One of my earliest memories is in May of 1996. I was almost 4 years old, my sister just over a year old. We were living in Hawaii at the time. My dad was in the Army, and had recently opted to not reenlist. That meant that we had a few things on our checklist that we had to check off before we moved back to Ohio. One of them was to visit the Arizona Memorial.
We had a stroke of luck: my dad's unit was assigned one week to e the ones to raise and lower the flag. So my mom packed up my sister and I so we could go see Daddy work, and also so that we could see this once in a lifetime site.
I remember it very vividly. The memorial itself is a long concrete cylinder. When you go in, the marble and concrete make an echo chamber of sorts. Even with so many people in the room though, it is eerily quiet. It is one of the most quiet things I remember. That's what impacted me the most, the silence. It affected me, as my mom said that she was surprised that I was as hushed and quiet as everyone else.
In the middle of the room there is a giant hole in the ground. Or at least, that's what it looked like to me. I was a little scared of it, but my dad walked me up to it, and I looked down, and I saw a shipwreck. I was a little confused, but my dad told me all about that infamous day.
In 1941, on December 7, a fleet of Japanese airplanes attacked the same place where I was standing, sinking a ship and killing lots of people. Next to me was a wall with the names of people who had died. One of them had the same name as my grandpa. It could have been him.
What's the museum/exhibit that has impacted you the most?
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