Arizona (standard:science fiction, 11394 words)
Author: Dano	Added: Sep 14 2000	Views/Reads: 4557/2920	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Reminicent of the movie "The Final Countdown", this is how I would have written the story of a time traveler ending up in Hawaii on December 6, 1941.

12/4/97  God its sooo good to be on vacation!!!  Finally in Hawaii, Amy
and I arrived this afternoon, long flight, bad airline food.  The 
"Paradise Resort Hotel" Amy wanted us to stay in is a little less 
appealing in real life than in the brochures.  She still thinks it has 
"old Hawaiian charm", I think it stinks and still wish it had a pool.  
We had a nice dinner and a few drinks, heading for bed, planning an 
early morning tomorrow, lots of sights to see.  We will start with the 
Arizona memorial and end with a wild night on the town! 

12/5/97  Visited the Arizona memorial this morning.  While I have always
been interested in the tragedy at Pearl Harbor and read nearly every 
book about it, I couldn't believe the impact the experience had upon 
me.  It was a beautiful morning, we arrived before the memorial opened 
because we heard it gets very crowded later in the day.  We found a 
patch of grass where we could see the water and the monument which sits 
over the ship and sat down to wait.  The memorial is a stark white 
against the green foliage of Ford Island and the translucent blue green 
waters of the harbor.  The sun was just starting to crest the top of 
the hills behind us, promising another wondrous day in what I decided 
was truly paradise.  During our wait, I tried to imagine the same 
wonderful morning, some fifty six years before.  A quiet Sunday 
morning, the men aboard their ships start to come up from their bunks 
and stretch their arms towards the blue sky as a local fisherman's boat 
drifts slowly by rows of quiet ships.  Birds lift from the palm trees 
amid a glorious song, into the gentle trade winds and ease south across 
the emerald green water towards the less inhabited end of the island.  
It became impossible to imagine how the scream of enemy planes, the 
shouts of panic, and the thunder of bombs  could overpower such a 
beautiful, wondrous scene.  Death and destruction in this incredible 
Eden was beyond the scope of imagination. 

When the memorial opened, we took our place in the theater and watched
the historical drama unfold.  The story of the Japanese march across 
the South Pacific, the tale of the attack, the epitaph of the Arizona 
and her 1100 men.  I sat next to a Oriental couple and their son.  At 
first I was a little uneasy, but the presentation was purely 
historical, no blame, no negative sentiment, just an historical 
documentary of the events of December 7, 1941.  The film and lecture 
left us in a pallid silence as we filed out of the theater and onto the 
boat for a short trip across the harbor to the Arizona monument.  
Again, in the sunlight, trying to visualize torpedo bombers coming out 
of the hills with their engines roaring, their deafening explosions, 
was all to hard to picture. 

Got back to the Cockroach Inn, took a nap, headed for Waikiki beach, its
not even a real beach! It a bunch of sand dumped on the coral.  Went 
for a swim and skinned my knee on a coral reef about 100 yards off the 
beach.  Can't wait to get to Maui's beaches 

12/6/97  1:27 AM, Big night on Waikiki.  Started with a booze cruise and
then hit the dance clubs.  Drank way too much but isn't that what 
vacations all about??  Too hard to type right now, tired, going to bed. 


Amy and I had been dating for just over a year and had planned this as
our first "real" vacation.  Amy's definition of a "real" vacation was 
bound by the constraits that you must get on an airplane, stay in a 
hotel, and not come in contact with any old friends or family.  These 
guidelines worked fine for me and I was thrilled to be in the tropics 
again, and especially with Amy.  We had met when she purchased a home a 
year ago.  I was her loan officer, we clicked the moment she walked 
into my office.  I invented reasons to call her, invented forms she 
needed to come and sign, and even attended her closing, something I 
rarely did.  She was wonderful and funny, we got along great.  We 
shared similar interests in Scuba Diving, travel, whitewater rafting, 
and beer drinking.  We had similar cars, dogs, houses, and each owned a 
older second car, hers a 65' Chevy pickup and mine a 68' Firebird 
convertable. 

I awoke to the sounds of two men arguing on the street outside.  I
couldn't make it all out but it had something to do with a delivery of 
fish to the restaurant next door.  Amy had insisted that we stay at The 
Seven Seas Hotel, an old hotel she had heard about.  "It has the 
romance of the 30's" she quoted the shiny pamphlet.  What it had was 
poor air ventilation, cockroaches, and a bad smell.  I tried covering 


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