The Hawaiian Islands located in the center of the Pacific Ocean are one of the most famous tourist destinations in the world. What does Hawaii rely on to attract tourists from all over the world? What are the fascinating things about her? For those who have never been here, no matter how others describe it, it is just a vague concept.
Not long ago, when I set foot on this long-awaited place, I finally found the answer to the world’s longing for this place. That is, Hawaii has a unique ocean and warm water.
At six o'clock in the morning on the second day after arriving in Hawaii, I came to the coast. Although the street lights illuminated the road on the coast very brightly, the beach was still dark. All you can hear is the rhythmic crashing of the waves hitting the shore. I stood in a lighted place on the shore, doing aerobics and looking at the sea in front of me. As the sky gradually grew brighter, some people began to swim in the water, and some people kept jumping into the sea with surfboards under their right arms. After a while, a red morning glow appeared where the sea and the sky met. I quickly turned on the camera and took a picture of this beautiful scenery. At seven o'clock, it was completely bright, and I could see the true face of the sea clearly. It turns out that the sea water in Hawaii is as blue as a clear, cloudless sky, even the shallow water on the shore is no exception. I have seen many places with seas, including the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea and South China Sea in my motherland, the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Africa, and some coastal cities on the east and west coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. But except for Yalong Bay in Sanya, the seawater seen on other coasts is all green. In some places, due to pollution from turbid river water on the mainland, the seawater has turned into a muddy yellow color, which is completely incomparable with the seawater in Hawaii.
The tour guide, Mr. Zhang, is an immigrant from Taiwan Province of China. He has settled here for more than 30 years and knows the situation in Hawaii well. Mr. Zhang said that there are three reasons why the sea water here is blue: First, the sea water is very deep. Hawaii is located in the center of the Pacific Ocean, far away from the mainland on all sides. There were no islands here originally. The huge volcano that occurred more than a million years ago created a cliff deep in the ocean. The slurry sprayed out of the sea and gradually formed the current size of 132 islands. The underwater part of the island is very steep, and the coast extends several hundred meters to the sea into the ocean thousands of meters deep. The deep sea has a sky-blue water color. The Hawaiian Islands are surrounded by deep sea, and even the shallower water along the coast is refracted blue. The second is that there are no rivers in the archipelago that flow into the sea. Wherever there is land, there are usually rivers flowing into the ocean. Where rivers merge into the sea, they will bring in sewage from the land and domestic and production wastewater from coastal cities, thus causing the water in shallow coastal areas to become turbid. There are no rivers on the islands of Hawaii, so there will naturally be no sewage flowing into the sea. Third, the Hawaii state government attaches great importance to environmental protection. Although Hawaii is surrounded by the sea and has extremely rich fishery resources, it does not have a fishery. Because the state government has long realized that developing fisheries will inevitably cause great pollution and destroy the beautiful natural scenery here. Therefore, it was stipulated that no motorized boats were allowed to be used for fishing, no motorized tourist boats were allowed, no trees were cut down, and no smoking factories were built on the island. In short, anything that pollutes sea water, air, and land is prohibited.
Mr. Zhang said that the domestic sewage of hundreds of thousands of people in Honolulu is transported to the deep sea through very long submarine pipelines. When such a small amount of wastewater enters the deep sea, it is instantly digested without a trace by the vast ocean.
The total area of ??the Hawaiian Islands is 16,700 square kilometers. The largest Hawaiian Island covers an area of ??more than 10,000 square kilometers. The island has the famous Mauna Loa volcano with an altitude of 4,170 meters. An active volcano that erupts every few years. The Hawaii Volcanoes Park is on the island. Tourists from all over the world go to this island mainly to visit the Volcanoes Park.
The famous Oahu Island (also called Oahu) is the third largest island in Hawaii, covering an area of ??more than 1,500 square kilometers. Honolulu (Honolulu), the state capital of Hawaii, the U.S. Pacific Naval Command and Pearl Harbor are all on this island. The island's population exceeds 900,000, accounting for more than 80% of the state's 1.3 million population, of which 6 to 7 million live in Honolulu. The city of Honolulu is backed by green mountains and faces the ocean. The scenery is very charming. It's less than a 5 minute walk to the beach from our hotel. Since tourists from all five continents come here for the beautiful sunny beaches, most of the city's hotels are built on the seaside.
