Pearl Harbor & More Waikiki!

The wall with all the names of the men who died on the USS Arizona 

The American flag hangs over the unique memorial building...

Josephine (Denmark) & Luiz (Brazil) with 

the battleship Missouri in the background

The Awesome Hawaii expedition - Pearl Harbor's USS Missouri battleship and USS Arizona Monument ---

Today we got up a little earlier than usual to go to Pearl Harbor. Our bus driver, Rhonda, picked us up at 8:00am and took us to the legendary Pearl Harbor NAVY base. 

Before we could go up to Ford island, an officer checked our bus for bags and stuff we couldn't bring into the memorial zone, he also told us that we couldn't take pictures from the bridge as we crossed over to Ford Island to get to the battleship.

As soon as we arrived to the USS MISSOURI we split into two groups. 

The yellows started out with the tour of the battleship while the reds went to do some cleaning. Our guide told us about the life on board the ship and how they made the "floating society" work. After the attack on Pearl Harbor on the 7th Dec. 1941, the ship got hit by a kamikaze plane and got damaged. Other than that, the ship didn't get any more damage during the three wars "she" fought in. There were never any battle deaths on the ship or anything. Today it's a museum in Pearl Harbor because it is the ship where the Japanese surrendered and World War Two ended.

Afterwards, the groups changed and the reds went on the tour while the yellows did our volunteer project. The volunteer project we did was to help keep the ship clean, so we got some cloths and cleaned different areas inside the ship for 15-20 minutes. It was so worth the effort we put in to get the forty-five minute tour for free! At the pier right outside the battleship, we had some time to buy souvenirs (a lot us us bought the reproduction of the newspaper from the Attack on Pearl Harbor on the 7th Dec.) and took a nice group picture by the flags.

Next, we went back to the bus to go to the USS Arizona memorial. When we arrived, we went to see a short documentary about the happenings at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack on the island was at 8 AM and the Japanese Military came in two waves with a total of over 300 planes and bombed the harbor. A lot of ships were sunken or badly damaged. The USS Arizona was hit by a bomb that hit the ammunition storage room and made all of their bombs and bullets fire, so the ship sank within 7 minutes! On the Arizona itself, 1177 Marines and Sailers died and during the 2 hour attack, a total of 2400 Marines, Sailers, and civilians lost their lives.

Once the movie was done, we took a boat ride to the memorial, which is built on top of the wreck of USS Arizona. At the memorial, we could see under the water what was left of the wreck after the NAVY used parts of the ship to repair other ships. Several times they tried to recover the bodies, but because of the technology level at the time, they decided to let the bodies rest in peace. Today there are still over 900 bodies in the ship. It's considered a cemetery because the ship became their tomb.

Something that we found really interesting, was that the ship is still leaking oil after being sunken for over 72 years... They say it is the ship and "her" crew crying "tears".

The boat took us back and, on our way to the bus, it started to rain heavily. We ran back to the bus and went to get lunch. We all ate different things, as we had so many different restaurants to choose from. When we all got full, we went back to the hotel and had some rest and time to chill at the beach or do some last souvenir shopping.

For dinner we stayed at our hotel and had a buffet on the 21st floor. The food was good, and afterwards we enjoyed the wonderful night view, and took many pictures over the Waikiki Beach and the lit up Honolulu skyline.

Aloha from--

Joakim Selfors (Norway)
Lukas Küppers (Germany).