Yesterday I spent practically the whole day on a bus site seeing. And by site seeing I mean we went to a grand total of three "sites". Me and a few friends went on the circle island tour. It was a tour done through the school for orientation so we could get a better understanding of O'ahu. Our first stop was the Pali Lookout Point, which was a gorgeous spot in the mountains where we could look out and see a beautiful view.
It was so beautiful! I love how lush this island is. I also love being able to look to one side and see a clear blue ocean and then look at my other side and see tall green mountains. It's absolutely surreal.
After the lookout point, we all piled back onto the buses and drove to the USS Arizona Memorial, or Pearl Harbor. We walked around the different exhibits for about an hour, learning more and more about the tragedy until we were ushered into a theater. We watched a video about Pearl Harbor and the attack, it was really sad and eye-opening to see the actual destruction and terror that the Japanese inflicted upon the US. After the movie, we took a ferry over to the actual memorial. The Pearl Harbor memorial was built on the remains of the USS Arizona, the ship that took the biggest hit during the attack. As you walk down the corridor of the memorial, theres a chunk cut out of the floor with railings so you can look down and actually see the sunken USS Arizona. At the end, there's a room with all the names of the 1,177 men who died that day. There's one spot on the left side of the memorial (if you're walking in from the entrance) that you can see oil droplets rise to the surface and spread out. When the USS Arizona was hit, a lot of the oil exploded with it. However, some remained on the ship so from then and for the next 50 years, little oil droplets will continue to rise to the surface from the remaining oil supplies. They sometimes call them the "tears of the Arizona" or "black tears", claiming it is the ship mourning all the lives lost on December 7, 1941. The history channel website had a cool picture where you can see the oil and the ship:
I took a few pictures myself of what I saw. Overall I would definitely say that Pearl Harbor is one of those sites you must see at least once in your life.
If you look closely you can see a little black dot in the center of that oil. That's what rises to the surface and then expands.
The USS Nevada also was one of the ships that was badly damaged.
I really did enjoy this trip to the USS Arizona memorial and I feel like it helped me better understand the events of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Definitely made me even more proud to be an American/my love for America definitely grew.
After Pearl Harbor, we stopped at Walmart because we are college kids in Hawai'i. Here, there's only 1 Walmart and 1 Target on the whole island of O'ahu. And it's an hour away from Laie, where BYU is. So there was a lot of abnormal excitement about going to Walmart. Overall, the day was long but really good. I got to do a lot of stuff I wouldn't normally get to do because not many people have cars out here, especially freshman.
♡,
Nina
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