USS Arizona Memorial

The remains of the USS Arizona still lie at the bottom of Pearl Harbor with 1,107 entombed within her. Though this is hallowed ground it took many years to fund and complete the building of the memorial.

Admiral Arthur W. Radford, who commanded carrier task forces throughout the second world war to become Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, instituted the daily raising of the colors over the remains of the USS Arizona in 1950. In that same year, a temporary memorial was built over the remaining portion of the deckhouse. Redford requested funds for a memorial but was denied because of budget constraints during the Korean War.

Legislation passed in the ’50s which designated the wreck as a national shrine, including American President Dwight D Eisenhower’s creation of a National Memorial at Pearl Harbor in 1958. Fundraising began and came from some unlikely sources including $95,000 privately raised from a 1958 episode of the “This Is Your Life” TV show featuring retired Admiral Samuel G Fuqua, Medal of Honor recipient, and a senior surviving officer from the USS Arizona. Another $64,000 came from a 1961 Arizona Memorial benefit concert by Elvis Presley and $40,000 from the sale of plastic models of Arizona from the Revell Model Company.

The remainder of the $500,000 dollar memorial came from the then Territory of Hawai’i (Hawaii was not a state until 1959) and federal funds of an initial $200,000 and an additional $150,000 proposed and legislated by the late Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye.

Inouye was a volunteer officer at an Army aid station on Oahu (he was studying to become a doctor) when Pearl Harbor was attacked. His aid station received a large portion of the wounded that day.

Inouye volunteered and fought in the Army’s infamous “442nd Regiment” in Europe and would become a Medal of Honor recipient for a battle in Italy where he was shot multiple times and lost his right forearm but continued to fight to knock out the last of three German machine gun nests to take and important ridgeline. After the war, he was elected to congress in 1953 and would be elected as Hawaii’s first Senator in 1962. He never lost an election in 58 years and was a U.S. Senator to Hawaii until his death in 2012.

The USS Arizona Memorial was completed in 1962. It is accessible only by boat and straddles the hull of the sunken wreck without touching it. It was designed by Honolulu architect Alfred Preis who was detained at Sand Island Oahu during the war because of his Austrian birth. The Navy specified that the memorial is in the form of a bridge floating above the ship and accommodating 200 people. Preis explained his design this way;

“Wherein the structure sags in the center but stands strong and vigorous at the ends, expresses initial defeat and ultimate victory … The overall effect is one of serenity. Overtones of sadness have been omitted, to permit the individual to contemplate his own personal responses … his innermost feelings.