Group seeks $1.25M for USS Arizona upgrade

By Jaymes Song
Associated Press

Officials yesterday announced the formation of the Hawai'i Advisory Council, which will help raise money to replace the aging and sinking museum and visitors center at the USS Arizona Memorial.

Fargo said the group's target is to raise at least $1.25 million of the Pearl Harbor Memorial Fund's overall goal of $34 million to rebuild the center to "make the operation down at Pearl Harbor absolutely successful and conducive to all of the visitors that join us here in Hawai'i."

The Arizona Memorial's visitors center was built in 1980 and was designed to accommodate 750,000 people a year, but today the gateway to the sunken battleship's monument attracts more than twice that.

"The Pearl Harbor museum and the Arizona Memorial are significant not just to us, and not just to the nation, but I believe they're significant to the world," Gov. Linda Lingle said. "And going forward, a reminder of peace."

Interest in the Pearl Harbor attack increases as the years go by and survivors die, and the one-story, open-air building with a view of the famous white memorial that straddles the sunken battleship is literally bursting at the seams.

In addition to being crowded, portions of the shoreside building have settled as much as 30 inches and continue to slowly sink, causing cracks in the concrete structure.

The Pearl Harbor Memorial Fund is in the midst of an effort to raise $34 million to replace the center, which honors those killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, that drew the United States into World War II.

Preliminary plans for the new 24,000-square-foot visitors center include more restrooms and a 5,400-square-foot museum to display artifacts that are collecting dust in storage.

During the peak summer months, the center averages 4,500 visitors a day, pushing the wait to two hours to watch a 30-minute film that includes U.S. and Japanese footage of the attack and to be ferried out to the memorial.