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Published: July 23rd 2014
Up early again this morning to head out to the airport at 5:45am. (This vacation stuff is exhausting!) We flew to Oahu for our all-day tour of Honolulu and Pearl Harbor. Our tour bus took us first to the Punchbowl cemetery which is a military cemetery in Honolulu. Service members from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf war are buried there. Also Ernie Pyle, the famous WWII correspondent. It really was a very beautiful setting. Then we got a tour of some sights of old Honolulu - a gorgeous palace which was the residence of the last several kings (and one queen), the famous King Kamehameha statue, and an old church built out of coral. Which was not coral-colored, but still cool. Though Patti and Allison had high hopes, there were no sightings of Steve McGarrett from "Hawaii 5-0." Sadly.
Our tour then took us to the Pearl Harbor Memorial. We were all very moved by what we saw and learned. There was an introductory film which showed footage of the day. It's one thing reading about it but quite another to see the destruction first-hand. The most sobering part of the tour was when we went out to the
USS Arizona memorial. That's the ship that's still at the bottom of the harbor, with 1177 men still on her, also. You can look down into the water and see one of the gun turrets, and oil that is still seeping out of the wreckage. There's also a wall of remembrance, with all the names of the men killed on the Arizona. There were 23 pairs of brothers, and one father-son pair. To say that it's sobering doesn't begin to describe it.
We then toured the USS Missouri, which is the battleship where the Japanese signed the documents of surrender in 1945. Learned a lot there about the later days of WWII. The Missouri was hit by a kamikaze late in the war, but the damage was minimal. Of course, the pilot of the plane was killed, and it turned out that the crew of the Missouri recovered his body. The captain of the ship ordered that he should be given a military burial at sea, and he was buried the next day in a hastily-sewn Japanese flag. The captain explained to his crew that though this young man (19 years old) was our enemy, he deserved the respect
of the Americans as a fellow serviceman who gave his life for his country.
All in all it was very informative, and we were all glad we spent the day learning all that we did.
Back home, we had a late dinner at Tommy Bahama's - just a short walk away. Tomorrow - surfing lessons!
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Chris Santy
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Book-em Danno
Sadly Jack lord has been dead since 1998, and I don't recognize the new 5-0. To be honest, the Arizona Memorial is about the only thing I really want to travel all the way to Hawaii for. And "surfing lessons??" You just get on the board, avoid the sharks and ride the wave. Glad you all are having a great trip.