2/26 Remembering WW II

We caught the city bus at 5:45 this morning and took the ride to Pearl Harbor and the Arizona Memorial. We got there a little before they opened at 7 and got into the first round of visitors to the memorial (8 AM). While we were waiting for our turn, we walked through the museum, which was very interesting. At 8, we went to the theatre to view a film on December 7, 1941. For the grandkids, this is the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. One of the battleships that was destroyed was the Arizona. They ship sank where it was moored and they built a memorial (see photo) to the men who died right over the ship. You actually can see some of the ship just beneath the water’s surface, which is very oily as the ship is still leaking all these many years later. It was a very solemn occasion, but I’m glad we went. When I went to elementary school, it was named after a native son of Groton who died on the Arizona – William Seeley. I remember bringing in pennies to help to build the memorial. We took a picture of his name on the wall of honor inside the memorial. From there we took a shuttle over to Ford’s Island and visited the Pacific Air Museum. They did a wonderful job with the exhibits and Dave was in his element looking at all of the WW II planes. We went back to the Arizona and Dave bought a set of books about the war from the author. We will carry one on the trip and the author will send the others by mail. We came back to Waikiki and put our feet up – it was too hot to walk around. Later in the afternoon we walked down to the beach, but stopped at the Army Museum (an old Army fort on the beach). This was Dave’s day so we spent some time looking at the war from the land perspective to round out the sea and air that we had done this morning. We finally did get to the beach and watched from the pier as a woman paddled by on her surfboard – the unusual thing is that she was also giving her dog a ride! (see photo) He seemed to enjoy it and was very good at keeping his balance. I stuck my feet in for a bit of a wade – the water was very nice. I hope to get these stitches out on Monday so we can go in for a swim! We had an early dinner and have just come back to the room to write the blog and to get everything ready for tomorrow. The shuttle will pick us up at 6:45 AM tomorrow to take us to the airport. Tomorrow we will be on the big island.