The Hawaii football team took a break from its training to take a 90-minute trip into the past.
In an after-visiting-hours excursion, the Warriors were given a private tour of the USS Arizona Memorial on Wednesday afternoon.
On the boat ride to what is essentially a water cemetery, the players were given a presentation on the “date which will live in infamy.”
The players used their cell phones to take pictures of the 1,177 names on the Memorial Wall.
Several eyes moistened behind their sunglasses.
“It was very moving, very touching,” head coach Norm Chow said.
There is a circular opening in the floor of the memorial. The players were handed flower petals, which they dropped into the water.
“It was hard not to be emotional,” said tight end Ryan Hall, who has a bachelor’s degree in history from Duke. “I personally don’t have any ties, luckily, but I was thinking about all of the families that have.”
Outside linebacker George Daily-Lyles fought back emotion, without success, after dropping the petals.
“If you look at it from the football standpoint, we get to do the stuff we want to do because people made sacrifices for us,” Daily-Lyles said. “People are entombed there. Even though I never met them, I felt they died for me. They helped make my life a lot easier.”
The Warriors completed the second week of training camp on Wednesday — with the first segment on the Manoa campus and this week at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
During Wednesday’s morning practice, Chow had noticed the players were a bit sluggish.
“I knew it would be a tough day,” Chow said. “It’s been a hard camp. You could see it at breakfast. Guys were dragging around. We weren’t going to flinch. We were going to keep working hard.”
The players expected a strenuous workout for the afternoon practice. They were told to gather under the tents where their meals are served. One of the players even brought his playbook.
Chow then announced that practice was canceled and the players would instead go on the tour.
Chow had one stipulation: Cell phones could only be used for taking pictures.
“Some of us grew up without cell phones,” Chow said. “We did OK.”
The Warriors then crammed into two tour buses and two vans.
“We get so caught up in the world we live in and the importance of what we do, we sometimes forget the people who fought for our freedoms,” Chow said. “Things like this bring that back. This was about bonding and being grateful.”