While most of the people compare Hawaii with the paradise island for tourism or the love song of brilliant summer, with me, Pearl Harbor - a famous historic site in the Second World War - is a bass note in an endless love song of nature here. The bus running more than an hour from the city center of Waikiki in Honolulu on Oahu Island gradually evokes the sad memories in the history of the United States 74 years ago.
Sad memories
As the 50th state joining into the United States on August 21st, 1959 and located in the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii is a long chain of contiguous islands with a total area of 17,000 km² and its population is about 1.5 million people. The largest island is Hawaii Island (10,000 km²) which is located at the extreme of the islands, but the most important one is the Oahu Island with about 1500 km² in area, situated about 140 miles from Hawaii to the northwest. On the southern coast of the Oahu Island is Honolulu city, which has more than 350 thousand people, is the capital of this archipelago with more than 55% of Asians.
On the south coast of the island, about 6 miles to the west of Honolulu is Pearl Harbor, the headquarters of the United States Pacific Fleet. in the 19th century. Besides Pearl Harbor, the Pacific Fleet also has another base in the Maui Lahaina harbor, which is located between Oahu and Hawaii.
Following the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the United States Navy established a base on the island in 1899. On December 7th, 1941, the base was attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy airplanes and midget submarines, causing the American entry into World War II. One of the main reasons that Pearl Harbor happened was because the United States had major communication breakdowns among several branches of the U.S. armed services and departments of the U.S. government. This led to the surprising Japanese attack at the Hawaiian air base.
After putting an end to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, the general of Japanese Navy in this attack, had realized the difficulties that Japan would face up with. And indeed, this Japan’s victory was an important turning point in the Second World War. As a result, at 12:30 on December 8th, the president Roosevelt read the declaration of war against Japan. Many military experts supposed that Pearl Harbor was a lesson about the loss of vigilance. In terms of intelligence work, Japanese military prepared to fight for years and had the significant victory after 3 hours attacking.
Pearl Harbor is also the title of a film by director Michael Bay, produced in 2001. The film is a love story rather than a chronicle of the historic event. Some scenes were filmed on the USS Lexington in Corpus Christi, Texas. At the Academy Awards 2001, the film was nominated in four categories and won in the category "Academy Award for Best Sound Editing".
No comments:
Post a Comment