Imagination soared yesterday as the Pacific Aviation Museum opened its Ford Island hangar to an adoring crowd of grown-up kids, genuine war heroes and an astronaut.

Several hundred people filed into Hangar 37, the first phase of a four-phase museum project, to check out a real Japanese Zero, a U.S. Navy Wildcat fighter and an Army Air Corps B-25 Mitchell bomber.

"It's amazing," said Eric Jones, 12, of Kansas City, Mo. "I don't know how they got so many planes in here. I like it that they have some of the Japanese stuff. You don't see that too often."

The museum's first phase tells the story of World War II in the Pacific. Future phases to be built in other hangars will recount tales from the Korean, Vietnam and Cold wars.

Yesterday's opening featured 20 visiting Japanese Zero pilots, who stole the show when they posed for photographs in front of the museum's Zero.

Also present were retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager, a World War II ace and the first man to break the sound barrier, and retired U.S. Navy Capt. Wally Schirra, one of the original seven Mercury astronauts.

Karen Souza Spofford, the daughter of a former U.S. Air Force pilot, called the exhibits wonderful.

"I think it's awesome, I really do," she said. "It's really beautiful. It's historic."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.