In the afternoon, we took a yacht to visit Pearl Harbor on Oahu. Pearl Harbor is the main base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and a natural harbor. In 1893, the U.S. Pacific Fleet overthrew the indigenous Hawaiian dynasty and occupied it for a long time. Since then, the US military has used Pearl Harbor as its military base. In 1959, the United States declared Hawaii the country's 50th state, formally incorporating Hawaii, the most important strategic location in the center of the Pacific, into the U.S. territory through dishonorable means. As a result, the territory of the United States has been greatly extended from North America to the central Pacific Ocean thousands of miles away, which has greatly facilitated the deployment of military power by the United States in the Asia-Pacific region, infringement and interference in the territorial waters, airspace and other sovereignty of East and South Asian countries. From the world map, you can see how important the strategic position of the Hawaiian Islands is. It is located between the Americas and East Asia. It is not only a tourist resort without typhoons and cold, but also the largest and most important military base of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region. It was precisely because of Hawaii's important strategic position that it posed a huge threat to Japanese imperialism's dominance of the Asia-Pacific region. The Japanese carefully planned and implemented the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that shocked the world, causing almost the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet to be annihilated.
Pearl Harbor is well-known around the world, mainly because the Japanese attack on the port during World War II caused heavy losses to the U.S. military, and Americans were forced to join the anti-fascist movement. War Alliance.
The failure of Pearl Harbor is a shame in American history. But Americans respect history and do not avoid this incident. After the war, the USS Alexandria Memorial was built in Pearl Harbor to commemorate the American soldiers who lost their lives in the Pearl Harbor incident. In 1979, the United States set up a tourist service center here to receive visitors free of charge every day. When Chinese visitors came here, they first put on headphones with Chinese transliteration and watched the historical documentary short film of Japan's "Sneak Attack on Pearl Harbor" in a screening room with a capacity of 100 people, and then boarded a boat to go to the Arizona Memorial Hall in the water on the other side of the harbor. .
On November 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor at a very small cost (64 people died, 29 aircraft and 5 small submarines were lost), causing more than 3,000 American casualties. There were casualties (about 2,500 people lost their lives), 12 warships were sunk or ran aground, 9 warships were damaged, 164 aircraft were blown up, and 159 aircraft were damaged. The most tragic incident was that the front deck of the USS Arizona was hit by a 1,760-pound Japanese bomb, which detonated the ammunition depot at the bow of the ship. The huge explosion destroyed the battleship in just nine minutes. Together with all 1,177 officers and men on board, the ship sank into the sea.
The white Alexandria Memorial Hall is located on the sea where the ship sank. You can see the remains of the warship exposed on the water. The names of every fallen soldier are engraved on the walls of the memorial hall. The ruthless war has left them here forever.
This significant loss could have been avoided. A few days before the attack, China had deciphered Japan's message about attacking Pearl Harbor and promptly notified the United States. However, the Americans were overconfident and did not take Chinese intelligence seriously. As a result, they had to bear undue losses themselves. There is another theory: The then US President Roosevelt intended to join the war, but could not find an excuse to intervene in the war and was worried that Congress would not approve it. At this time, he learned that Japan was planning to attack Hawaii and deliberately failed to notify the military at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack damaged the United States, and Congress naturally agreed to go to war with Japan. However, this statement is not very logical and may not be credible. In fact, as long as Japan bombs Hawaii, it has already declared war on the United States, so why bother looking for excuses to resist aggression. Historically, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was called the outbreak of the Pacific War. The Japanese war maniacs thought they had taken advantage of it, but it was from this day on that the war of aggression launched by Japan reached a turning point in history. The United States joined the anti-fascist alliance and not only directly fought against Japan, but also stopped selling war supplies to Japan and instead vigorously supported China's war of resistance. This determined the inevitable defeat of the Japanese invaders.
After visiting Pearl Harbor, return to Honolulu and visit Hawaii’s famous Waikiki Beach and the former Royal Palace. The beach facing the Pacific Ocean in Honolulu is called Waikiki Beach. The beach connects the city and the sea and is the main scenic spot for citizens and tourists from five continents. On one side of the Esplanade is a seawall less than one meter high, and on the other side are buildings of different styles.
The avenue is lined with lush tropical banana and coconut trees, and in one section there is an extremely eye-catching single-tree banyan tree. Outside the seawall is a beach several feet wide. Since the Hawaiian Islands are land formed by volcanic islands, there is no sand along the coast. Beach parks are artificially created and the sand is transported from other places.
