I first travelled to Hawaii and visited Pearl Harbor many years ago. Returning to Hawaii recently and being something of a history buff, I of course made the trip back to Pearl Harbor and the memorials there. Chief among those is the USS Arizona Memorial. The memorial is built over the rusting hulk of the battleship Arizona and is visited by a short boat trip.
I won’t go into all the historical details as it’s well and truly documented elsewhere, but the Arizona is one of several US warships which were sunk on what Franklin D Roosevelt declared “a day that shall live in infamy”. Over the years oil has continued to leak slowly from the ship’s tanks and continues to do so today. Visitors to the memorial frequently disperse flowers on the water, which when contrasted with the floating oil, the deep blue colour of the water and the rusting metal of the shipwreck, provide the subject matter for today’s images.
The USS Arizona Memorial: There is a strange beauty to this place of tragedy. Flower petals float amidst the oil sheen and the rusting remains …
