Events of Tuesday, February 1, 2011

                Today, this glorious first day of the shortest month of the year, we woke up early in our KOA Kampground in the suburbs of New Orleans, also known as The Big Easy (according to everybody) or “N’Awlins” (according to the locals). We showered, had breakfast, packed a lunch, and headed over to the campground office for the free shuttle ride. Our shuttle driver drove us the scenic route into New Orleans, going far out of our way to avoid the closed River Road. On the way, the driver pointed out to us many different points of interest and also quite a few points of disinterest. We saw a huge variety of architecture, just one piece of evidence of the diversity in everything of New Orleans, because of a rather bizarre blend of many different cultures. This city is like nothing we’ve ever seen. There is so much character here! The houses are all individual structures; no two are exactly alike. Even the taxis have character! On the ride there, we saw a row of taxis parked outside of a building, and no two were alike. They were all different colors, unlike in New York, where most taxis are yellow. None of the taxis in New Orleans are yellow!

                The KOA shuttle driver stopped on the riverfront, which is the designated spot for drop-off and pick-up. However, everyone onboard was headed to the National WWII Museum, to visit the indoor museums and attractions on this muggy, stormy day. So our driver proceeded to the WWII museum and dropped us off around the corner from it. However, tonight, for the shuttle back to the campground, we will have to walk back to the original rendezvous point. Still, it was nice of him to get us that much closer.

                Upon arrival at the National WWII Museum, we purchased tickets and joined a group tour about the Pacific theatre that was just starting. Our tour guide, Brian, led us up the elevator to the second floor. Throughout the tour, he said pretty much exactly what the exhibits said; highlighting what he thought was interesting in a painfully monotonous voice. In this manner, he led us through the exhibits regarding the Home Front and the D-Day Invasions in the Pacific. The only reason we stayed with the tour was the others taking the tour. One gentleman, a WWII Veteran, willingly shared about his experiences. He was as intriguing a speaker as our tour guide was boring. Other members of the tour group also shared about their family members’ involvement in World War II. Besides us, the group was all elderly couples, most of whom had lived through the war.

                After the tour, we took the elevator back down to the ground floor and sat down in the indoor Louisiana Memorial Pavilion to eat our picnic lunch. Intermittently throughout lunch, the rain came pouring down and pattered loudly on the roof above our heads. We were so glad we had decided to be inside the museum all day today. After lunch, we wandered around the first-floor exhibits, where we saw various vehicles used in the war, including the Higgins Boat or LCVP, which was invented and manufactured in New Orleans. This special amphibious boat is the reason this museum is located in the city of New Orleans. Also a highlight was the “Normandy Liberty Bell”, a gift from the Normandy region of France to the National World War II Museum as an expression of its gratitude toward its liberators of 1944. It is the only exact ringing replica of Philadelphia’s original Liberty Bell.

                Next, we crossed the street through a light mist to the building which houses the theater of the 4-D movie, which is included in our combination tickets. “Beyond All Boundaries: The 4-D Experience featuring Tom Hanks” is “a powerful, immersive journey through the war that changed the world”. It begins with a pre-show video on eight screens. Sometimes, the eight screens all showed the same picture or video; other times, they all showed different pictures or videos. Then we proceeded into the main theater.

                Beyond All Boundaries is a very well-done documentary. The seats shook and vibrated with the enemy fire, and it snowed on us on Christmas Day. A lady in the row in front of us received the heaviest “snow” dusting. The snow-like soap suds seemed to gather on her head. When our narrator and guide Tom Hanks shared with us about the concentration camps, the room began to fill with steam. My mind raced, “Oh no! Poisonous gasses! They’re poisoning us! We’re going to die just like those millions of Jews did in the Holocaust!” For a split second, I really thought that we were going to die, and then I reminded myself that it was just a movie, just an experience. That’s how incredibly real it all was.

                After the smoke dissipated, the room began to smell like what I would imagine burning, rotting human flesh to smell like, as described in those horror stories of the Holocaust. It was such an unbelievably genuine experience! Next, we saw the blinding white flash of the atomic bomb that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the flash, complete darkness filled the room. However, we saw a big purple spot because of the extreme brightness of the screen only moments earlier. With the conclusion of the war came the conclusion of the experience, and we left the 4-D theater, blinking in the bright lights, thoroughly shaken by the whole incident.

