A Photo Log of the World War 2 History Cruise on the
 M/S Statendam from Auckland to Kobe
March 1 - 26, 2008
Note: This site is incomplete.  Click on the thumbnail images below to go to the page for that destination.  (Except for those noted "Not Done").
Use your browser's back arrow or click on the last photo on a page to return here.
 
Holland America scheduled this cruise to visit World War 2 historic locations in the western Pacific. Military historians gave lectures on sea days to provide background on the places visited.  Movies regarding WW2 were shown. Land tours visited battlefields, museums, memorials, cemeteries, etc.
New Zealand and Noumea were Allied bases. Rabaul and Yap were Japanese bases which were isolated and by-passed by the Allies. Guadalcanal, Guam, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa were the sites of major battles. Nagasaki was the target for an atom bomb.
 


Auckland, New Zealand
(not done)


Tauranga, NZ
(not done)


Bay of Islands, NZ
(not done)


Noumea, New Caledonia
(not done)


Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands


Rabaul, Papua New Guinea


Yap, Micronesia


Guam, USA
(not done)


Saipan, Northern Marianas


Iwo Jima, Japan
 


Okinawa, Japan
(not done)


Nagasaki, Japan
 

  


Inland Sea, Japan
(not done)


Kobe, Japan
(not done)



 

  
Note:  Color photos were taken and video and sound recorded by Jim Stubchaer using a Casio ExiLim EX-Z750 ultra compact digital camera at 3072x2048 pixels resolution. Many were cropped and/or adjusted using Photo Elements 4 (PE4).  None were edited to add or remove objects.  All were taken on this cruise except for the three photos at the Peace Park in Nagasaki, which I took in 2005.  Except for these thumbnails, all were resized to 640 pixels wide for this presentation.   GPS tracks from a Garmin 76CSx were transferred to Google Earth Plus and edited in PE4. Most of the text is from my log of the cruise.