What an interesting day. We got up Monday morning at 3:00 to get to the Honolulu airport in time to catch our flight to Sydney, Australia. Got to the airport a little after 5:30 am and immediately ran into a problem. Turns out, the flight from Honolulu the previous day had been cancelled because of a mechanical issue and all the folks that should have gone out on Sunday were now going out on Monday...in our place. So, after a while we were told we'd be leaving at 11:00 pm Monday nite the 28th and arriving in Sydney around 6:30 Wednesday morning the 30th. The airline was good enough to book everyone a room in Honolulu and so we went back to the room and headed back over to Pearl Harbor for the day.
When we were at Pearl Harbor on Sunday we hadn't had time to see the USS Missouri, so that was our first stop. The Missouri was the last US Battleship commissioned, entering service in 1944. It was also the ship where the surrender documents for Japan were signed in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. The ship is 887 feet long and displaces 45,000 tons. The ship was decommissioned in 1955 and then refitted and recommissioned in 1984, seeing service in the Desert Storm, and was finally decommissioned the second time in 1992. She has been on display in Pearl Harbor since 2009 in the same spot that the USS West Virginia was berthed on the day of the Japanese attack of December 7, 1941.
This will give you some idea of the size of the ship:
Here you can see six of her nine 16-inch guns, each capable of firing a 2,700-pound shell to a distance of 25 miles:
The actual spot on the ship where the 1945 surrender ceremony of the Japanese forces in Tokyo Bay was conducted is marked with a plaque:
A copy of the actual documents signed by MacArthur and the Japanese delegation is also on display.
Before we went to Pearl Harbor, we visited the "Punchbowl" again so we could spend some time there. The Punchbowl is in the hills overlooking Honolulu and is formally known as the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. It became a military cemetery after the Pearl Harbor attacks and has seen service people buried there ever since. The setting is beautiful and the cemetery is every bit as breathtaking as Arlington Cemetery near Washington, DC.
This is a view approaching the central monuments that contain the names of every soldier, sailor, airman, or marine that is buried at the cemetery:
And this is a picture from the top of the memorial looking out toward Diamond Head:
As you can see, it's a beautiful tribute to those who gave their lives for our country.
We finally left Honolulu around 11:30 pm on Monday night and arrived in Sydney around 6:30 am on Wednesday morning. The flight itself was about 10 hours. Ugh!
But...this is the furthest West we have been, the furthest South we have been, the first time we've crossed the Equator, and the first time we've crossed the International Date Line...
Anyway, we will be in Sydney for six more days before driving down to Canberra for a couple days.
More to follow!