Although Hawaii has a tropical climate, it is located near the Tropic of Cancer and is affected by the northeasterly trade winds, so the weather is not hot. And because it is far away from the East and West continents and the North and South Poles, it has never been hit by typhoons. There are only two seasons in spring and summer every year, with flowers blooming all year round and the sun shining brightly. The hottest time does not exceed 35 degrees Celsius, and the lowest temperature is more than ten degrees Celsius. Therefore, you can visit the sea 12 months a year. When I came to the beach, I saw that the beach was very popular and the white waves were rising one after another, which was particularly spectacular. There are countless people flying on surfboards in the waves. These aquatic athletes are undoubtedly frequent visitors to the sea. You can see how chic and experienced they are. Even if they are knocked over by the waves, they will soon be standing on the sampan and continue to hit the water.
Although I don’t have time to go into the water, and I don’t dare to go into the water, it is an indescribable enjoyment to stand on the shore and watch the surfer’s performance.
Later, we went to the city center to visit the Hawaiian Palace Plaza that was built more than a hundred years ago. And took photos in front of the two-story palace. All the doors of the palace are closed, and tourists can only admire the exterior of the palace, which is not luxurious, and take photos with the statue of the king in the square. Visiting the former Palace Square made me understand the history of Hawaii.
Hawaii has only been inhabited for more than a thousand years. In the fourth century AD, Polynesians came to Hawaii by canoe to settle and named the island "Hawaii", which means "original home". These are the local indigenous people. After thousands of years of reproduction, the indigenous people grew to more than 300,000 and established the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1795.
Almost at the same time as the Kingdom of Hawaii was established, the British came here on a long voyage. Since then, Westerners have arrived one after another, breaking the tranquility of this "paradise". Europeans brought advanced Western productivity and production methods to Hawaii, as well as various diseases on the mainland. Hawaiians, who have been isolated from the outside world for thousands of years, have no immunity to foreign germs, and the mortality rate after infection is extremely high. For more than two hundred years, the indigenous population has not only not increased, but has continued to decline and decrease. Today there are only about 13,300 people. Only one percent of the state's total population.
Although the indigenous population is declining, they are always resentful of Westerners' intervention, especially the Americans' turning Hawaii into their own territory, and always want to restore their own territory. Dynasty, get the Americans out. In 2003, an independent movement organization composed of indigenous people (referred to as Xia Du) sued the U.S. government in the U.S. Federal Court, demanding independence. After accepting the case, the court found that the complaint was justified and the indigenous people won the case. However, since the occupation has actually lasted for more than 50 years and the time limit has expired in accordance with relevant United Nations laws, it cannot be implemented. This is the unreasonable American logic. It wants to seize other people's territory but does not want to bear the responsibility of being a bandit. In order to appease the indigenous people, the current U.S. government adopts a special care policy for the indigenous Hawaiians, that is, each indigenous person is provided with a monthly living allowance of US$400 before the age of 12, and a monthly allowance of US$800 for each individual between the ages of 12 and 18.
The descendants of the Polynesians who first came to Hawaii have now become a complete minority in the state. Hawaii has long become a land where multi-ethnic people live together, of which white people account for one-third and Asians account for the majority, mainly Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos and Chinese. Chinese account for about 4 to 5 percent.
Mr. Zhang said that due to Hawaii’s unique natural geographical environment, there are no wild animals here. Therefore, no matter day or night, a person does not have to worry about encountering wild animals even if he walks into the deep mountains and woods. There are jackals, tigers, leopards, snakes, scorpions and other wild animals and insects.
The biggest gain from coming to Hawaii is to understand the historical process of the United States’ occupation and annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii, as well as the long-standing bandit nature of American imperialism.
Hawaii is also the place where Mr. Sun Yat-sen first started his revolutionary activities. In 1894, Sun Yat-sen joined local overseas Chinese in Honolulu to establish the Xingzhong Society, a political group that opposed the feudal rule of the Qing Dynasty.
The Xingzhonghui was the early organization of the Chinese Kuomintang. That year, the U.S. Navy had occupied Hawaii for less than a year and had not yet officially declared the Hawaiian Islands as U.S. territory. Out of respect for Mr. Sun Yat-sen, I asked the tour guide to lead me to an inconspicuous monument erected by the Kuomintang to commemorate the founding of the Xingzhong Association in a small street that night when I arrived in Honolulu.
During the short time in Hawaii, everyone also learned the most popular local saying: "Aloha", which is a short sentence with rich content, meaning "you" OK”, “I love you”, “Welcome”. Hawaiian people are honest, hospitable, warm and friendly. No matter where they meet, they always say "Aloha" to them. During those two days, when a group of us met with each other, this was what we said the most.