Just finished watching the movie Pearl Harbour. I liked it! It's a slow moving love story but I loved the special effects of the bombing of the harbour. This movie reminded me again that the USA wouldn't be the great power that it is, without our military might. I saw that in the church service they had in the DC after 9/11 when the military colour guard was there.

It is easy to forget that a military even exists, living here in the bastion of liberal thought. But the military is there and we wouldn't be the country we are without them.

It was weird to watch that Pearl Harbour movie because I grew up in Hawaii and you couldn't ignore the military presence. They weren't many on the island I lived on, but everytime I took a trip to the state's capitol, Honolulu, there they were. Bands of short haired young men, very young, mostly white and clean shaven from hometowns in the middle of the country, would roam around Honolulu especially on the weekends. They were all so strange and I was alway afraid to talk to any of them. Some of them were friendly, some weren't.

The other thing I got from watching the movie was how many people died. And most of them are buried in Hawaii at Punchbowl cemetery. Punchbowl cemetery is situated on one of the best plots of land on the island with the most incredible view of downtown Waikiki. And there are so many people buried there and a lot of them are from the Pearl Harbour disaster. You can't be buried at Punchbowl unless you served in the military or are the spouse of someone who served. My uncle served as a medic in Vietnam and he and my aunt already have their plots picked out.

I've been to the Arizona Memorial several times. If you go to school in Hawaii, every time you make a trip to the state capitol, a visit to the memorial is always on the agenda. The school board of education in Hawaii wanted every school kid in Hawaii to never forget what happened. The images of the bombing of Pearl Harbour are as familiar to me as they might be to someone who was alive during that time. When you visit the memorial you can't help but freak out at the thought of all the soldiers entormbed in the ship below. It's a trippy feeling and the Pearl Harbour movie brought it all back.