Establishing a Memorial to Remember and Honor

ESTABLISHING A MEMORIAL TO

Remember and Honor

By Scott Pawlowski, Curator, Pearl Harbor National Memorial

USS Arizona Memorial under construction

While World War II raged on, many individuals recognized the need for a memorial to the dead of December 7th, 1941. Navy personnel sought a tribute to the sailors who died at Pearl Harbor, others sought to commemorate the attack itself. Everyone agreed that there should be some tribute. The details were varied but over the next 15 years or so would be refined into the Memorial structure you see today.

“A long, long time went by between the initial thinking about a memorial [and final design]. It went back, really, to 1942, We started then to talk about a memorial, early 1942.” Alfred Preis National Park Service oral history #76, 1985

The Governor of the Territory of Hawaii chartered the Pearl Harbor Memorial Trust on December 9, 1943 as an offshoot of the Women's National Patriotic Organization who adorned veteran gravestones on Memorial Day for the Navy. The purpose of the organization was "to acquire land for, build and maintain a suitable memorial dedicated to the men who fought in the battles of the Pacific, to be known as the Pearl Harbor Memorial and to solicit the donation of funds and property to the corporation for the said objects and purposes." While their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, this organization helped define the multitude of interested parties who wanted to Remember Pearl Harbor. The Pearl Harbor Memorial Trust also spent quite a bit of time soliciting ideas about what exactly a memorial would look like. Interestingly, the proposals split into two main approaches with a variety of potential locations. One approach would be to have a memorial that was a place to render honors. The other approach was some sort of place to gather like a community center.

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz wrote when asked about his idea for a memorial:

''Would it not be possible, using the natural beauty of one of the small valleys or hillsides near Honolulu to plan, landscape and plant a memorial garden with paths winding among flowering trees and shrubs?

Such a memorial would not only be a fitting monument to the armed forces but also a lasting adornment of which the Pearl Harbor Memorial Trust, and the people of Honolulu might well be proud."

By 1946, Mr. Tucker Gratz, a prominent Oahu businessman, spearheaded civilian efforts towards the creation of a shrine over or next to the USS Arizona remains. The efforts of Mr. Gratz and others led to the creation of the Pacific War Memorial Commission (PWMC) in 1949 by the legislature. The PWMC was tasked with the creation of permanent World War II monuments throughout Hawaii, including one to those killed in December 1941.

“True to the rule that if there're more than two people in a room there will be at least two proposals, there were two proposals. One, passionately defended and proposed, was a "useful" memorial, an auditorium. It was I [Preis] who spoke on behalf of a ''contemplative" memorial, and argued that the purpose really is a spiritual one, to stimulate people to think, to feel in their own way about the war, about war itself. So that's the way it started.” Alfred Preis National Park Service oral history #76, 1985

Navy leaders also sought a memorial to the sailors who died. In 1950, Admiral Arthur Radford, the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, ordered the construction of a wooden platform and flag mast on the boat deck of the USS Arizona. The hoisting and striking of the colors over the USS Arizona began. Notice here that this memorialization is very different from Adm. Nimitz’s ideas just 6 years earlier.

Admiral Radford concurrently requested funding for the creation of a shrine over the USS Arizona both in 1950 and 1951 but Congress did not answer these appeals. After years of additional debate and lobbying by both civilian and military people, President Eisenhower signed Public Law 85-344, authorizing the creation of the USS Arizona Memorial on March 15, 1958. This law was amended by Public Law 87-201, effective September 6, 1961 stated:

"Such a memorial and museum shall be maintained in honor and commemoration of the members of the Armed Forces of the United States who gave their lives to their country during the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7. 1941." Public Law 87-201

After 4 years of citizen centered fundraising and financial assistance from both the state of Hawaii and the federal government, Alfred Preis’ ideas of a contemplative memorial were cast in concrete. The new memorial opened on Memorial Day, 1962 with a crowd of around 200 people at the dedication.

This is what Alfred Preis, the USS Arizona Memorial designer has to say about this National Historic Landmark. This passage was taken from Alfred Preis’ National Park Service oral history conducted in 1985. Admiral Radford’s Initial efforts at a memorial.

Question:On your design some of the notable features are the dip in the roofline and the 21 openings in the center portion of the bridge, seven on each side and seven on the top, When you designed it with the dip in the middle and the 21 openings was there any particular symbolism that you were thinking of?

Answer PREIS: Yeah, but it didn't start with the symbolism. The approach was strictly structural. It was a hang bridge, suspension bridge, which the catenary…The curves of the sagging, hanging cable. That's basically what that term, catenary, means. It was a structural solution which I thought the cheapest. Afterwards, when we were confronted by the talk to make a memorial out of it, everything I've read and thought and felt was stewing in my mind, and I tried to fit it together with the structural concept.

There's nothing wrong with that. This is, I think, an essential element of the creative process. You are working on two different planes of ideas and you guide them until they meet and fit together. I don't think that there are often flashes of whole designs. The basic concept, yes, but what to do with the individual ideas and how to merge them with the functional and structural necessities comes later. For instance, the holes: the holes had only, only, one purpose at the beginning. To reduce the weight. At this stage we were still thinking in structural alternatives to build the memorial out of steel, clad in concrete, or entirely of concrete, either cast in place or precast. Well, you asked about the symbolism.

USS Arizona Memorial under construction

Question:I just asked whether you had any symbolism in mind…

Answer PREIS: Yes, but it was not preconceived. This grew out of the design and out of the essence of feelings which we acquired by reading and thinking and discussing. The idea of initial defeat, that we as a peace-loving nation-- and I'm quoting myself—will never strike the first blow. So therefore, since I also believe, as a Freudian, that war in the long run is probably unavoidable, regardless of our peace loving convictions, that if and when there should be another war, we again will have to be attacked first. We are not going to attack first. That was our thinking. So therefore, if we're to be attacked first we would suffer again an initial defeat, we hope a temporary defeat. The slack curve of the catenary became the sag of defeat, the weakness, and the sharp-edged upward curve of the two sides of the structure depict the will to rise out of that defeat into victory.

As to the wall and ceiling openings, we want to emphasize the openness, rather than the enclosure, the number of openings would have been odd numbered, so that in the middle would be an opening and not a column. So I could make three, I could make five, I could make seven. Seven offered the best relationship of height to length and the most favorable relationship of wall and ceiling voids and solids. We had to give the openings form and we had to also make the ''flesh", the remnants of the walls between the holes, articulate something. I was most impressed by Marines standing at attention, their legs spread, rifle in front of them. This is what the wall between the openings does: they are slender, sinewy and hard, and formed as background for the spreading legs. In the beginning, they had a Marine standing in front of each of these columns. It was very beautiful. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, the man who would eventually design the USS Arizona Memorial was a 30 year old Austrian who moved to Honolulu after fleeing the Nazis from his birthplace in Vienna.

The night of December 8, 1941, Alfred Preis and his wife were rounded up and sent to the Sand Island internment camp. The couple spent nearly four months there on suspicion of being enemy aliens.

Family members said Preis was never bitter about the experience. And he considered his design of the USS Arizona Memorial as the proudest achievement of his architectural career.

Alfred Preis died in 1993. His ashes were scattered in the waters off the USS Arizona Memorial.