Pearl Harbor

We visited Pearl Harbor today, that infamous location attacked by Japan on 7 December 1941, the event that drew the United States into war with Japan during World War II. The photo above shows the USS Arizona Memorial, which straddles the remains of the actual USS Arizona. When you're inside the memorial, you can look down into the water and see the ship, and you can't help but think about the men who perished in that shallow grave. Their names are on one of the walls on the memorial.

The USS Missouri, the ship where the Japanese instrument of surrender was assigned nearly four years later in Toyko Bay, is docked just yards away from the Arizona memorial.

It's interesting that even now, nearly 70 years after this event, people still visit this place. There were big crowds here, and perhaps even more interesting is that at least a fourth (maybe more) of the visitors were Japanese. I kind of wondered why they would want to come here, but then I realized, maybe if I was in Japan I might want to visit war memorials there, too. After all, one of the reasons we build these memorials is to keep the memories alive, so that hopefully nothing like this will ever happen again.