March 8 - Pearl Harbor Day

     The Valor in the Pacific memorial park in Pearl Harbor includes not only the memorial to the Arizona battleship, but also the Missouri battleship, the Bowfin WWII submarine, and the Pacific Aviation Museum.  In our five hours we managed to fit in only the battleships.
     

Dedicated in 1962, the memorial sits on piers that straddle the sunken ship.

The foundation of one of the main three-gun turrets.

"Black Tears of the Arizona" - Around a quart and a half of fuel oil leaks from the hull every day.

The remains of 1102 sailors and marines remain in the hull of the ship.  24 survivors who have since died have chosen to join their shipmates, their ashes interred in the hull.

This flag mast is attached to the Arizona.  Every time a navy, coast guard, merchant marine ship passes by the memorial, all hands line the rail and stand at attention.

Pearl Harbor remains the main base of the Pacific fleet.

Moored 550 yards away is the last American battleship, the USS Missouri.  The surrender documents that ended WWII were signed by the Japanese on the deck of the Missouri.  Thus, the start and end of America's active participation in WWII involved these two ships.

The Missouri now stands as a symbolic guardian over the Arizona.

You can wander around most of the upper decks of the ship. 

Below decks sailors and marines were crammed together.  And there were a lot of them - up to 2700.

At the top of the command chain, the captain had slightly swankier digs.

The tidy mess.  240 gallons of milk, 500 gallons of coffee, 210 dozen eggs, 200 pounds of bread, 1000 pounds of meat products - part of the grocery list to feed the crew every day.  Whew, and I think we have it hard when we feed forty on New Year's Day.

Hopefully the next time we come to Oahu we'll tour the Bowfin submarine and get to the Aviation Museum.

We're leaving Hawaii today

     Our plane takes off at 1:30 pm.  We've got a couple hours before our Airbnb host takes us to the airport.  I'm a few days behind on the blogging, and I'll catch up when we're at our son's place in Sacramento.

March 7 - Golf balls, Diamonds, and Bonbons.

     In our several passing-bys of Pearl Harbor we noticed a very large floating radar dome docked in the harbor.  Then, this morning, I looked out the window and saw it floating off to the southwest far out to sea.

(This is not my photo.  We never got this close,  If we had, we probably would have been ventilated  by sniper fire.)  

   Behold the Sea-based X-band Radar, an integral part of our Star Wars defense.  It cost $917 million to build, and has succeeded in over 15% of the tests it has participated in.  Wow.  There were plans to build two more, but I guess the defense dept. ran out of money.  

     The giant golf ball is normally supposed to be stationed in Alaska to keep an eye on missiles originating from Russia or North Korea.  But when it needs to be repaired, it makes its way to Pearl Harbor.  Because, you know, it's so much cheaper and easier than flying engineers and technicians to Alaska to do the work.  I'm sure it does a lot of good against the suicide bombers of ISIS.  Well, if the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor taught us anything, it's that we're always well equipped to fight the last war.  Still, it's sort of cool.

  

   Our plan for the day was to hike into Diamond Head.  From Waikiki it looks like a mountain range at the end of the beach.

Diana tries to get up the nerve to ask Fabio for his autograph; Diamond Head watches on dispassionately. 

But from a more elevated point of view it is obvious that DH is a volcano crater.

     The hike from the center of the crater up to the rim is a very popular stop on the tourist circuit.  But it's well worth battling the crowds.  We took a bus to a stop at the northern base of Diamond Head.  Walking along a road that tunnels through the side of the crater, we ended up inside, then walked up a steep path towards the rim.

Early in the 1910's the crater was fitted by the military with an elaborate tunnel and bunker complex  to help defend Honolulu from attack.  Now the hike to the top uses the old pathways.  This is a very steep set of steps that brought out the sweat.

 Then it's on through the labyrinth tunnel system.

 And up a rickety, rusty spiral staircase.

Artillery spotters looked out these narrow peepholes.

Finally,we made it to the top.  Waikiki and Honolulu are behind us.

A view of Diamond Head Lighthouse.

     Looking down into Diamond Head crater.

