WE GO TO PEARL HARBOR TODAY. But before that, a walk up to the top of Diamond Head is on the schedule. Although it's close enough that we could walk from the hotel that adds enough distance that the organizers have arranged for a taxi, which suits me fine because I'm beginning to feel the effects of more walking than I'm accustomed to. In fact, although I make it to the top without any problem, I'm glad to accompany another of our group on the shorter, more direct return path to the hotel when we've finished and leave the longer walk to the more ambitious members of the group.
Sunrise over Diamond Head, as seen from the 10th floor of our Waikiki hotel.
Entrance to Diamond Head now requires a timed entry ticket for non-residents; our taxi drops us in a staging area outside the park and we walk in through this tunnel.
The lower slopes of the bowl (it's a tuff cone, not a true volcanic crater, and at "just" 300,000 years old it's much younger than the rest of the island) are heavily vegetated and don't offer many photo opportunities. Once you clear the vegetation, though, the views begin to open up.
Views from the top are good in all directions. It's easy enough to see from up here why there are gaps in the suburban development pattern. Nearly every square foot of usable land has been developed by now, at least for many miles from Honolulu.
I've never before seen a blue STOP sign. In fact I still haven't: this one's on the longer route back to the hotel and I've taken the shorter option. My wife captured this image.
Just as I arrive back at the hotel I get a shot of a bird I've seen several times but never in a situation to catch a photo. It's a Brazilian cardinal; not really a cardinal at all, it and its yellow-beaked relative are members of the tanager family. They look very similar but this species has a crest where the yellow-beaked one doesn't. And the beak's a different color, now that I think about it.
After lunch our taxi returns and whisks us off to Pearl Harbor, where of course we'll see the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial. In fact that's about all we'll have time to see, at least in detail. The rest of the place (U.S.S. Missouri, U.S.S. Bowfin, etc.) will have to wait for another time.
While waiting for our entry time to come around we visit the collection of artifacts next to the Visitor's Center. There's a short film that details the attack per se but doesn't cover any of the politics and diplomacy that preceded it. That's probably just as well: sticking to the well-documented attack is far less likely to be controversial.
Tucked away in a corner, though, I find a display case dedicated to the experiences of a Japanese-American citizen of Honolulu, and in fact a serviceman at the time of the attack. It's good to see recognition of this aspect: the immediate hatred from the whites, the knee-jerk reactions of the President and Congress, and the long-lasting after-effects those reactions have had.
Finally our time arrives and we board the boat that ferries across to the ruins of the Arizona. We're reminded that it's a war grave, and asked to bear ourselves accordingly. At the far end of the interior we see the wall on which are inscribed the names of all the sailors and Marines killed on and entombed in the ship. There are over 900 of them, and it's sobering to reflect on that.
Approaching the Arizona memorial. Its arced top is an abstraction of the progress of the war in the Pacific: high points at the beginning and end, harder going in the middle.
Aha! Another bird bagged, on the grounds outside the Visitor's Center: the Java sparrow. I'd been seeing them, but as with others never at a moment when I could catch them with the camera. This blurry image is the best I could get.
