Seventy years after Japanese warplanes devastated the Honolulu-based U.S. Pacific Fleet on a "date which will live in infamy," history is still palpable at Hawaii's biggest tourist attraction.
By EMMANUEL DUNAND, AFP/Getty Images
Oahu's year-old, $56 million Pearl Harbor Visitors Center - where about 100 veterans of the battle will gather at today's memorial - features a new museum, movie theaters and audio tour narrated by actress Jamie Lee Curtis, and serves as a central ticket distribution center for tours to the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum, USS Missouri Memorial, Pacific Aviation Museum and WWII Valor in the Pacific National Monument (the USS Arizona Memorial).
At the latter, drops of oil from a punctured fuel tank still rise to the surface every 20 to 30 seconds.
"Some people call them black tears, as if the men were still crying inside the ship," a memorial guide told AFP.
The Los Angeles Times reports that restoration and preparations are underway for the Arizona Memorial, which was dedicated on Memorial Day 1962. The memorial has suffered from heavy traffic — 150 visitors every 15 minutes — and the effects of salt and tropical weather.
"Perhaps most intriguing of all, though, is the mending of a long-running mistake," the Times notes. " The Arizona refurbishment will allow the repair of 75 errors on a wall of inscriptions in the Shrine Room. Sections are being removed and re-engraved to fix misspellings and incorrect ranks among the names of the 1,177 Marines and sailors who lost their lives on the ship."
At Oahu's Dillingham Airfield, meanwhile, history buffs and adrenaline addicts can clamber aboard a restored 1941 Stearman bi-plane for a 40-minute aerial tour that retraces one of the routes used by Japanese bombers that fateful morning.
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