Third day (cont.) - USS Missouri

More pictures from the USS Missouri.

The guns of the USS Missouri looking over the USS Arizona Memorial and downtown Honolulu.

The Captain's Quarters.

The movies "Tora, Tora, Tora," and "Pearl Harbor" would have you think this is a control tower but it is actually a dive tank for practicing scuba dives.

These two buildings survied the attack on December 7, 1941 and still stand to this day.

Third Day - USS Oklahoma

I have wanted to visit the USS Oklahoma Memorial since it opened a couple of years ago. It is located on Ford Island just outside the USS Missouri Battleship Museum.

On the list of sailors who were lost on the USS Oklahoma when she capsized, I found Francis E. Dick. This is my grandmother's maiden name so he could be a relative. I'll have to find out.

No one was going to sell her for scrap. She was a typical Oklahoma woman and too proud to end up like that. She rests peacefully at the bottom of the ocean.

Each post stands for a fallen sailor.

The U.S. Flag over the memorial.

Second Day (cont) - USS Arizona

The USS Arizona Memorial as viewed from the USS Bowfin Museum and Park.

It looks like a white chapel sitting on the harbor.

I didn't realize until we were there that the memorial is only accessible by boat.

The flags of the battleships destroyed during the attack on December 7, 1941.

Parts of the ship are still visible above water.

Part of the moor where she sat that day is also still visible.

Note the sunken ship just underneath the surface.

Oil continues to seep out at the rate of a quart a day. It's said that the oil drops are the tears of the sailors who died with her that day.

The room at the far end has a list of all the sailors lost in the attack.

The windows in this room look out onto Ford Island and Pearl Harbor, giving the sense of stained glass in a church.

A solemn yet beautiful memorial.

Second Day - Pearl Harbor

On Sunday, August 16, we visited Pearl Harbor. The area where you board the shuttle boat to the USS Arizona Memorial is the USS Bowfin Museum and Park.

The USS Bowfin is held in place by enormous anchors and chains.

Here you can walk among many items taken from ships or submarines to see what equipment or weaponry was used during WWII.

Frazier looks through a periscope that was part of a conning tower for the USS Parche (SS-384), a sister ship to the Bowfin.

The conning tower is an eight feet diameter cylinder located above the control room of a submarine’s pressure hull. The conning tower contained equipment for steering the submarine and firing torpedoes. It was the command center of a WWII submarine and the battle station for the commanding officer.

A submarine rocket or subroc. An underwater-to-air-to-underwater anti-submarine missile was in use from 1965 to 1990. It was designed to be fired from a submierged nuclear fast attack submarine.

A 40-mm quad gun assembly, used on destroyer escorts and all classes of larger ships, consisted of four recoil-operated, heavy machine guns, designed primarily for anti-aircraft fire. Each gun had a firing rate of 120 rounds/minute and fired a 2 lb projectile at a maximum horizontal range of approximately 33,000 feet and maximum ceiling range of 22,800 feet.

The inside of a kaiten or suicide submarine.

‘Kaiten’ means to make a radical reverse in the course of events. It was an enlarged torpedo with a small cockpit, a periscope and manual controls for steering, speed and depth. It had a pure oxygen-fed kerosene-burning 550 horsepower engine and a huge 3,000 lb explosive warhead which could be detonated on impact or by an electrical switch controlled by the pilot.
Kaiten were transported by submarine to ‘firing position’ which was 3.5 – 4.5 miles from the target. The only kaiten known to have sunk a U.S. Navy ship hit the fleet oiler USS Mississinewa at Uluthi on Nov. 20, 1944.

The propellor of the kaiten.

Submarine Rescue Chamber

These chambers were used by the U.S. Navy for over 50 years to rescue crews of submarines stranded on the ocean floor. It had two chambers inside; the upper held two operators and eight passengers; the lower helped survivors to pass from the submarine’s escape hatch into the rescue chamber.

The first and only operation use of the submarine rescue chamber was in 1939 when the USS Squalus accidentally flooded her aft compartment during a test dive. Divers from the rescue vessel USS Falcon attached a downhaul cable from the chamber and make several trips to the surface until 33 survivors were brought to safety.

First Day - Waikiki Beach

My first trip to Hawai'i! We arrived on Saturday, August 15, 2009. I arrived first since booking complications caused Frazier to wait until the next flight out of LAX to Honolulu. I had a few hours before I had to pick him up so I did a little exploring along Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki.

This was the beach across the street from our hotel.

Beautiful landscaping along the sidewalks included waterfalls like this one.


Our first room had a city view. Although not ocean-view, the clouds perched on the mountains was breath-taking. It was a premium room but next to the elevators, which sounded like freight trains.