Day Four- Pearl Harbor

Read about Day Three.

Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial are two things I have been hoping to show the kids for about a year.  When we began with Classical Conversations for homeschool last year, we studied US History.  And we spent a week talking about Pearl Harbor and the kids memorized a song about it.  We taught the kids about WWII in an age appropriate way, and I was excited to make this come alive in their minds.  

If you are planning to visit this area, officially called the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, please be aware of a few things. First (and allow me to get on my soap box), the memorial is FREE.  If you have a rental car, you do NOT need to book an expensive excursion or tour company to see this, it is a National Park.  It bugs me that if you just do an internet search, the things that pop up are expensive tour companies.  Some even have .org addresses!  The best place to start your research is the National Parks website nps.gov.  From there you can learn all about opening times, closures, costs, and available tours.  If you want to book a time to visit the memorial, you can do so at 60 days out for $1 per ticket.  Alternatively, you can show up when they open and get free tickets that they hold back for day-of visitors.  The tickets are for the movie and the boat ride to the USS Arizona Memorial.

Second, be careful what you bring with you.  If it is larger than a cell phone, you cannot bring it in.  You cannot bring in a backpack.  You cannot bring in a camera bag.  You cannot bring in a large purse. The official size dimension is 1.5x 2.5 x 5.5 and this rule is strictly enforced.  There are lockers available to rent.  Beware if you choose to leave your purse in your car.  Lock it in the trunk!  Thieves know about the rule and purses left in cars by tourists are easy pickin's.

Third, at the time of writing this (February 2019) you cannot go onto the USS Arizona memorial because the dock is unstable.  According to the National Parks website, it should reopen in March of 2019.  However, when we were there in January of 2019, they had not started working on it.  While it is closed, you can still watch the movie and then the boat will take you around the memorial, but you will not get off the boat.  It was still worth it for us.  

Ok, enough with my disclaimers, on to our day!

Our plan for the Valor in the Pacific Memorial was to check out of the Outrigger Reef, head to the Memorial, then check into Aulani in the afternoon for the rest of our stay.  Check out was easy and there was minimal traffic on our way to Pearl Harbor.  I had secured us 11am tickets for the movie and boat, and we were parking the car at 9am.  Perfect!

There is a lot more to do at the Valor in the Pacific Memorial than just the USS Arizona Memorial.  There is a museum, you can tour the Bowfin submarine, you can tour the USS Missouri battleship, and you can go to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.  The Mighty Mo' and the Aviation Museum are both located on Ford Island, an active military installation, so if you decide to tour them, a motor coach to the island is included in your ticket price.  Unless you are active duty military, then you are able to go on base yourself.  Rob and I previously toured the Missouri and the Aviation Museum, so this visit we focused on the USS Arizona Memorial and the Bowfin.

Since we arrived early, we were thinking of touring the Bowfin and then seeing the movie/memorial. When I went to pick up our tickets, they had 9:30 tour tickets available and switched us! We had a short wait and then we saw the film.  The film was very well done, including actual historical footage, a history of the battle and the war in the Pacific, and information about the building of the memorial.  The kids learned a lot, and it was appropriate, even for 6 year olds.  

After the film, they explained the rules of the boat ride to the memorial.  They explained that we would not be docking and that we were to remain seated at all times, then we boarded the transport boat.  The boats are actually US Navy boats and are crewed by Naval officers.  In their starched white uniforms, they take this duty seriously! The boat ride out and around the memorial was about 20 minutes.  Twice they stopped the boat so we could take pictures and pay our respects (from a seated position).  My pictures, surprisingly, are terrible. Rob and I spent most of the time narrating to the kids what they were seeing and picture taking was not a priority.  

Approaching the USS Arizona Memorial.

Two ships were docked at each of these pilings, this one marks the USS Nevada.

I could share hundreds of tidbits we learned about the attack, but I won't.  Please indulge me one fact.  The USS Arizona, over which the memorial was built, is still leaking fuel.  Because it was scheduled to head out the next day, the ship was full of fuel.  Despite the fires from the attack, experts estimate 500,000 gallons of fuel sank with the ship.  About 9 quarts of oil leak out each day.  People refer to these drop of oil as "black tears."

Our next stop was the USS Bowfin Submarine.  If you've ever wondered what life is like in a submarine, this is a must visit.  The USS Bowfin served 9 war patrols from 1943 to 1945, each patrol lasting about 2 months.  During her service she sank 39 Japanese merchant ships and 4 Japanese war ships.  She now sits in Pearl Harbor and is  part of the Valor in the Pacific Memorial.  Lucky for you, I took lots of photos.

Because she launched on the 1 year anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the USS Bowfin was nicknamed the Pearl Harbor Avenger.

The forward torpedo room was also a bunk room. Yup, some people slept on top of torpedoes.

Officers quarters, no torpedoes.

Up this ladder is where the periscope platform is located.

Anne pointed out that they had a mixer "just like mommy's!"

The crew mess.

One thing I have neglected to tell you, it was freezing on this day and windy.  Ok, so it was about 70 degrees and windy, but when you are expecting a tropical vacation, that's cold!

After touring the USS Bowfin, we had a quick lunch at the outdoor cafe (this place could seriously use some improvement in the food department) and then went through the submarine museum.  We learned a lot about subs and the role they played in WWII.  Another place I recommend visiting if you can.

Then we went to Ford Island, which is such a cool place to visit.  First, it's living history because you can see actual buildings that were hit during the attack.  You can see where the runway once was.  You can visit the Battleship Missouri and you can tour the Aviation Museum.  Second, it is an active Naval base.  There are families stationed there! Can you imagine living on Ford Island? Amazing.  And the base housing is really nice.  

As I said before, we were not touring the Mighty Mo' or the Aviation Museum this trip.  We did, however, show the kids some of the building with bullet holes from the attack.  And we visited the USS Utah, another battleship resting in Pearl Harbor.  The USS Utah is actually more interesting to see because it rests half out of the water, half in the water and it sits very close to the shore.

I guess Rob and I both had the same idea to take a picture of the other one looking at the ship with the kids.  Great minds!

That was the end of our time at Pearl Harbor.  Just for reference, we were on Ford Island, looking at the USS Utah at about 12:30.  So the USS Arizona, the USS Bowfin, lunch, the Submarine Museum, and driving around Ford Island took about 3 hours.  At this point, the kids were reaching the end of their patience with looking at cool historical stuff, so we loaded into the car to head off to Ko Olina and Disney's Aulani Resort.

Keep reading about Aulani!