USS Arizona Memorial and USS Bowfin Submarine

This weekend, we went to see the USS Arizona Memorial. The Arizona was one of the ships that sank on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The ship was 608 feet long, and it sank in 9 minutes. 1,177 sailors and Marines died on the ship.

It is free to visit the memorial. We were given tickets with a visiting time on them. Rather than wait 2 1/2 hours, we went off to grocery shop and then went back to the memorial. There is an audio tour available, and it gets rave reviews, but we find that it is impossible to use these tours with Crumpet along. We took the 5 minute boat ride out to the memorial, and spent about half an hour at the site.

Here is the sunken ship beneath the memorial, taken from the air (no, not my photo...):
The memorial from the shore near our house (we took this on a different, much cloudier day).
One of the turrets from the ship:
Oil still leaks from the ship. It is said that the ship still weeps for its sailors. This got me choked up.
Crumpet was very interested in why the oil and water didn't mix, so we'll be doing an experiment relating to that next week!
A portion of the submerged ship- we saw a lot of tropical fish, and even a ray, here:
The inside of the memorial:
The names of the sailors who went down with the ship. There is also a list of names of sailors who survived, but came back to be buried with their shipmates:
Crumpet and his dad at the memorial, overlooking the USS Missouri (which I'll write about soon...):
The USS Bowfin submarine is located in the same complex as the Arizona. The long grey tube in the water below is the submarine. The sub is known as the "Pearl Harbor Avenger" because it attacked so many Japanese ships during World War II. For some reason, I had it in my head that children had to be 5 to visit the sub, so we didn't go in. (BIG tantrum ensued...) Now, I'm reading in my tour guide that children have to be 4. Oops, no one tell Crumpet...
Fortunately, there were other cool sights here, and the tantrum passed. A huge anchor:
Crumpet sitting on a torpedo with missiles in the background. Oh, how this boy loves weapons...

This is a portion of another submarine, which we were allowed in. The metal tubes in front are working periscopes, and it was fun to look at the memorials and our home island from here!
Inside the mini-sub:
A 'one man Japanese suicide torpedo'. Oh...
An American rescue chamber, designed to rescue sailors from submarines in trouble. The Navy only used this once, and it was successful. My husband used to ride subs, and imagining this as his only chance for rescue made me really glad he'll be on surface ships while we're in Hawaii!
Crumpet manning the guns (these would have been on a large battleship). We spent a lot of time here. As did several other families with young boys...

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