Day 5-Pearl Harbor

The hubs and I spend Sunday going to Pearl Harbor and the other museums around there.  Its so sobering to take that water taxi over to the monument to the USS Arizona, to stand above what became a tomb to so many.  Before we went over we walked through the exhibit of some of the artifacts found on ship and read some of the story's that were told.  One, in particular, stood out.  It was a letter written by a woman to her sister, expressing anxiety over not knowing if her son was ok.  You could tell she was panicked just by the way the letter was so scattered one moment talking about the son the next asking about mundane.  At the end it tells you the woman lost both of her twin boys that day.  In the taxi my eyes lift up to the skies and try to imagine them filled with enemy aircraft and to see what those boys saw that day.  Trying to imagine the hopelessness they might have felt as they sat there like sitting ducks.  Of course I can't imagine but for some reason just trying feels like my own personal tribute to them. 

From there we went to Bowfin museum which is a real submarine.  I was pretty surprised at how big it was.  We were able to go down into it and see all the inards.  I don't think I would be good at being a submariner, not so much the lack of space but the lack of fresh air would creep me out.  Its a good thing that was never really one of my choices for occupation.  

Next we went to the USS Missouri, the Mighty Mo.  It was pretty interesting walking around that big battleship.  It was a 1.6 mile walk through the whole thing (I thought that was pretty amazing in its own).  We got to see a good amount of the ship, it was neat to look at the life of a navy sailor.  The part I thought was the most interesting is the deck where the peace treaty was signed in Tokyo harbor to end WW2.  We were able to sneak in with a guided tour for this last part and here him give all the added details into what we were looking at by walking us through that day.  It was neat to be able to see where the war started for us and where it ended with the Japanese.

After that we went to the Pacific Aviation Museum, which sucked.