President Bush Proposes Designating Pearl Harbor National Monument
Why this wasn’t done years ago I’ll never know.
WASHINGTON, May 29 - (Kyodo)—President George W. Bush proposed Thursday designating Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the site of Japan’s surprise attack that ushered in the Pacific part of World War II, a U.S. national monument.
He put forward the proposal in a memorandum to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne asking for their input.
“Pearl Harbor is well known as the site of Imperial Japan’s attack on Dec. 7, 1941,” Bush said in the memorandum. “Its historical significance, however, both preceded the Japanese attack and spanned World War II.”
“There are objects of historic and scientific interest at Pearl Harbor…These objects of historical and scientific interest may tell the broader story of the war,” he said.
Unlike a national park, a national monument can be officially designated by the president under the Antiquities Act without congressional approval. Among the current national monuments is the Statue of Liberty in New York.
(AP)
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Just a side note, I did a lot of training on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor and it (the USS Arizona) still bleeds (is leaking oil) to this very day.
You can actually see the slick in the picture up top.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:15 pmI’m all for it, but that raises a practical question. Several parts of the ship are scattered around the country - do they become monuments as well? A mast and anchor are in AZ:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/11973
The ship’s bell is somewhere else in AZ, and I was told (in the early 90’s when I was stationed there) that the topmasts and other abovedeck items are stored elsewhere in the naval base. One of the rear turrets was mounted in Kaneohe Bay as a defensive structure, and the other one was somewhere else - Barber’s Point? I don’t know where those items are, any longer. Perhaps they were scrapped. What about them, though?
May 29th, 2008 at 7:25 pmSounds great to me.
May 29th, 2008 at 8:01 pmI wonder what the PHSA will officially say on this proposal?
When I was in Hawaii. We lived about 5 miles from Pearl Harbor on top of a hill called Red Hill. You could see the Aizona Memorial from there. I made that trip to see the Memorial many times. If you ever get a chance it is a must see. Plus it makes a good trip, Free ride by the Navy and there is no cost to see the Memorial. Just a side note: Red Hill hid Huge fuel tanks underground that fed fuel to pearl harbor during the war. These tanks were so big they could hold the Aloha Tower in one. (Good reading at Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility Wikipedia)
May 29th, 2008 at 8:05 pmI’m all for it, but that raises a practical question. Several parts of the ship are scattered around the country - do they become monuments as well? A mast and anchor are in AZ:
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I believe its going to be the entire harbor - there are many things from scattered across the entire harbor, including men, that were lost on that day.
May 29th, 2008 at 8:07 pmAh; indeed. I fixated on the Arizona. There is a lot of fascinating stuff there, like the USS Utah:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=pearl+harbor,+hawaii&ie=UTF8&ll=21.368946,-157.962421&spn=0.001304,0.002508&t=h&z=19
Long link; sorry. There’s a lot of WWII history in Hawaii, actually. I recall several occasions where I came across a bunker, usually overlooking a beach. The whole place was turned into a fortress at one point.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:17 pm