Hawaii Day 2 Pearl Harbor and Honolulu City Tour

Hawaii, Thursday, 2012-1-31

SBX moored in Pearl Harbor

I woke up at 4 but was afraid of going back to sleep because our tour started early at 6:45. It started this early because it was difficult to get the ticket to visit the USS Arizona Memorial. However, the bus was late because it had to wait for other guests in other hotel. We arrived at the ticket counter at 7:40, and the guide could only get the ticket for 13:15. He took us to tour the visitor center where we could see the Arizona Memorial Monument and the Battleship Missouri Memorial across the water on the shore of Ford Island. In the visitor center, there were many monuments commemorating the US lost in the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor. There was also a small museum containing the memorabilia of the attack. We also saw the distinctive white dome of Sea Based X-band Radar (SBX) moored next to the Ford Island in the habor. The radar was mounted on a semi-submersible drilling rig, and the whole unit can roam over the Pacific Ocean to detect any incoming ballistic missiles.

We finished the tour at 9:00, and then we had to decide if we want  to stay until the 13:15 admission to see the Memorial. Most of the people had committed to other tour which would start soon after noon time, and the guide would take them to continue the tour. We and three others decided to stay. We were told that another guide would come to pick us up at 14:20 after we had finished seeing the Memorial. This turned out to be a bad option because there was nothing to do in the visitor center. It would be much better that we continued the tour with the same group. The tour would have finished before noon time, and we could then come back to see the Memorial.

USS Arizona Memorial

At 13:15, we first watched a short documentary about the Japanese attack. I was surprised that the commentary in the film didn't condemn seriously the barbaric acts that the Japanese had done in the war. The movie lasted for about 20 minutes, we then boarded a boat to take us to the Memorial on the shore of the Ford Island not far away. The wreckage of USS Arizona was lying under water where it was sunk during the attack, and the remains of its personnel were still in the battleship. The only thing that was visible above the water was a large steel cylinder which was the turret on the vessel. A structure had been built over the midsection of the ship where the visitors would stand and look down into the water and seeing just a vague shape of the sunken ship. Names of soldiers who were died in the sunken ship were listed on the wall at one end of the Memorial. We stayed for about 10 minutes, and left when a new group of visitors arrived. I noticed that there was no Japanese visitor.

We returned to the parking lot and met our new guide. He was either arrogant or had received instruction from his office that they were not responsible for keeping us idle for 4 hours in the visitor center in Pearl Harbor. He told us that it was useless for us to complain and the office would not response.

He showed us the remaining sightseeing spots which were supposed to include in the tour. We stopped in front of the Hawaiian State Capitol, and saw the statue of Father Damien who came to Hawaii from Belgium. He volunteered to care for the people in the isolated leper colony in Molokai Island in Hawaii. He eventually died of the same disease. When we were there, a group of teachers was joyfully carrying out a demonstration seeking the support of the passing motorists. We then continued on to China Town, and stopped at a statue of Dr. Sun Yatsen beside a small river and took some photos. Sun came to Honolulu and received his education here till the age of 17. He later returned to Hawaii to promote and get support for his idea of revolution against the Manqing Dynasty. We then continued driving through the core of the small China Town. I saw a tent on the pedestrian where apparently someone had decided to camp. The street was clean and there were not many stores opened.

We stop in front of ‘lolani Palace and took photo of the statue of King Kamehameha in front of Hawaii Supreme Court. The king was originally a chief in the Big Island (Hawaii), and he was the first king united the whole Hawaiian islands. ‘lolani Palace was built by King Kalakaua after his Europe visit. It was completed in 1882 after 3 years and $340,000  in cost. It was the monarch residence until the kingdom was overthrown in 1893. We then made a short stop at a jewelry shop.

Ching had learned that there was a large duty free store in Waikiki and it was not far from our hotel. The guide was very eager trying to get us a card to shop in the store. We later learned that he would earn points if we made any purchases. It turned out that we had to change airplane in San Francisco on our return to Canada, and therefore, we could not buy duty free goods in Hawaii.

The store had three floors. The first floor sale Hawaiian products like macadamia nuts and coffee. I saw many Japanese as well as Chinese shopping. The second floor was mostly for cosmetic product. They had the Hawaii beauty queen stationed on this floor for taking photos with customers. The third floor was for jewelry and watches. The customers in these two floors were all young and middle age Chinese. They were buying the expensive brand name products. There was a promotion going on serving music, snack foods and wines to the visitors. We ate a lot of them and skipped our dinner.

It was dark when we started walking back to our hotel. The wide pedestrian was full of tourists. And there were many places close to the street showing Hawaiian music and dance. At night, we were surprised by the large noise of fire display. It was fired from the sea not far from our hotel. Our room was on the 25 floor, and we could see the display very clearly from our balcony starting from its fire on the water to its explosion in the sky. 


More photos could be seen in lku99999 Picasa Photos Album in Google.