Monday, September 14, 2009

Pearl Harbour

So yesterday we went to Pearl Harbour. The beautiful draw to it being that is a free adventure. It was a pleasent enough morning, you're allowed to wonder around an outdoor area next to the harbour which has a load of missiles and anti-plane turrets. There's also a submarine you can go into and a museum and I think a ship but they all cost extra. But what you can do for free is watch a (quite bias) 20 minute film about the bombing of Pearl Harbour and then go on a short boat trip to a structure built over the wreck of the USS Arizona. It was declared a national monument in the 60's and in the 90's had this bizarre white bridge structure built over it. It was an interesting thing to do, though just as much in the sense that we can say we've been there then the experience itself. A lot of bodies are still down there, 1177 souls died on that one ship, and I think it would have been a lot more emotive if it wasn't for the film before hand which although interesting was annoyingly American. What was more annoying though was the woman sat next to Francesca who in the packed theatre was going "yeeeeh" and "um-hum" to practically everything said in the film as though the commentator in it was actually listening to her. Although the film wasn't directly biase it was unsympathic to the cost the Japanese paid for the war. There was an explanation for why the American seamen had "had their futures ripped away from them" making them seem all innocent but although there was all this pre-Pearl Harbour anti-Japanese stuff all they showed after that was how it rallied the Americans into war, nothing about the two huge nukes the American dropped. American military is so self righteous, bleugh! Though this opinion is probably currently extenuated by the book I'm reading, Little Brother, which was given to us for free by the uni which was nice of them.
ANYWAY, we did have a nice day, and it was an interesting place which I'd definately recomend to anyone, just be prepared for a one-sided presentation of events.
In other news, we both have a new class today as there weren't any classes last Monday. I can't say I'm particularly looking forward to it, 3 hours of State and Local Government, but you never know.
So, until next time,
This is Tom signing off two weeks into our Hawaiian experience

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