Arizona Memorial

Six Japanese Imperial aircraft carriers with 353 planes traveled 3,400 miles across the Pacific to attack the United States without warning. The Japanese chose to attack on Sunday as they believed the US Navy fleet would be more relaxed and less alert on a weekend. They achieved complete surprise as many sailors were still in their pajamas or eating breakfast in the mess halls when the attack began at 7:55 am.

Two waves of Japanese torpedo bombers, high-level bombers, and fighter bombers kept up the attack for just under two hours targeting the U.S. fleet and aircraft bases. Airfields throughout the island at Hickam, Wheeler, Bellows, and Ewa as well as Schofield Army Barracks and Kaneohe Naval Air Station. The first wave destroyed 188 planes on the ground before moving on to attack Pearl Harbor. Torpedo bombers struck battleship row as well as several other ships near the dry docks.

The remains of Arizona still lie at the bottom of Pearl Harbor with 1,107 entombed within her hull. 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 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 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 Arizona Memorial was completed in 1962. It is accessible only by boat and straddles the hull of the sunken battleship 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.