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May. 4th, 2006 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringIt was clouds most of the way across. The overcast stopped me looking down on the deep blue Pacific, but they couldn't stop my thoughts. Far down below my airconditioned jet where I sat spearing slices of melon, the Liberty ships had made their slow progress from Fort Mason's piers carrying men and war stores. Battleships, carriers, submarines and all the others had sailed the exact same route. A far slower pace than mine, but possibly more pleasant in the perception of men given a break between the intensity of training and the stress of combat.
I also felt for those who had flown the route in the unpressurised, propeller-driven aircraft of World War Two. The posters of those days portray space and comfort, where white-coated stewards bend attentively over the smiling passenger, but in reality the trip would have noisy, turbulent, cramped and uncomfortable, down amongst the clouds and the weather, the feeble padding of the straight seats a torture after the first few hours.
Here and there were glimpses of ocean, and as we got closer to Hawaii, my thoughts turned to danger, rather than discomfort. Japanese submarines would have prowled here during the war. Men looked out for them, binoculars searching for a feather of periscope wake in all that blue immensity. Or worse than submarines. Japanese carrer forces had visited the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands twice during the war, each time leaving death and disaster in their wake. The lookouts aboard those grey American ships would have been quartering the sky for enemy scout planes, searching the thin line of horizon for the pagoda masts of a Jap battlewagon.
I looked out the window as we turned and lined up for landing. I got a glimpse through a window on the other side of the aircraft, and it electrified me. Just for a second there was that black and white aerial view of Pearl Harbour, dark Ford Island surrounded by light water. I couldn't see the burning battleships, the spreading ripples from explosions, the wheeling attack planes, but I didn't need to see the details. I was here.
I got a better view as we settled onto final approach. Here were satellite domes and nuclear submarines, tranquility and sunshine. But Battleship Row held two items that caught my eye. One was the gret grey shape of a battleship. A real, honest to God battleship. I'd last seen USS Missouri twenty years earlier when she had visited Sydney for a naval review and now here she was, decommissioned again, moored where she had been during the war. And just ahead was a small white, boxy structure, one that was familiar to me from a hundred photographs: the memorial to USS Arizona, sunk here in nine minutes one bright Sunday morning. The ship still lies on the harbour floor, along with a thousand of her men, trapped below decks when a bomb set off the forward magazine.
Aloha, the signs read as I walked along to baggage claim. A colorful, smiling, friendly world, and to my surprise it was a familiar one. The first plane flight of my life dropped a wide-eyed seven year old on the Gold Coast, and I'd grown up on the beach, tumbling through the surf, walking wide golden beaches, and snacking down junk food amongst the holiday skyscrapers.
Change the flag and everything is the same. That same mix of glitzy and tacky, luxury and seedy that I knew and tolerated.
I can't say that I love the relentlessly commercialised world of Waikiki and Surfers Paradise. Exciting and colorful, sure, but give me fewer crowds and more people, if you know what I mean.
My hostel was glorious in its tackiness. Stuck down a side street half a block from the water, it had been a medium sized motel forty years ago and had seen several changes since. The walls had two coats of paint too many, the fittings didn't fit, and the brown painted chipboard kitchen cupboards matched the squeaky metal bunk beds in nothing but ugliness. But it was home for three nights and I settled in, wondering who would occupy the other three beds.
I was just thinking about heading out to buy some groceries - coffee, breakfast cereal and so on - when the door opened and a young man bounded in. Before I knew it, he'd dumped his gear and dragged me off down the beachfront to Duke's where he plonked me down, ordered me a local beer and watched as I settled into the warm glow of beachwatching.
Turns out this chap had just flown in from San Francisco (on a slightly later flight than I) and spent a week here every three months scubadiving, taking photographs and having a great time. For three months he'd been dreaming of sitting down and tasting that first mouthful of cold beer at Duke's, and I could see why. Diamond Head in the background, golden sand beach strewn with tanned bodies, waves crashing onto the shore, pretty waitresses to keep the beer flowing...
He just wanted someone to share the experience with, and I was happy to be there for him.
I also felt for those who had flown the route in the unpressurised, propeller-driven aircraft of World War Two. The posters of those days portray space and comfort, where white-coated stewards bend attentively over the smiling passenger, but in reality the trip would have noisy, turbulent, cramped and uncomfortable, down amongst the clouds and the weather, the feeble padding of the straight seats a torture after the first few hours.
Here and there were glimpses of ocean, and as we got closer to Hawaii, my thoughts turned to danger, rather than discomfort. Japanese submarines would have prowled here during the war. Men looked out for them, binoculars searching for a feather of periscope wake in all that blue immensity. Or worse than submarines. Japanese carrer forces had visited the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands twice during the war, each time leaving death and disaster in their wake. The lookouts aboard those grey American ships would have been quartering the sky for enemy scout planes, searching the thin line of horizon for the pagoda masts of a Jap battlewagon.
I looked out the window as we turned and lined up for landing. I got a glimpse through a window on the other side of the aircraft, and it electrified me. Just for a second there was that black and white aerial view of Pearl Harbour, dark Ford Island surrounded by light water. I couldn't see the burning battleships, the spreading ripples from explosions, the wheeling attack planes, but I didn't need to see the details. I was here.
I got a better view as we settled onto final approach. Here were satellite domes and nuclear submarines, tranquility and sunshine. But Battleship Row held two items that caught my eye. One was the gret grey shape of a battleship. A real, honest to God battleship. I'd last seen USS Missouri twenty years earlier when she had visited Sydney for a naval review and now here she was, decommissioned again, moored where she had been during the war. And just ahead was a small white, boxy structure, one that was familiar to me from a hundred photographs: the memorial to USS Arizona, sunk here in nine minutes one bright Sunday morning. The ship still lies on the harbour floor, along with a thousand of her men, trapped below decks when a bomb set off the forward magazine.
Aloha, the signs read as I walked along to baggage claim. A colorful, smiling, friendly world, and to my surprise it was a familiar one. The first plane flight of my life dropped a wide-eyed seven year old on the Gold Coast, and I'd grown up on the beach, tumbling through the surf, walking wide golden beaches, and snacking down junk food amongst the holiday skyscrapers.
Change the flag and everything is the same. That same mix of glitzy and tacky, luxury and seedy that I knew and tolerated.
I can't say that I love the relentlessly commercialised world of Waikiki and Surfers Paradise. Exciting and colorful, sure, but give me fewer crowds and more people, if you know what I mean.
My hostel was glorious in its tackiness. Stuck down a side street half a block from the water, it had been a medium sized motel forty years ago and had seen several changes since. The walls had two coats of paint too many, the fittings didn't fit, and the brown painted chipboard kitchen cupboards matched the squeaky metal bunk beds in nothing but ugliness. But it was home for three nights and I settled in, wondering who would occupy the other three beds.
I was just thinking about heading out to buy some groceries - coffee, breakfast cereal and so on - when the door opened and a young man bounded in. Before I knew it, he'd dumped his gear and dragged me off down the beachfront to Duke's where he plonked me down, ordered me a local beer and watched as I settled into the warm glow of beachwatching.
Turns out this chap had just flown in from San Francisco (on a slightly later flight than I) and spent a week here every three months scubadiving, taking photographs and having a great time. For three months he'd been dreaming of sitting down and tasting that first mouthful of cold beer at Duke's, and I could see why. Diamond Head in the background, golden sand beach strewn with tanned bodies, waves crashing onto the shore, pretty waitresses to keep the beer flowing...
He just wanted someone to share the experience with, and I was happy to be there for him.