                We next explored the gift shop, where I found a really cute dress with red, white, and blue stars and stripes, as well as a matching apron, both of which were extremely pricey. Then we traversed the street through the hot and muggy air, back to the main museum. This time, we rode the elevator all the way up to the third floor. Our plan was to slowly work our way down through the museum’s three floors. The third floor explored the role of American infantrymen in the European theatre, mostly in the Normandy D-Day invasion.

                In Planning for D-Day, we explored the deadly fortifications awaiting the Allies, viewed the weapons, uniforms, and gear of the Germans versus the Americans, and met the commanders of Operation Overlord. Next, we learned about Eisenhower’s difficult “Decision to Go” and the variety of ships and gliders used in the largest and most complex amphibious assault in history.

                Then, in The D-Day Beaches, we viewed the artifacts and stories of individual soldiers. This helped to put a human face on the most decisive day of WWII – June 6, 1944. We heard the experiences of the men who fought for the Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches. Finally, we contemplated the ultimate cost of victory on the European front.

                Next, we explored the second floor. This was the floor we had breezed through during our tour with Brian, so we were all glad to come back and explore it more deeply. The second floor described life on both the home front and the Pacific front. In The Home Front, we learned that the United States had the eighteenth largest army in the world in 1939, after Romania. We discovered how much World War II really was a total war, and how those on the home front fought just as hard as those anywhere else. Rations of food, metals, and rubber were only a few ways the folks back at home sought to help the war effort. Listening to the voices of those who were there, we learned their catchy slogan: “The fellow who relaxes is helping the Axis!”

                Subsequent to a thorough exploration of the home front, we dove into The D-Day Invasions in the Pacific. We followed the American campaign in the Pacific Theater of Operations during WWII. Beginning at Pearl Harbor and ending with the birth of the atomic age, the exhibit employed artifacts, photographs, and maps, as well as the individual personal accounts of survivors, both military and civilian to tell the story of D-Day operations like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. A little informational educational tidbit I learned today: the background story of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. At first, a small flag was raised on Iwo Jima, but everyone agreed that such a miniscule flag simply would not do. So they got a bigger flag and prepared to raise that. Someone named Norm informed the photographer and the videographer that they were going to raise another, bigger flag. So they met up with one another, prepared their respective equipment, and turned around just in time to capture that famous moment of the six American soldiers raising a flag together. Just moments afterwards, a far lesser known picture was taken, of the soldiers all smiling and waving and looking at the photographer. When asked if he had posed the picture, the photographer responded “Yes”, thinking the question was referring to the second photograph. When they cleared up that misconception, he replied, no, that if he were to have posed the picture, he would not have had all the soldiers facing away from him. That renowned picture, as well as the corresponding video, greatly boosted American morale on the home front.

                The exhibit also presents the story of the racism and brutality that played such a major role in the Pacific war. One section of a wall portrayed American political cartoons stereotyping the Japanese as small of stature, bucktoothed, yellow-skinned, and slant-eyed. Further on, the same wall displayed political cartoons of a similar nature, but of the Japanese derogatory views of Americans. In these caricatures, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a demonic ogre and a pious, two-faced devil. It was somewhat heartrending to see that the very strategy that Hitler and the Nazi Regime used to make the Jewish race subhuman was also used by both the Japanese and us Americans to make each other out to be “life not worthy of life”, as the Japanese put it.

                Following the completion of the museum exhibits, we walked across the street to the museum gift shop (one of three), before meandering back through the city to the riverfront, in the rain. Once there, we snacked on granola bars, and then caught the shuttle back to the campground. This shuttle ride actually had a relative theme: cemeteries. Our driver showed us all the cemeteries in town on the way back to the campground, and even demonstrated how we would get into the biggest and best burial ground of them all. All the graves in New Orleans have to be built above ground. Coffins placed below the ground float up and pop out of the ground, because of the high water table here. However, Jewish custom requires in-ground graves, so they have a coffin-shaped concrete rectangle filled with dirt and people remains. Of course, the grass that grows on top of those above-ground Jewish graves requires mowing, so the gardeners have to lift up their lawn mowers to perform the task. Our shuttle driver unfeelingly announced that these dead bodies are basically baking in clay ovens in the intense summer heat of New Orleans. He also mentioned that all of the graveyards were covered in water in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, that is how high the water rose.

                Once back at the campground, we had rotisserie chicken, sweet yellow corn, and steamed white rice for dinner, and chocolate brownies with butterscotch chips for dessert. Next, we participated in an educational math session and went to bed to rest up for a long day tomorrow.