he goes with a ... read more