Wanderung 26

Bob:

Although ports of call on cruises are often quite brief, ending by the early afternoon, Honolulu was an exception in that we arrived in the early morning and stayed in port until after 10 p.m. That reduced the time pressure of trying to get back to the ship by the usual late afternoon "all aboard" time. The increased time in port allowed us to plan to use the local bus system, called "The Bus", to get over to Pearl Harbor and back because we knew some bus would go there, but we also knew it would take a while to find out which bus, find the appropriate bus stop, and then rumble on out there with many a local stop in between.

Monika:

Bob:

As it turned out, Bus # 20 meandered from the Aloha Tower area westward to the airport and then further on to Pearl Harbor. We finally found that out by asking a bus driver because we couldn't find any bus schedules at the Aloha Tower where the Sea Princess had docked, and the "helpful"; shore agents just wanted to sell shuttle bus tickets for $30 apiece or taxi rides for $60 or so. When we found out that as seniors we could ride out to Pearl Harbor each way for $ 1.00 each, we finally understood why the agents seemed so reluctant to give us information on how to use The Bus to get out there.

The Bus was, of course, quite slow with lots of stops. Route 20 meandered through some of the more industrial parts of Honolulu before looping in to the airport terminals and then after about 45 minutes finally ending up at the gates of the Pearl Harbor museum complex. The national monument has four distinct pieces: the USS Arizona Memorial, the USS Bowfin submarine, the battleship Missouri, and the Pacific Aviation Museum. We had already seen the USS Arizona Memorial, so on this visit I purchased a ticket for the Bowfin submarine and the Pacific Aviation Museum for $28. Monika did not want to crawl into the tight confines of a submarine, so she just purchased a ticket for the Pacific Aviation Museum for $20.

We took the shuttle bus over to Ford Island where the battleship Missouri is moored and where the Pacific Aviation Museum is located in two hangars adjacent to the airfield, which appeared to still be in active use. Although it looked interesting, we skipped the stop for the USS Missouri and continued on to the Pacific Aviation Museum.

Monika:

Bob:

The first of the two hangars contained about 6 large display areas, each featuring a full-sized aircraft and two different types of informational plaques. The first type explained the facts and figures for the particular aircraft on display. The second type gave a kind of running account of the first stages of the war in the Pacific and the role of aircraft in each stage of the war. I really enjoyed the combination of both detailed and contextual information, so of course I had to read everything and our visit ultimately took over three hours, whereas many people could probably walk through the hangar in ten to fifteen minutes.

The first exhibit was on the Japanese Zero, a fighter aircraft that began the hostilities by strafing the airfields on Pearl Harbor and destroying hundreds of US combat aircraft. Examples of the types of torpedoes and bombs specifically developed by the Japanese for the attack were also on display, including a special torpedo designed to operate in the shallow waters of Pearl harbor and sink the outermost moored ships and a special bomb designed to be used by dive bombers to penetrate the decks of the innermost moored ships and sink them. It was clear to me that the attack on Pearl Harbor was both intricately and meticulously designed in advance as well as being extremely well executed.

But further exhibits documented the American response to the crippling blow to the US Pacific Fleet, starting with General Doolittle,s bombing raid on Tokyo, Japan. A re-created Mitchell bomber was on display, and just one look at that would give you the willies when you imagined trying to take that lumbering giant off the tiny, pitching flight deck of a carrier at sea. Nevertheless, it was done successfully and most of the crews survived after finally having to ditch their bombers after dropping the bomb loads on Tokyo.

Monika:

Bob:

I knew the basic story but I was surprised by two things. First, after the raid, Doolittle thought he was going home to a court martial for having lost all his aircraft, but he was instead rewarded with a medal and promoted! The second thing was that the Japanese killed over 240,000 Chinese who were just suspected of helping the bomber crews escape into Allied territory. The sheer barbarity of that type of slaughter, (as well as other similar events like the Rape of Nanking), help clarify why to this day China and Japan have a politically uneasy relationship.

The Battle of Midway came next and was important because the Japanese advance across the Pacific was effectively stopped there and four of their aircraft carriers destroyed. The museum brought home to me how WWII had changed the importance of capital ships so that the battleship truly became secondary to the role of the aircraft carrier, which projects force to far more distant points than can be reached by the guns of a battleship.

