Wednesday: Pearl Harbor

I like me some history.  Not so much proper English, but I do like me some history.  History was always my favorite subject in school.  Whether it's due to parental influence or just the way my brain works, I truly enjoy learning and in many cases re-learning about the events that shape a culture.  Hawaiian culture is rich with history, both since statehood and before.  Seeing where the Japanese attack on December 7th, 1941 took place is seeing where one of the truly major events in our country's short history occurred.

Wednesday morning, I started out pretty early to make sure I had plenty of time to see the USS Arizona Memorial.  My first attempt to make it out to Pearl Harbor didn't go so well, so I over-prepared and made sure I knew my walking path to the bus stop, route times, etc.  It was over a mile walk to get to the proper bus stop, but the traveling party of Bob Marley and the Wailers kept me company (Marley is huge in Hawaii, and for some reason that makes sense).  I made sure the bus driver knew my intentions, just in case there was another missed stop fiasco.

Upon reaching the main ticket office, I asked when was the next available ferry ride to the USS Arizona Memorial and was told the next spot open was at 11:30am.  It was just past 9am.  They usher a different tour group every 15 minutes, so the fact that there are 9 trips that are already full this early on a Wednesday in October speaks to the number of visitors to this place throughout the year.  So, I had a little time to kill.

Shots of the area known at Pearl Harbor

There was a small walk-through museum that told the story of the lead-up to the attack and a detailed description of the actual day.  An angry little Chinese man sat outside the entrance, selling an audio assistant to the museum.  While there was no charge to enter the museum, this guy was charging for these audio headsets.  He wasn't being very nice to the man in front of me and seemed a bit petty and out of place in such a solemn place.  While waiting to overpay for one of these headsets and deciding whether this man was employed by the museum or an independent seller of headphones, a nice lady offered to give me her headphone set.  I gladly accepted, saved some money, forgot all about the unhappy little man, and gave my first "mahalo" of the trip.  Did my southern drawl sound a little funny saying the Hawaiian phrase?  Only that lady could say for sure, because it just feels strange saying it back home.     

Random thoughts from my visit:

1. I am a plaque reader.  If this wasn't the case, my two hour wait would have been pretty dull.  I'm not sure if I'm in the minority here, but when visiting a museum of any kind I end up reading every piece of plaque information I can soak up.  However, each individual plaque has about three sentences to gain my total attention (or read the entire entry).  There weren't many snoozer entries in this museum.

2. Nearly half the visitors at the memorial were Japanese.  This is the case all over the island, but this was the only spot where I noticed.  This is obviously not a bad thing, but it is interesting how far we've come in a fairly short amount of time.

3. This attack took place during peace time.  The war was certainly already going on, but our involvement was limited.  Our stance of non-interventionism since World War I had been eroding over the year leading up to the attack, but we were still trying to sit this one out.  The US had not officially entered the war at this point, which can certainly account for the level of surprise and military success of the attack.

4. Most accounts agree that our defenses would have been able to successfully repel a ground assault or a battleship lead naval assault.  The idea of an attack from the air seemed very unlikely at the time. 

5. Over 400 planes were launched from a Japanese aircraft carrier for the attack, and unfortunately this was something we were not ready for.  The Japanese only lost 29 planes in the early morning attack (20 on the second wave which is probably why the planned third wave did not occur).  This method of transporting attack planes in large numbers via aircraft carrier changed warfare and made the strategy of using battleships nearly obsolete.

6. Special torpedoes were developed so planes could drop them and not have them wasted by hitting the ocean floor instead of their intended targets.  The shallow waters around the island of Oahu made an underwater attack incredibly difficult.  The Japanese developed this special torpedo to combat this exact problem.  To successfully launch them, planes had to fly low (under 60 meters if I remember right), slow down significantly (sometimes by lowering landing gear), and get dangerously close to their intended targets. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_91_torpedo

7. I couldn't help but recognize the celebrity voices used for both the video and audio portions of the tour.  I'm pretty sure the voice of Jamie Lee Curtis lead us through the audio portion of the Arizona Memorial walk-through.  Abby Bartlett herself, Stockard Channing, was the voice-over during the video before the boat tour.  I thought these were two interesting choices, but they were pretty solid.

8. The USS Arizona still sits under water.  Those who manned this ship were entombed within it and were not able to escape.  The memorial was literally built on top of it's resting place.  Oil can be seen in the water around the sunken battleship, because a small amount of oil (about a quart/ day) still leaks from it even now.

The names of the men entombed on the Arizona.

9. I learned that 2386 people died that morning.  1177 of those were the direct result of the explosion that crippled the Arizona.

A portion of the USS Arizona that is above water.

Overhead shot of the USS Arizona Memorial.

I'm glad I made the trip to see this.  It's difficult for me to fully comprehend what occurred here back in 1941.  Random things kept coming to mind while I toured the area.  The Hawaiian Islands are in the middle of the ocean, so aid was not readily available from the mainland.  All the injured and dead were dealt with by the staff already on the island.  There's no way they were prepared for that kind of devastation.  I kept wondering how President Roosevelt reacted to the news that most of his Pacific Fleet had been destroyed, and the eventual realization that our country now had to enter a second world war.  How would the average person have reacted to the news of the attack?  My mind kept drifting back to September 11th, and the sense of uncertainty and fear that followed.  The two events are easily comparable, and the first-hand video accounts were eerily similar to those I remember hearing in the days following 9/11.

It was a good morning, and I really enjoyed discussing it with my friends that night.  One of the few things I planned well during my vacation was the alternating of beach days and historical days.  My Thursday at Waikiki would be a nice change of pace.