I am the Skipper

Today we had our own private tour of Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, the Arizona Memorial, the Oklahoma Memorial, and the Pacific Aviation Museum.  All of the places were fascinating--especially since we got to see them from angles that normal tourists can't because they are not allowed on site.  Our guide was one of the advisers for the film Pearl Harbor (the one with Ben Affleck) (he is also the host of that show called "Unsolved history"--in reality he is a national park service employee and very, very knowledgeable. His name is Daniel Martinez).  He did not like the final product so much, but one of the interesting consequences of the movie was that in cleaning up afterward the crew rediscovered some of the original damage done by the Japanese attack.  So, we got to stand on the airfield and see the marks made when Japanese aircraft strafed it 60 years ago.  It's somewhat unimaginable the amount of damage done by a single plane. 

The Oklahoma Memorial was very touching.  There were marble columns for each of the hundreds of men killed.  But the Arizona Memorial was the most interesting place we visited.  The ship is still there--with men still on board--rusting.  Almost 1200 men died on the ship on December 7.  Some of the survivors have chosen to be buried at sea with their shipmates in recent years.  The memorial itself sits on top of the ship and you can see pieces of it rising up on either side of the memorial. We had a private tour of the memorial and threw flowers in on the remains of the ship.  It was really touching to think how many young men died on that ship--average age somewhere around 18.  As we looked out across the water at the USS Missouri (the ship on which MacArthur and the Japanese signed the peace treaty) a huge rainbow spread out over the ship, encircling it.

A ship captained by two naval personnel takes you out into Pearl Harbor.  On the way back up to the visitor center I got to skipper the ship and then park it.  It was so fun getting to turn the big wheel. But, I found that I drive a ship like I drive a car--as I was parking it I made a bad turn and bumped it into the "curb" giving everyone a jolt.  I was skipper for a day but I don't think I will be recruited!  :)

Tomorrow we have panels where the survivors will talk and where Japanese who were in the internment camps will talk.