Kumukehu Street: Back from Honolulu!~

Fun says:

Hello all! Im gonna have first dibs on blogging on our Honolulu trip ( neh neh ni boo boo @ vincent).

Anyways. We just got back from a 3 day trip in Honolulu to meet up with my parents who arrived on Saturday. The amount of luggage they had was damn scary. All full of food! Hurray for chinese food in insta-packs like Prima.

Well there isnt really much to blog about apart from shopping..SHOPping..AND MORE SHOPPING. Vincent unloaded like all his cash on cds!! I bought a couple of T-shirts and stuff for people. Nothing much really.

There was a funny incident at the hotel we were staying at though. I forgot to bring an extra shirt to sleep in, so i had to go walk across the hall to my dads room in my used shirt and glorious boxers and get one from him. While i was waiting helplessly outside the door knocking for a long time. The lift bell rang and 3 girls walked and started teasing and cat-calling me the ENTIREEEEEE time i was out there till i grabbed the shirt and ran back to my room. Easily the most embarassing incident ever.

Anyway, what we did the next day was pretty cool, we all got into the rental car ( a cool blue jeep) and set off with my jet-lagged Dad at the wheel to make a round island trip around Honolulu. Its really much smaller then u would imagine. It only took us about half a day, and we did make a few stops. To look around at the beaches and to grab food. But the highlight of the trip was driving around the rock formations all covered in lush greenery, the hilly formation looked so cleanly formed as if some great entity clawed away at it mercilessly over the many long years. Like ridges running all the way from top to bottom. The clouds hovered just high enough to cover the peaks (or rather the clouds weres just very low -.-). To top it all off as we cleared that part of the island, a huge, vivid rainbow painted the sky in front of us, we could see the start (or end) of it as the arc raced off into the clouds. As we all know, Life a Bitch, and when it rains, it pours. But hey.

No Rain. No Rainbows!!

Sadly i didnt get pics of the damn rainbow coz my batt had to die at that exact moment. !@&#!@()#* I did however, get pics of Pearl Harbour! Vincent and I headed down to the USS Arizona State Memorial, where the sunken battleship served as a watery tomb to the 1177 (i think) navy/army personnel. All of them perished in the attack on Pearl Harbour by a Japanese surprise attack on December 7th 1941. A japanese bomber released a armor-penatrating torpedo which barrelled into the ship and ignited the super load of ammunition and other explosives, resulting in a massive explosion. Well thats just the gist of it. Walking around the exhibits they had while waiting for our turn to watch a short film and take a boat ride to the memorial itself, reading the stories of all these brave and at that time, young men, made the trip a very solemn one. Stories of valor and heroism one after another, each with their own story. Some more pleasant then others.

Everyone has at least heard of this historical moment in detail or in passing, but there were a few interesting things that came to my attention about the whole ordeal.

First off, the Japanese guys here are the main baddies right? But its more screwed up of them to attack Oahu, Honululu, which has a population of which 45% were of Japanese ancestry. Reading the names of the civilian casualties, all these Japanese names pop up, and their ages. I cant remember the names clearly. but the age.. something like..3 months? 3 years? Its really horrible. To me at least, the war had clearly transcended any racial or ethnic backgrounds. Vincent did mention that he would have hated to be a Japanese right now lest people should start bashing us up, but there were super lot of japanese tourists there. Alike the ang mohs there, the same solemn expression glazed over them as well.

[List of casaulties, war personnel and civilians]

Another interesting and sad fact was that there were 75 sets of brothers on the USS Arizona. Of which only 14 survived. On the wall of remembrance where their names were engraved, you would see many of them with the same last names. Some brothers survived while their kin perished in the flaming oil and watery prisons.

The memorial itself was like a huge white bridge built over the sunken wreckage of the USS Arizona. Looking down over it, you can stil see oil seeping out of the wreckage even till this day. Little splashes of oil slowly dissipitating into the blue.

Here are the pics!