Lush is the only word to describe Hawaii – it’s so lush that even the mountains are green … a first for me. And everywhere you look there are flowers – hibiscus, bird of paradise, false bird of paradise (I had to look that one up), red ginger, shell ginger, lilies. frangipani – it’s a gardener’s paradise. And then of course there are the orchids used to make the lei. Mine lasted the full four days that we were in the hotel, which is impressive for such a delicate looking flower.
Such a lush, exotic place is just crying out to be used as a film location. There are some films set in Hawaii, such as Blue Hawaii starring Elvis Presley, and Disney’s Lilo and Stitch, but there are many, many other films that have used the lush backdrop to give an impression of remote, exotic, or otherworldly locations. Jurassic Park was filmed on Oahu, and so was Godzilla and Jumanji. Hawaii stood in for East Africa in George of the Jungle, and for the Peruvian jungle in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
We visited Waimea Valley on Oahu, which is bursting with lush tropical foliage and where you can swim in a lake with a huge waterfall. Not surprisingly, hundreds of films and TV shows have been filmed here, including the Hunger Games, LOST, Baywatch, and of course Hawaii Five-O.
Ironically, very little of the film Pearl Harbour was actually shot in Hawaii. It was mostly shot in California, with just a few scenes in Honolulu and a few more in Gloucestershire, of all places.
But there is original film footage of the attack on 7 December 1941 shown daily at the Pearl Harbour National Memorial near Honolulu. It’s a fascinating museum, very well-organised and respectful, and it tells the story clearly and vividly.
I think the thing I found most moving at Pearl Harbour was the trip out to the USS Arizona Memorial, constructed over the sunken ship in the harbour, which honours the crew members who died when the ship exploded after being bombed. Over 1,100 men died and most are still entombed in the ship on the seabed. But of those lucky few who survived, more than forty chose to be buried with their shipmates inside the ship when they eventually died of old age. So a ceremony was devised for these burials whereby a National Park Service diver takes the urn out to the ship, holds it aloft for the family to have one last look, and then dives down and places it in a former gun turret inside the ship. Even as long as 80 years after the bombing (the last crewman was returned to the ship in 2021) these men still felt that the Arizona crew were their family and wanted to be buried with them.
There are still dramatic and terrifying incidents taking place regularly in Hawaii, but thankfully these days they are created by directors and actors – with the help of a lush backdrop – for the entertainment of us all.