My friend Sharon from New York went with her family. She adds: "I have only felt that solemnity and heavy sense of death and grief one other place I've visited--Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany." (Probably folks who have been to Ground Zero would say they felt it there, too.)
Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery, a large military cemetery on Oahu, is the Pacific version of Arlington National Cemetery. On December 7, the relatives of the men who were killed gather there and drop leis into the harbor in their memory...VERY touching. Men who served on the Arizona are still being interred there today when they die. Divers take the ashes below the water following a memorial ceremony and lower them through the hull.
Note: The USS Arizona Visitor Center is located on the Pearl Harbor Naval Base adjacent to the sunken remains of the USS Arizona, which went down in 9 minutes with 1,177 men on board. The center is operated and maintained by the National Park Service. Young children are not allowed to go out to the Arizona Memorial.
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