Nov 7, 2009 – The USS Missouri and Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii – Douglas Peebles

Pearl Harbor is a harbor on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan on December 7, 1941, brought the United States into World War II.

Pearl Harbor was originally an extensive, shallow embayment called Wai Momi (meaning “pearl water”) or Pu’uloa (meaning “long hill”) by the Hawaiians. Pu’uloa was regarded as the home of the shark goddess Ka’ahupahau and her brother (or son) Kahi’uka in Hawaiian legends. Keaunui, the head of the powerful and celebrated Ewa chiefs, is attributed the honour of having cut a navigable channel near the present Puuloa saltworks, by which the great estuary, now known as “Pearl River,” was in all subsequent ages rendered accessible to navigation. Making due allowance for legendary amplification of a known fact, the estuary doubtless had an outlet for its waters where the present gap is; but the legend is probably correct in giving Keaunui the credit of having widened it and deepened it, so as to admit the passage of canoes, and even larger vessels, in and out of the Pearl River estuary. The harbor was teeming with pearl-producing oysters until the late 1800s.

• FDR predicted that this day would “live in infamy” for all time.
  What day is it?
• Ready to take a break from war news?
  Check out these beach pictures
• What’s the best way to pay your respects to the folks who died here in 1941?
  Start by visiting this place
• Not quite sure where Pearl Harbor is?
  We can help

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