   After letting the breeze cool us off a bit, we hiked back down and found our way to a bus stop.  Next stop - the Honolulu Festival.  For twenty some years the city of Honolulu has run an annual love-in to bring together Japanese people from the homeland and their long lost relatives in Hawaii. It is held in various places in Waikiki. The convention center was home to a massive craft and trade show selling all kinds of products from both Hawaii and Japan, as well as staging a number of performances.

 Here, in the lobby of the Honolulu convention center, participants join in to do a Bon Dance. 

Here's a short video.  By the way, Diana didn't catch the part of the dance where I waltzed by. Can you believe it?

Next up were very energetic Kodo drummers ...

... as well as these Dojo drummers.  Let me tell you, the acoustics inside the convention center were very reverberative ... and loud.  After several minutes of chest-thumping, head-splitting thunder, I had to leave.

      We wandered around Waikiki for a couple hours, then took the bus back to our Airbnb, where we made dinner and ate out on the balcony accompanied by the night lights of the city.

March 6 - We take in the arts, and snoop around governmental grounds at night

     The Hawaii State Art Museum is free!  So, since it's only a ten minute walk from our place, we went over to visit.

 Home of the Hawaii Art Museum.  Almost all the historic buildings in Honolulu are in a central, ten block area of graceful tropical trees and large parks.

Nearly all the artwork is by past or present Hawaiian artists, or by outside artists who came here and were inspired by Hawaiian subject matter. 

Satoru Abe's copper cutouts reminded us of Kelly's artwork.

(We discovered this large-scale work of Abe's a couple days later near our Airbnb. I post it here because it fits better in the narrative.)

Tuffy?  Is that you?

We have a hard time turning away from reflective objects without taking a selfie.

We were delighted to discover that for one night a year Hawaiian state senators and representatives open their offices to the public to view their collections of art.  And it just so happened that this was the night.  The state capitol was built in 1969, and has elements that represents the Hawaiian islands, including the exterior pillars representing palm trees,

a surrounding moat representing the ocean,

and conical walls surrounding the chambers.  The outside is covered with lava stone.

The Senate room.

The central courtyard is open to the elements, a feature that works a lot better in Hawaii than it would in Ohio.

The open house was a rather classy affair, with a string quartet filling the hall with wonderful music.

 It was pretty cool seeing the art collections, and getting to talk to aides, as well as some of the representatives themselves.

Plus every office had a selection of goodies to eat.  We had cookies, brownies, crackers and cheese, and sushi.

 After the shindig closed down, we wandered around some of the other areas of the historical zone.  This is the Iolani Palace.

 Here, a statue of King Kamehameha stands in front of the courthouse.

This banyan tree crowds the courthouse parking lot.  I love those crazy trees!

March 5 - Random travel around Honolulu

     This was our last half day with the car, so we decided to drive through Waikiki before returning it to the rental place at the airport.

Part of the long beach at Waikiki.

     See the white bird at the right side of the photo?  It's a pigeon, not a seagull.  As I mentioned before, in our two months in Hawaii, we haven't seen a single gull.  Another bird that you won't see here is a crow. They were native to the Islands and are called 'Alala by the Hawaiians.  However, the last two living in the wild died over a decade ago.  (Around 100 remain in a captive care center in San Diego.)  

     That's pretty weird to me.  In our travels it seems the two most successful families of birds are the gulls and crows, seemingly able to live just about anywhere.  You even find gulls in the desert - the state bird of Utah is a California Gull for heavens sake.  I guess it's just one more thing that makes our 50th state unique.

Picnic lunch at a park on the beach.

The view of our picnic table through the banyan trees.

 Wind powered off-shore ...

... and flower-powered on.

This god of the forest hoists a mighty weight.  What's he doing here?

Most photos of Waikiki include a view of Diamond Head.  I thought I'd be different and give you a Diamond View.

After the "War to End All Wars", Honolulu built a natatorium in Waikiki as a sort of liquid War Memorial.  Only in Hawaii.  

The place is nearly in ruins now, although the city did put a coat of paint on it a decade ago.  But really, did it ever make any sense?  Here you are on one of the most swimmable ocean coasts in the world - miles and miles of awesome beaches - and you put in a salt water pool?

The one square mile of Waikiki has over 60,000 hotel rooms, making it one of the most densely populated spots in the US.  And yet, strangely, I'm quite attracted to it.  If you like people watching, this isn't a bad place to be. In fact, it isn't that far out of the realm of possibility that Diana and I return some winter and take a room for a week.  Maybe we'll learn how to surf then. 

It probably won't be here, however.  The Royal Hawaiian Hotel, built in 1927 and one of the first hotels in Waikiki, has rooms that start at $325/night, and that's without a view of the ocean.

Still, can't you imagine me paddling Diana around the waters of Waikiki?  Romantic, isn't it.

 For our last remaining minutes with the car we stopped briefly at Keehi Lagoon Beach Park.  It lies only a few hundred yards from the airport, and yet from this vantage point it looks like a tropical paradise, doesn't it.  

A different view shows how close the park is to the industrial area.  I don't think anyone swims here - instead it's a starting point for Hawaiian canoe racing.  From the lagoon there are protected waters all the way to Waikiki.

We returned the car, happy that after eight weeks of driving around Hawaii I managed not to hit anything, or anyone.

      We took the bus to our last Airbnb in the Harbor Towers in downtown Honolulu.  After stowing our stuff and showering, we walked down to Chinatown.  Unlike similar C'towns in other cities, Honolulu's doesn't feel as exotic when you walk around the neighborhood.  For one thing, it's not the tourist attraction that it is in other cities.  There are street signs that include Chinese characters, markets and stores and other shops packed with typical Chinese goods, and a few buildings have architectural flourishes evoking China.  But in those other cities, you feel like an interloper - a rare Caucasian wandering through the streets of Asia.  

     In Honolulu, the entire city is majority Asian, so you don't really cross a racial boundary as you enter Chinatown. Sadly, the streets were fairly empty when we were there, except for a crowded block where a movie or TV scene was being filmed, and many small groups of homeless people lurking on corners or sleeping in doorways.  

    We wanted to eat Chinese food, so we walked up and down several streets until we finally settled on a small diner.  I didn't take a photo, but later, while touring the Hawaii Art Museum, I discovered a painting that included the restaurant.

       The building on the left on the corner of the street was our dining spot.  Like Chinese restaurants everywhere, we had hundreds of poorly translated choices on the menu.  We tried asking questions, but the proprietors spoke little English.  Still, we had pretty good meals.

     More entertaining were the people we talked to while we were there.  A couple in their forties sat at a table near ours.  He was Asian, had a buzz cut, and wore a white T-shirt that only partially covered extravagant tattoos on his powerful arms. He had lit three incense sticks and was mysteriously waving them around as he sat at the table.  The owner began bringing out plates and plates of food to them - we didn't know how they'd eat it all.  Diana asked the woman about one piled high with greens, and on her husbands signal, she offered some to us.  This began a conversation that lasted over an hour.

      It turns out he's a Buddhist monk who has studied with master monks in the US and Thailand.  They were in the restaurant because a friend of the owners had asked him to come to their struggling place of business and expel the bad spirits that resided there.  He took no money for the service, as far as we knew - the abundantly burdened table servied as thanks from the owners.

     Interestingly, he didn't speak any Chinese, being Hawaii born and bred, and depended on his wife to interpret.  They became rather evangelical about his special connection to the spirit world.  She showed us many photos on her phone of the master monks they had met, people he had healed, and even photos of bad spirits she had taken in that very room while we were there. (Looked like dirty windows to us, but who are we to judge.)  Anyways, he informed us that he could tell we were good people, which, to tell the truth, was a relief.  We do tend to give ourselves a certain amount of credit for not being too much of a burden to the planet and its inhabitants.  But to have our fine opinion of ourselves confirmed by this future master was comforting.

     Tony, (for that was his name), told us that we should live our lives without worry, because, since we were good people, angels were protecting us.  After we left the restaurant and headed back to our place along darkened streets populated by shadowy figures, I tried to remember his reassuring words.  Still, we kept up a lively pace.  And somehow, we made it back, safe and sound.