Pridal-aventure

At sunset the 24. of january we left Honolulu and at sunrise the 25. we anchored at Lahaina on Maui the second largest island in the Hawaiian Islands.
The island of Hawaii is by far the largest island in the group with two active volcanoes - Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. Population wise Oahu is by far the largest.
I joined a motor coach excursion to the panoramic Maui.
Lahaina was once the big place for whaling. There are several Hump-back whales in the warm waters around Maui. Today they are all protected, so the city has to manage without the whaling.
Maui consist of two mountain ranges - dormant vocanoes - like Oahu, and between them a wide valley where most of the people live.

The 8 Hawaiian Islands

Maui

water ....

water ...

water anywhere

The Portoguese garden in the valley

The Japanese garden in the valley

The Korean garden in the panoramic valley

Old whaling center in Lahaina

Todays whalers

Chinese New Year celebration

The year of the dragon

What did I say ?

My way - in my tree in the shadow

                                               In background the main root of the big tree
                                      By the way it is the largest tree of its kind in the world
            This tree is one system where the branches has reach the ground all over the square

Hawai is a group of 8 small islands.The population is about 1,4 million inhabitants.
a mixture of Philipinoes, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, White Americans, White Europeans and the original Polynesians.

Approaching Oahu

Diamond Head Crater Honolulu

Green to port - red to starboard

ALOHA tower ligned up - OK

That is where we get off the ship

My motivation for going to Hawaii was Pearl Harbor - not Waikiki Beach.
I wanted to know why the American Forces were caught with their pants down and thus made it rather easy for the Japanese to do what they did.
To day I heard that the American Generals and Admirals were very worried about sabotage in Honolulu due to the fact that a rather high percentage of the population here were of Japanese origin.
That was why the battleships were lined up on battleship row and all the aircraft lined up wingtip to wingtip in the middle of the airfields. In that way they were easier to survey against sabotage from individuals and submarines.
Why all the "warnings" about something out there was not as it ought be, were overheard, is already known from TV-shows and movies.

The 23. of january at 1600 hrs local time we reached Honolulu.
I joined an excursion to Pearl Harbor by motor coach to attend a patriotic evening with sunset serving of cocktails and hors d'oeuvres aboard the battleship USS Missouri.
"Mighty Mo" as she often is called is best known as the site at the end of World War II where General Douglas MacArthur, on the ships decks, accepted the official full surrender of Japan in september 1945.
The Mighty Mo is built in New York in 1944.
After having been in and out of commission several times she is now moored on battleship row right at the place where USS Oklahoma was sunk the 7. of december 1941.
She is now a museum for retired "obsolete" battleships.

Mighty Mo

Welcome aboard

Right below that coffin lies USS Arizona - seen from Mighty Mo

Big gunns - turret 1 and 2

Kamikaze attack on the side of Mighty Mo at the battle of Okinava

Big guns turret 3

Worl War II settled at the Mighty Mo

Right here it happened - disc in the deck

In detail

Umezu - MacArthur

Gun food

Man food

The 24. of january I went to the USS Arizona Memorial Park at Pearl Harbor.
It is a modern memorial park with a movie theatre and a lot of different exhibitions.
Climax is reached with a boat trip to the Arizona Memorial itself.
I was surprised to see so many japanese tourists - or were they chinese - hard to tell ?
Anyway they behaved properly.
The americans has gone soft in the information shown in the theatre.
They do not give all the blame to the japanese, they admit that the oil-embargo which President Roosevelt threatened to inforce was contributing to the tension between the two countries.