Wow, shit's getting real, eh? Very cool, and it makes the holidays all that much sweeter. Best of luck to the soon-to-be-four of you!
We had our gala on Saturday night, the aerological tower dedication on Sunday, as well as the premiere of "Remember Pearl Harbor", which you may have already seen on TV the past two days (narrated by Tom Selleck). Today was the Blackened Canteen ceremony and Youth Peace Summit at the museum. We hosted over 300 students from the island for a seminar featuring Dr. Hiroya Sugano, who travels every year to commemorate the fallen and promote lasting peace, and Captain Gary Yellin, a WWII P-51 pilot and author of the book "The Blackened Canteen". He is also responsible for the memorial in Shizuoka for the B-29 crew members killed in the mid-air collision that produced the canteen. The symposium also featured students from local Kamehameha School and students from Nagaoka School in Japan who worked jointly for the last several months on essays relating their lives now and the peace and reconciliation post-WWII between Japan and the US. The students created a peace proclamation in the afternoon and presented it to the mayor of Nagaoka and our museum director (witnessed by all of our VIPs and hundreds of visitors). It was honestly very, very moving.
To see the canteen, itself, was quite amazing, as it was something I remember reading about in grade school -- now I was a part of the ceremony. I've been afforded incredible opportunities to witness and take part in history since I started working here a little over two years ago. I am in awe of some of the things we have done. I work with some truly spectacular educators and historians.
A mini-highlight of the day was getting to present a lei to our symposium facilitator, the sister of President Obama. She is quite the accomplished scholar and education advocate here in Hawaii. In a few weeks, the President will be here to display, on a much grander scale, exactly what we worked with the students for -- he will be meeting with the governor of Hiroshima to embrace mutual reconciliation.
Very brief story on the ceremony at the USS Arizona Memorial: