The Pacific Aviation Museum. Two humongous aircraft hangars full of aircraft, engines, a small theater, a café, dioramas, and the story of Pearl Harbor right in the middle of the harbor on Ford Island. If you saw “Tora! Tora! Tora!” or “Pearl Harbor” you saw the red-and-white control tower which fronts Hangar 37, the building devoted mostly to the events of December 7, 1941. Around the building and about 1/4 mile away is Hangar 79, which houses Korean War and Vietnam War aircraft, including a MiG-15 and a MiG-21, Cobra and Huey helicopters and a DC-3, one of the most-loved airplanes of the 20th century. Officially called the Dakota by the Brits and the Skytrain by the Americans, it acquired the nickname “Gooney Bird” (nobody remembers why) and is still in use in some countries today.

There’s an exhibit in Hangar 79 which runs through July of this year called “National Memories” (.pdf) which is meant to commemorate the friendship between China and the US during World War 2. This is the first American showing; it’s already traveled through Mainland China and Taiwan. One of its exhibits is a Curtiss P-40E Warhawk. These planes were part of Lt. General Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers, a squadron of US Army, Navy and Marine pilots who were technically part of the Chinese Air Force. They fought extremely well from 1941-1942 and were credited with 296 kills of Japanese aircraft, all the while losing only 14 pilots.

Here I am in front of the Warhawk: