After 18 months in Groton and four years in Norfolk, I told Robert I wanted to go somewhere it wouldn't snow. The allure of the white stuff faded the first winter of my marriage. Pearl Harbor was the obvious answer.
I loved Hawaii. There's something wrong with you if you don't love that place. We arrived in late January, about a week after Linda's birthday. It was twenty degrees in Norfolk when we left; 70-something in Honolulu when we landed. Rob's sponsor and his wife met us at the airport with a duty van & I had a brief impression of city lights surrounding us as we were whisked away to the Navy Lodge.
The attack on Pearl Harbor looms large in a way there, and in another is as forgotten as the meaning of Dec 7th is to most people not military historians.
The Navy Lodge is on Ford Island, which you've probably never heard of unless you happen to be particularly interested in this piece of history. The control tower from the Naval Air Station formerly there is now being turned into a museum.
It's odd to look at that picture & realize I've walked past those buildings. They're still there, though now unused. The Navy has several pictures from Ford Island here. If you look at an aerial view of Pearl Harbor, you'll see that Battleship Row curved along the side of Ford Island. This is why the Arizona Memorial was so close to where we were initially staying. The "Mighty Mo"; the USS Missouri is still best reachable from Ford Island, & that's where you go for the USS Iowa memorial as well; the USS Bowfin (which of course is a sub) is at the other end of the bridge.
Sadly, I never went to any of those. I got pregnant with Esther the first week we lived there & was too sick during her pregnancy to do much of anything, and then the logistics of three kids stopped us from doing much else in the way of touristy stuff.
I'm still pissed I never got to go to the Tropic Lightning museum.
1 comment:
You should go now...It is a very moving tribute to our soldiers.
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