The USS Arizona Memorial

The reason to stop at Hawaii on our round the world trip was to visit Pearl Harbour. This natural anchorage on the island of Oahu was the place of the surprise Japanese attack on the American Pacific navy fleet, 7th December 1941.

The battleship, USS Arizona, was hit by a bomb which ignited the forward magazine hold and destroyed the ship in one huge explosion. 1,177 men on board at the time were killed.

Today the wreck lies where it sank, still visible just beneath the shallow waters of the harbour, an official war grave. A memorial has been built across (but not touching) the remains of the hull. It is open to the public as part of an organized tour.


The first part of the tour is a 30 minute documentary made from cine archive footage. Astonishingly, the moment when the Arizona explodes is captured on film. It is an incredible, shocking moment. You also see Presdient Roosevelt addressing the nation the next day speaking of the "diabolical act of treachery", and I wondered what the Japanese tourists were feeling at this point.


The audience was quiet when we were lead to the navy launch that would ferry us over to the Memorial. Manned by navy personnel in crisp white uniforms, it was carried out in a dignified, professional manner.
At the Memorial, the atmosphere was sombre, you could see parts of the wreck and there is still oil slowly finding its way from the depths to the surface.

At the far end of the Memorial there are the names of all those killed. I know that the Second World War claimed millions of lives and this was just a miniscule part of that, but you could not help being moved.

Birds of Hawaii: The Brazilian Cardinal

Slightly larger than a sparrow, this bird feeds on small insects and bugs, and also scavenges around tourists and their lunches when possible.

He is rather an attractive fellow; the name obvious from th cardinal red colour of his head ( a cardinal is an important person in the Roman Catholic church and wears a distinctive red hat).

Again, an information board provided the details:

The Mighty Mo

Moored up in Pearl Harbour is the battleship, the USS Missouri. Pride of the Second World War naval fleet, it was on board where Japan signed their surrender documents to end the conflict. Retired in 19xx, it is now a tourist attraction:

The reason for telling you this is that the nickname of the USS Missouri is the 'Mighty Mo'. And, on the spur of the moment, I brought a postcard of said battleship and sent it to Maureen (who, as you know, is called 'Mo') basically saying "I saw this and thought of you".

I hope she sees the funny side of this, because if she doesn't, I am so so dead.

Birds of Hawaii - The Dove

When we first saw these amusing little creatures we thought they were a type of large sparrow - a group of them were twitering excitedly around some food someone had thrown them:

Looking closely, however, their head movement when they walked (rather than hopped) suggested something from the pidgeon family - but the smallest pidgeon we had ever seen.

All was revealed by an information board we came across later in the day - the bird is a Dove; and hopefully you can read the description in the photo.

(By the way, note that it is not the 'Hawaiian Dove' , just 'Dove'; for the same reason we don't call the dove in the UK a 'British Dove').

Dear Santa

Dear Santa, if I'm a really, really, really good boy, can I have one of these for Christmas????:

The Pacific Ocean is vast!

Flying from San Francisco to the Hawaii islands seemed to take forever, partly because all you could see out of the window was sea. Miles, miles and miles of it. Google Earth proves the point:

In the picture, you can just see the Americas on the right hand edge, and Australia on the left hand; otherwise it's all water!

(By the way, you can also see the archipelago of Hawaii not quite in the middle - we are not even half way across yet!) The Pacific Ocean is big. Really big. Huge. It must be the biggest sea on the planet. What can you learn about it?

Geography Quiz No.3

Right, ready for another geography question? (I hope you are enjoying these questions as much as I am). Here is a satellite image of the area near where we are staying in Hawaii:

The city of Honolulu is on the left (west) of the image - if you follow the coast line to the right (east) you can see a peculiar circuliar feature on the headland - the question is: what is that feature?

To help you with working out what it could be, here is a picture from the circle towards Honolulu:

It's quite high up, isn't it? So, a good clue for you to think about. Answer in a few days.

Confused in Hawaii

I must admit to being confused about Hawaii and Honolulu - we all know the names, of course, but are they the names of the islands, the cities or the administrative name for the area?
After we got settled in our hotel, a perusal of the available tourist literature quickly cleared up the confusion.


Ok. are you ready?

The archipelago of Hawaii is the 50th state of the United States of America; its capital is Honolulu on the island of Oahu, which is also it's major city.

This state encompasses nearly the entirety of the volcanic Hawaiian Island chain, which is made up of hundreds of islands spread over 1,500 miles (2,400 km). At the southeastern end of the archipelago, the eight "main islands" are (from the northwest to southeast) Niihau, Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe, Maui, and Hawaii. The last is by far the largest, and is often called the "Big Island" to avoid confusion with the state as a whole.

Glad we got that sorted; now are you ready for some trivia?
Hawaii is the only state of the United States that

• is not located in North America
• is completely surrounded by water
• has a royal palace
• does not have a straight line in its state boundary (must be the trivial of all trivia)

Leg 2 : San Francisco to Hawaii : 2386 miles

Answer to Geography Question No.2

Yes, you have been waiting patiently for the answer; just to remind you of the original question - which bridge in the satellite image below is the famous landmark of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, Bridge A, B or C?

