My wife and I visited the U.S. War Memorial here in Honiara over the weekend. We’ve been here plenty of times already but we didn’t take any photos. Guadalcanal Island was a major battleground of the Pacific theatre during World War 2, with many losses on both the American and Japanese side, so it’s not surprising that there is a well maintained memorial here. The U.S. military makes regular visits to the Solomon Islands, sending personnel and fighter jets in honour of their war dead. The film The Thin Red Line is based on the Guadalcanal campaign and is worth watching if you can put up with its 3 hours running length.

The U.S. Memorial is located along Skyline Ridge, on a hilltop that overlooks Honiara, so it’s a rather pleasant and scenic place to visit. The memorial itself is simply a collection of marble slabs with details descriptions of the battles and lists of losses. They make for good reading if you’re interested in World War 2 history, though in the case you should probably go read the Wikipedia entry on the subject instead.

This is wha’s written on the central pillar between the two national flags. Directly in front of it is a star under which the remains of an unidentified U.S. soldier was found during the excavation of the site for the construction of the memorial. It’s worth noting that even until today, the people here regularly come across unexploded bombs and caches of munitions from the war.

Here’s a view of Honiara with the sea visible just beyond. As you can see, there’s plenty of greenery and small houses dotting the landscape, but hardly any big buildings of note.

This is a betel nut stand just outside the memorial. The Solomon Islanders have the nasty habit of chewing them and betel nut stands are found all over the place, one of the few signs of enterpreneurship here. As you can see, the owner of this particular stand decided to do a bit of branding.