Pearl Harbor

Yes, we are back from Hawaii, we're sad to say. We got home yesterday and we are trying to deal with the cold and real life (with lots of make-up homework). Not fun. I took sooooo many pictures - I don't even know where to start. I took 570, and somehow narrowed it down to 420. No worries - I am not posting all of them!!! I'll still post A LOT though! Well I'm starting with the easy stuff. On Friday, we all went to Pearl Harbor. I am not one to get too excited to go to historic places, but then I always end up being fascinated. I didn't know too much info prior to the visit - probably because I had Schoonover for History (All you that had Schoonie know what I mean). I ended up learning soo much and I loved it, even though it was kinda sad. First, we went into the museum. They have some really cool stuff in there. They had a clock that they had found after the bombing. The clock wasn't destroyed, but the time stopped at exactly 8:06 when the bombing occurred. That is kind of neat. They had a bunch of handwritten letters from some of the men back to their families that I got to read through. It was cool to see what was going on in their lives back then. One guy said he had gained like 15 lbs in 2 months because the Hawaiian food was so good. (I gained about 15 lbs in 10 days so I know what he means about the FOOD!) I read through a telegram that a lady received when she found out she lost her husband. They were both so young and had two young boys. So sad. It just said, Mrs. whatever we are sorry to inform you that we lost your husband in action. I couldn't believe that that is how she had to find out - and it was dated for 5 days after the bombing. I can't imagine the feelings that those young wives and families had when they waited to get the news. They also had a lot of pictures on how the Arizona looked before and after the bombing. Next we went into a little video that gave some information on Pearl Harbor, which was very good cause I was totally lost about it. The only information I knew was from the movie. Sooo I'll explain everything in case you are a little rusty or just plain dumb like me. So the Arizona is one of the many ships that got bombed, but it was the one that had the most people die. All of the ships were able to be restored except for The Utah (which killed 58 people), The Oklahoma, and The Arizona (Which killed 1177 people). They have these white markers everywhere in the water so you can see where all of the ships were when it happened. So anyway....the Utah and Oklahoma were completely destroyed, but The Arizona is still there. It sunk, but it is close enough to the top of the water that you can still see the remainder of the top deck of it. Around 1000 men were trapped below deck when the ship was bombed (so around 177 fell off deck) and the other men drowned when the ship sank. They never got the bodies out, so all of the men are still trapped beneath the memorial spot. After the movie, we took a little boat ride to the memorial that is laid on top and across from The Arizona.

If you look close, you can see the ship under the water. A few of the parts still stick out above it. I have no idea what most of it is, but it's still cool I guess this is where they had their big canons?.... When you look down, you can still see oil in the water.. This is in the memorial. It is a list of names of all the men that died on The Arizona. I guess at the time, they had a lot of brothers enlist together - they had 38 total sets of brothers, and 23 of those sets of brothers died on it. And this is the dedication plaque that stands in the memorial. Pretty neat huh? Look how smart I got from visiting there. Awesome.