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Visit to Battleship "Missouri"

HONOLULU, HAWAII, Nov 30 - Our next trip down the memory lane and history's waterways led us to Battleship "Missouri." 

It was on this great ship that representatives of the Japanese government signed the articles of surrender on Sep 2, 1945 in Tokyo Bay, thus ending World War II (above).

Above are some of the views a visitor to "Missouri" gets as he/she climbs aboard.

Only when one gets close up to the great guns, the biggest the U.S. Navy has ever built, can one appreciate the enormous destructive power of these weapons (two left shots).  You can also see from the middle right photo the size of the chain that lifts and lowers the anchor.

Insider the officers' mess, one can see many interesting original newspaper headlines from the various milestones of WW II...

...though not the one about the advance warning re. Pearl Harbor you saw in Part 1 of this travelogue.  The rightmost shot was taken by Elizabeth with her cell phone camera.

Inside the ship, one can also see the difference between the "ordinary" officers' quarters (two left photos) and the "executive" officers' (middle right). I do not know what all those wires did in the rightmost shot, but they looked complicated.

Eventually, we made it up to the bridge, where a new captain took over (middle right).  The rightmost shot shows the view she enjoyed from the bridge.

Diamondhead Hike

The hotel concierge told us the Diamondhead volcano hike would take about 30-45 mins.  What she neglected to tell us that that was from INSIDE the volcano.  It took us over an hour of climbing to get there on foot from our hotel.  And then we were off to a grueling but very rewarding hike/climb.  Check it out...

But first, our starting point - views from our hotel room (two left shots), and of Waikiki beach in front of it.

You can see in the leftmost shot the famed Diamondhead, an extinct volcano that seems to make it into every postcard of Honolulu.  You can also see it closer up in the rightmost picture, taken during our hike to the start of the hike. :-)

This is where we also watched for a few minutes a Hawaiian Flag Football game (left), and saw the rooftops of Waikiki hotels and apartment buildings (middle left).  Eventually, after over an hour of hiking along the city streets and roads, and through a tunnel into the center of the Diamondhead volcano, a serious climb began (two right shots).

Some views from our hike up the mountain, including at a rest point...

...just before the steepest part of the climb (left).  Just below the top, we entered one of several abandoned WW II bunkers.  You can see the views the gunners enjoyed from there.

After one final push, we were atop the mountain.  And these spectacular 360-degree views were our reward.

The rightmost shot is a close-up of Waikiki beach from the top of Diamondhead.

Elizabeth wasn't sure if she would be able to make it to the top.  And I told her not to push it.  But she made it anyway.  Which was a cause for a little celebration atop Diamondhead.  :-)  She was also awarded an official certificate that she had made it to the summit, which she proudly carried down the mountain.

Later on this evening, as the sun was setting down over the Pacific, painting Honolulu orange, she posed on Waikiki beach with the mountain she had conquered in the background.

And that's all she wrote from our weekend in Honolulu.  CLICK HERE to go back to Part 1 of 2.

To be continued...

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