Stars and Stripes

Lots of stars and stripes on Friday October 28, 2011, when we visited Pearl Harbor.  It was our first chance to see the new Visitor's Center, which opened in December 2010.  Much of the content is the same as before, but the new VC is spacious and airy, and there are lots of open areas to enjoy the surrounding views from.  The flag above flies above the Arizona Memorial, always a powerful reminder of how truly unglamourous and horrifying war is.  I was fortunate enough to be the first one in and managed to get a shot of the memorial (below) before anyone else made it into the frame.

We chose to skip the submarine museum this time and tour the battleship Missouri, and take another walk through the (now expanded) Aviation Museum on Ford Island.  The Missouri is the historic battleship that was the site of the signing of the documents to officially end WWII, on September 2, 1945.  If you watch the newsreel footage on YouTube, and then stand on that very spot, you will  be amazed at how large it looks in the newsreel, and how small it is in real life! The Aviation Museum has expanded to a 2nd hangar and has increased its collection with an eye toward making it an even more impressive location to visit.   A word to the wise if you are visiting Pearl Harbor... it is literally impossible to visit all four sites (Arizona Memorial, Submarine Museum, USS Missouri and Aviation Museum) in one day, unless you are a jogger... so plan accordingly!

A Douglas Dauntless... one of the many beautifully restored aircraft in the Aviation Museum.