Our Travels in a Nutshell: Honolulu

Thursday, October 1

It was an early start for all of us as our tours required us to be ready by 7:20am. Tony went on a Pearl Harbour VIP Military Base Experience tour, while the 3 of us went on a small group tour of Pearl Harbour. This was a good decision as there were only 15 of us, and we had a great tour guide/driver called Tony!

Pearl Harbour is about 30 minutes drive from where the Volendam was docked, and there is a lot to see and do there related to the attack on it on December 7, 1941 which brought the USA into the Second World War. The first site we visited on Ford Island was the memorial to the Oklahoma, one of the battleships that were sunk with a large loss of life. Not far away was the battleship Missouri on which the surrender document was signed in Tokyo Bay to end the war, and the "mighty Mo" has now been turned into a museum.

On board the Mighty Mo

Commissioning ceremony, near the spot where the surrender document was signed

We were given a guided tour for 30 minutes and then left to roam around other parts of the ship to get a feel for what life on board might have been like - we much prefer our current ship and life on the water as we know it, but we owe our gratitude to all who served so we can enjoy the lifestyle we have today. While on the tour there was a commissioning ceremony for a man who was being promoted to Major, and he had his family and military family there to witness it - not something you see very often.

We could have spent longer than the hour we had to roam about the Missouri, but we had to drive back to the main site on the mainland to access the Arizona memorial. Our allocated time to see the movie about the attack and then visit the Arizona memorial was 11:15, so we had time to visit a couple of the other museums that depicted different aspects of how and why Japan took the course it did and the history of the 1930s and 1940s, from individuals to Hawaii's involvement and of course the world war.

The Arizona memorial is built perpendicular to the hull of the ship, and there were over 1100 sailors who lost their lives in the December 7 attack, and most of them were left in the wreckage, thereby converting the wreck into a cemetery. Some of the survivors who have since died requested that they be buried with their crew mates, so it is a very special place to Americans.

Approaching on the launch

Exposed gun turret, and oil still leaks from the Arizona!

Viewing area on the memorial

After we left Pearl Harbour we drove through Punchbowl cemetery which contains the bodies of lots of service people who died in World War 2, and the views from there are spectacular.

The last part of the tour took us through the downtown area, most of which we had seen yesterday, but Tony had some good stories to keep us entertained so it didn't bother us. Honolulu is a beautiful place and requires a longer stay to really enjoy it and to get further afield on the island of Oahu - I'm sure there will be another visit sometime in the future!