I’ve discovered that I am not a very good navigator. And that the people I work with are incredibly patient. And that entering “Pearl Harbor” and “Pearl Harbor Monument” on the map on the iPhone will take you to two very different locations on O’ahu.

Once we arrived, very circuitously, to Pearl Harbor Monument, we realized it was worth the trip. Our National Park Service here in the US is one of the few government agencies that just does it right. One day I’d love to meet someone who works for the Park Service and let them know how much I appreciate what they’ve done and how much my life has been enriched by the services they provide.

The museum at Pearl Harbor is informative, without being overwhelming. Through pictures and bullet points we experienced the heavy atmosphere of late 1941. We watched a documentary that detailed the events leading up to the fatal attack on Dec 7, as well as footage of the disaster. A boat ferried us to the memorial erected over the sunken USS Arizona, where 1,177 people lost their lives during the attack. And we remembered.