I wanted to go ahead and finish up our tour of Fredericksburg today, so let me tell you about the War Museum. After we left the Japanese Peace Garden, we walked back across the courtyard, and came to the front of the Museum. The official name of the museum was the National Museum of the Pacific War, and the inside exhibits were housed in the George H.W. Bush Gallery. For those of you who don’t know, President Bush, Sr. was one of several of U.S. Presidents that served in World War II. In fact, just outside of the entrance to the museum itself sits the Presidential Plaza, a small circular courtyard with statuesque plaques for each of the US Presidents that served. In today’s slideshow, you can see the plaque that is there for George Bush, Sr.

Finally, we are ready to enter the museum. I would like to say upfront that I was more impressed by this museum than I have been by any in a long time. They recently reopened the museum after serious upgrading and renovation, and you can tell that they put love and money into it. As you can see by the pictures below, they have several real airplanes, including a bomber, and a Wildcat, tanks, artillery, a replica of the bomb that was dropped in Japan, and even a Japanese floating plane. What also makes this museum unique is that they devote the entirety of the place to the Pacific War. Other than a brief mention of Hitler at the beginning of the tour, there is no mention of the war in Europe.

Also, the museum is laid out chronologically, starting many years before the War began, with an explanation of the situation between Japan and China. In a very organized manner, you walk through the exhibits, and it leads you through the war, with a station for each of the major conflicts. At each station, there is a box with six buttons on it, and beside each button is the name of a WWII veteran. If you push the buttons, you can hear those veterans, in their own voice, give a brief memory of that station’s battle. It is an amazing chance to hear the war memories from the people that were there. Much like the Memorial Wall outside, we simply didn’t have enough time to listen to each memory, but I would love to go back someday and hear them.

If you watch the slideshow, you will see a slightly blurry bluish picture of a submarine in a room. Just to give you an example of the quality of their exhibits, you come to a place in the museum where you have to wait for a show exhibit to finish before you can continue. When it is ready, doors open in front of you, and you walk into that room with the submarine. After a few seconds, the doors close behind you. The room is very dark, with a bluish light that shines on the submarine, the floors and the walls. It covers them with a swirling pattern, and you really feel as though you are underwater, looking at this submarine. It was a bit overwhelming to me, as I am a little phobic about underwater things (cannot even bring myself to watch the Abyss!), but it was effective. The wall behind the submarine is a projector screen, and as the show continues, you see brief videos of the battle. There is one part of the show where the screen goes black, except for large depth charges that drop from the ceiling. As they reach the sub, flashes of lights go off, and I swear, I could almost feel the room shake with the force of the “explosions”. Like I said, very overwhelming and effective.

When we first bought our tickets, they told us it would take 3 hours to go through the museum, and I laughingly told Mike “they don’t know us very well”. We are not generally a “stop and read every exhibit plaque” kind of couple. But in this case, I think they underestimated the power of the story that was being told. All in all, we spent about an hour and a half in just this museum, and I could have spent many more. I would have loved to have had the time and energy to stop at each battle, listen to all the stories, watch all the presentations, but we just didn’t. Not this time, but I am sure we will be back.

So there you have it, my friends… our tour of Fredericksburg.

I have a few more pictures I want to show to you, but they are random, goofy pictures, and each picture has its own story, so I think I will write that post sometime this weekend, or maybe Monday. But if you stay tuned, you might actually get to see that elusive creature that I have been promising since I started this blog… updated pictures of me and Mike! Also as a teaser for the next post… you will see epic fail in someone’s knowledge of history, how I picked the most inappropriate place to take a happy, smiley picture, and an honest-to-God “What the Hell” flag that was used during the war.

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