Thursday, October 22, 2009

"Mo" Disappointed

Today I intended to make a WWII Hawaii memorial tour, visiting the USS Arizona, first sunk on Dec 7th 1941, the USS Oklahoma Museum (capsized and sunk Dec 7th) USS Bowfin Submarine Museum that sank dozens of Japanese ships, and the battleship USS Missouri, where the Japanese surrendered ending WWII (and where Steven Seagal was a cook too!). I fully expected to spend the bulk of the day on the Mighty Mo... touring it's many decks... only to find out.. she entered dry dock on October 14th and will not be open to the public again until 2010! The Oklahoma museum is also closed, while the Missouri is in dry dock.. ugh!

Note here, on the page that tells you when the ship is open, how obvious it is, that she's in dry dock and closed. Grrrrr.

The Arizona was a somber memorial, and the visitors to it, lo and behold, were 98% non-Japanese - as opposed to the rest of the island, where it's 60 to 75% Japanese. One of my distant family members went down with the ship on Dec 7th when the forward magazine was penetrated by an armour piercing dive bomb. I did not know I had any extended family members aboard.
The Bowfin was a roomy, spacious sub, after visiting the U505 at Chicago's Field Museum many times. The Germans sure knew how to pack-in a ton of equipment into a tiny space efficiently. The American Bowfin, co missioned in 1942 and LOADED with GE gauges, lights, control panels, and motors could have easily displaced two U505s.

1 comment:

  1. I remember seeing the your last name on a list of sailors killed on the USS Arizona.

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