I also had not realized that the struggle for Guadalcanal had begun only six weeks or so after the Battle of Midway and had lasted for several months. It appeared to almost have been a toss-up, a relatively even contest for a long time. When we examined the facts of the losses on both sides, I was surprised that the losses of ships and aircraft pretty much balanced out on both sides, so materially it became a war of attrition. But one fact struck both Monika and I: the fact that the Japanese losses of men were around 25,000 despite a successful withdrawal at the end of the campaign, whereas American losses were less than a fifth of that. Clearly the battle strategy and tactics of the Japanese generals maximized rather than minimized the casualties of their own men. That plus the fact that the Japanese High Command left their armies to starve on isolated Pacific islands towards the end of the war showed just how little the individual soldier was valued by the military powers effectively governing Japan at that time. Such a tragedy.

The first hangar wrapped up with the training aircraft flown by President George Bush the first. Unlike his son, the first President Bush kept his flight logbooks and we could see his entries for flight hours in the pretty little yellow biplane used for primary flight training at that time. He also courageously piloted his Douglas torpedo bomber in attacking Japanese ships during the war, and was of course shot down for his pains and rescued by a submarine. Clearly he was quite a brave man.

Monika:

Bob:

We had lunch in the little cafe next to the gift shop at the end of the hangar, and I enjoyed my plate of pulled pork and potato salad very much. The second hangar in the Pacific Aviation Museum displayed post-WWII jet fighters and helicopters. A restored MIG 15 of the type used in the Korean War was hanging from the ceiling along with its American counterpart. I also thought I saw pieces of a MIG 21 or some such aircraft in pieces awaiting restoration, but that's a guess as there was no plaque explaining the situation.

Since I fly aircraft much more similar to the piston-engine, propeller-driven WWI and WWII aircraft, I cannot appreciate the fine points of modern jet-powered military aircraft as well as I can the older ones. There was, however, a pristine example of a P-40 Warhawk in one part of Hangar 79, together with a succinct account of General Claire Chennault's "Flying Tigers" and what happened to them after the U.S. officially entered the war and incorporated his pilots and aircraft into the US Army Air Corps that later became the US Air Force.

Monika:

Bob:

Having exhausted the aviation museum (along with Monika!), we took the shuttle back to the main museum complex. Monika investigated the gift shop and waited in the shade while I made a detailed investigation of the Bowfin submarine from stem to stern. I found it surprisingly spacious, especially compared to a German U-Boat of the same period (e.g. the U-505 at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry), but still quite small and quite deadly. Once the US submarine force replaced their defective torpedoes with ones that worked reliably, they essentially eliminated Japanese shipping by the end of the war.

I learned for the first time exactly how most of the US submarines avoided depth charge attacks by Japanese destroyers. Apparently the Japanese depth charges had a maximum depth of 300 feet, so the American subs would crash dive to 600 feet, rig for silent running, and try to slowly and stealthily work their way out of danger. Even so, however, the costs of lost men and submarines were, in the end, horrific. I did not know that the US submarine force lost 20% of the submarines fielded during WWII, and even that is low compared to the fact that only 1/3 of the German U-Boats sent out at the end of WWII ever came back. I suspect the Japanese submarine force also lost most of their boats and men, a sobering reminder of the costs of war. Indeed, from the deck of the Bowfin I could use a binocular rangefinder sight to see across the harbor to the USS Arizona Memorial, emphasizing the costs of WWII, and the USS Missouri where the war with Japan officially ended in 1945. Thank God we are friendly nations now.

Monika:

Bob:

We had both been on our feet many hours by the time I completed my tour of the Bowfin, so we headed back out to the bus stop. Bus # 20 didn't show up for a long time, but when we asked a Bus # 62 driver if he went back past Aloha Towers, he said he did and we jumped on board. When we were almost back into the city we were surprised to hear the driver announce a Costco store at one stop! Ian and Judith later recounted their story of taking a bus out to that Costco store and used Alex and Roya's Costco card to pick up a new Fuji camera with 16 megapixels and a 30X zoom for $ 180, plus 40 AA batteries to power it for the next few weeks. Such a deal! It also shows how friendly, cooperative, and trusting our tablemates were and why we enjoyed their company so much.

By then we were exhausted, but once back on the ship we had a quick dinner in the Horizon Cafe and then watched a hula dance performance put on by a Honolulu school that specializes in preserving that aspect of Hawaiian culture. The teacher who announced and interpreted the moves of each dance was very good, and seemed to be a sweetheart to boot, but the show was stolen by the children and teenagers actually doing the dances. The youngest of them could not have been more than 7 or 8 years old, and they were as cute as buttons! We may have over-reacted because the youngsters reminded us of our granddaughters who we had not seen or spoken to during the journey, but the other folks in the audience seemed to have the same reaction (possibly they were all grandparents too, of course). Astonishingly, even those very young children performed a 45 minute routine with about 8 different dances in perfect unison! That was a fun way to learn about a part of Hawaiian culture and end our day on Oahu, but I also think I started to really miss our home and children and grandchildren right about then.

Monika: