Hawaii Vacation

 

This is the USS Missouri.  Now anchored in Pearl Harbor.  Top two pictures are of the big 16" guns and other defenses on the ship.  The 'Mighty Mo' saw action in W.W.II in the pacific theater and was retrofitted in the 80's and served again the the early 90s in the Gulf war.  The Harpoon and Cruise missiles were added in the 80's.   

Second row of pictures is a Pepsi machine on the main deck.  This is a modern concession to the tourism industry.  Pepsi also contributes lots of money to the restoration of the 'MO'.  In 1947 President Truman rode his battleship back from a regional conference in Rio de Janeiro.  Upon crossing the Equator the President and his family participated in the tradition of the Shellback initiation.  This is a ceremony generally reserved for the "pollywogs" sailors who had never crossed the equator before.  After submitting to indignities of this ceremony he ate dinner with the crew in the main hall gathering his food from this chow line.  The crew honored his crossing the equator line with a line of his own.  

The Blue chairs are part of the electronics control center.  This was part of the retrofit in the 80's.  The Navy left a bunch of stuff when they decommissioned the ship.  One thing they left was a whole row of file cabinets.  The combination is easy to see.  The title of the drawer is "cleaning supplies".  I thought it was an amusing irony. 

The Brass plaque on the starboard side of the ship marks the spot where  the Japanese surrendered, to end World War Two in 1945.   

The bottom row shows the sleeping conditions for the crew.  On the left are the W.W.II bunks stacked 4 high.  The men barely had enough room to lay down.  Privacy was unheard of.  On the right are the bunks after the refit.  They are only 3 high.  Each bunk offers a small curtain to pull across and some space under the mattress to store personal items.  It was pointed out on my tour that even these conditions would not meet the federal standard for prison cells.