USS Arizona Memorial, Pearl Harbor

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USS Arizona Memorial, Pearl Harbor

 

On the morning of Sunday December 7th, 1941, the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked Pearl Harbor

navy base and it was the USS Arizona battleship where 1,177 of the ship’s crewman lost their lives.

Plans for a war memorial began in 1943, but it was not until the Territory of Hawaii installed the

Pacific War Memorial Commission six years later, in 1949, who made the first steps to build the

USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.

In the 1950s, the memorial was officially recognized when Admiral Arthur Radford, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific, had a flagpole placed over the sunken battleship. The construction was completed in 1961, and it was dedicated in 1962. A commemorative plaque was added to the flagpole’s base during the ninth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

The memorial is almost two hundred feet long, and spans the middle part of the USS Arizona battleship including its three main sections, which are the central area for general observation and ceremonies,

the assembly plus entry rooms and the shrine room.

The memorial was built by architect Alfred Preis who designed the structure such that it exudes a

general feeling of serenity. The shrine room contains a marble wall where the names of the men killed

on the USS Arizona battleship are engraved. The memorial was created at Pearl Harbor to honor all the military personnel who died in the attack.