Courtesy National Park Service
HONOLULU — A new $58 million museum and visitor center at the USS Arizona Memorial was dedicated on Dec. 7, the 69th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that launched the United States into World War II.
The Pearl Harbor Memorial Museum and Visitor Center has new and more historically comprehensive galleries and exhibits, additional open-air exhibits and interpretive displays, and an Education and Research Center with video-teleconferencing capabilities for distance learning.
The new 24,000-square-foot facility, built on a more stable area of the site to address previous structural issues, more than doubles the exhibition space of the original museum and visitor center built in 1980.
The expanded state-of-the-art museum has more historically comprehensive galleries and multimedia exhibits, additional open-air exhibits, two digital movie theaters and improved visitor amenities.
The center, which added six acres of adjacent land, bringing the total land area to approximately 17 acres, has a campus-style layout with liberal open green areas.
The new facility also serves as the central entrance and ticketing location for visitors to the four Pearl Harbor historic sites: WWII Valor in the Pacific National Monument, the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum, the USS Missouri Memorial and the Pacific Aviation Museum.
Managed by the National Park Service, the USS Arizona Memorial is built over the remains of the sunken battleship USS Arizona, the final resting place for many of the 1,177 crewmen killed on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes bombed their ship.
In addition to the USS Arizona Memorial, the recently dedicated WWII Valor in the Pacific National Monument includes sites on Ford Island, the USS Oklahoma Memorial, the USS Utah Memorial and several historic Battleship Row mooring quays and CPO bungalows.