The answer is Bridge A; connecting the north and south peninsulas that guard the huge bay. The southern side is San Francisco itself; the northern side is the rugged and rural area of Marin County.
The Golden Gate Bridge had the longest suspension bridge span in the world when it was completed in 1937 (1280m; its total length is 2737m) .

When you first see it, the impression is its size, of course, but also its height over the water - it is 227 metres high (746 feet in old money).

Over the four years of construction, 11 workers were killed from falls, even though there was movable safety netting beneath the bridge. Unfortunately, ten were killed when the bridge was near completion when the net failed under the stress of a scaffold that had fallen. Nineteen others who were saved by the net over the course of construction became proud members of the (informal) Halfway to Hell Club.
The bridge has 1.2 million rivets.

Rosie the Riveter

Even a country the size of the United States was suffering a manpower shortage in 1943, in the middle of the Second World Two. It was a 'double whammy' effect - men were required in huge numbers for the army, navy and air force yet at the same time it required many more in the armament industries. Typewriter firms built rifles, car makers turned out tanks.

The solution was to encourage women to fill the labour shortage, and when the SS Jeremiah O'Brien was built, in mid 1943, a third of the workforce were women. If the thought of a woman as a welder, a riveter, crane operator or labourer sounds a bit unusual now, it must have been shocking in the 1940s.

To try to persuade women to apply for jobs in the 'manual' trades, they came up with the 'Rosie the Riveter' campaign with the slogan "We can do it" (Rosie looks a bit butch in the poster - perhaps taking a cue from the Soviet revolutionary posters of the 1930s).

The 'Liberty' Ships

Docked at the San Francisco harbour is a 'Liberty' ship - an armed merchant ship used in the Second World War. There is a very interesting story behind the building of these vessels. In the early years of the Second World War there were dark days for Britain - cut off from Europe by Nazi Germany, all food, clothing, materials and oil had to be imported across the Atlantic. Seas on which deadly German battleships and U-boat submarines operated. In 1941 Britain and her allies lost 1,200 ships to enemy actions, and in 1942, 1,600 ships were sunk which nearly brought Britain to her knees.

When the USA entered the war, an immediate need was to replace all the lost merchant ships, so as to ferry both civilian and military cargoes to Britain and North Africa.

The USA applied its industrial might to this problem and started to build merchant ships using the advanced techniques that Henry Ford introduced to the manufacture of cars - the production line.

Vast shipbuildng yards were created where 10 ships could be built at the same time, with the workforce specializing in the same work on each. Utilizing a simple design (a British design of 1879) and prefabrication, a 'Liberty' ship could be built in 60 days! There is a fantastic picture of the yard of the ships being built - all a different stages of construction from keel (the bottom of the ship) to the superstructure (the top of the ship) as part of a huge assembly line.
There were 16 shipbuilding yards, and in total they produced 2,710 'Liberty' ships in WWII. An astonishing number.
The ship at San Francisco is called the "SS Jeremiah o'Brien" and is now one of the only two surviving Liberty ships.

Scenes from San Francisco - Part One

Hi, you know people are a healthy bunch in California - we have seen joggers, cyclists (more than you would expect in such a hilly city) and roller bladers. The sight that amused me was a roller blader with an ice hockey stick, skating down the road waving his stick at an imaginary puck making his power plays, totally oblivious to anything else. It's probably just a normal sight in this city.

And how about the man with a baby that boarded a fairly full bus, causing the bus driver to stand up, and shout that the assembled passengers "I would like someone to offer this man with a baby a seat please". Someone duly did, but perhaps not noting that, with baby in one hand, he was clutching a skate board in the other ???

The Governator!

We have talked about the current Governor of California

- remember this is an important person - California has a population and a wealth that puts it (if it were a seperate country) in the top 10 in the world.

Well, on our first day in San Francisco, we met him!

He is, of course, Arnold Schwarnegger, and we usually think of him as looking lke the picture on the left. In reality, he looks like this:
No-one messes with the Governor, even if he does drink latte... we've outside the Ferry Building, taking a photo of the clock tower when a guy in a smart sheepskin coat approaches us and asks : "are we tourists?". The answer is obvious. "The Governor will be leaving the building in a few minutes". Only then do we notice the Hummies with blacked out windows at the kerb.
Sure enough, he emerges a few minutes later, surrounded by his entourage of mean looking blokes in dark suits and even darker shades.

Arnie decides to do an impromptu walkabout into the public part of the Ferry Building, much to the intense interest of the locals (and two English tourists).

He walks fast, is surprisingly not very tall, and you still won't mess with him. Then he causes total chaos by going into the coffee shop to get a drink - we didn't hang around to see if, like royalty, he doesn't carry any cash.

Bizarre Phenomenon Observed!

Hi, Professor Madfish here. I would like to report a scientific curiosity which happened on the flight to San Francisco.

Water in small bottles were provided on the flight, and I kept an empty one for the time in San Francisco. The bottle was empty and the lid firmly on.

Imagine my surprise when, in the hotel, unpacking, the bottle was twisted and misshappen! See the picture on the left. Weird.

One other fact to relate - when I opened the bottle, the plastic went back to its usual (square) shape.

Anybody got any idea what is going on here??