The USS Arizona Memorial is hallowed territory. Whether viewed through a historical, metaphorical or purely pragmatic lens, it is difficult to overstate the site’s significance to Hawaii, and the world.
It is the final resting place for most of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed in the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that plunged the United States into World War II. The site, operated by the National Park Service, is also Hawaii’s No. 1 visitor attraction, attracting nearly 1.8 million people a year — including WWII veterans in their 90s eager to pay their respects one last time, Japanese visitors more familiar with accounts of their own country’s wartime experiences, Hawaii students on field trips and busloads of Waikiki vacationers making the sightseeing rounds.
No matter what motivates them, the visitors settle into a solemn hush once they disembark from the boat that takes them from the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center to the monument that straddles the hull of the sunken battleship. This an important place, and they know it. More than a relic. More than just another stop on an around-the-island jaunt.
So it is simply unacceptable that the memorial has become mired in ongoing allegations of malaise and mismanagement, first found to be selling tickets to commercial tour operators that were supposed to be distributed for free, and now falling short in basic upkeep, less than four years after the dedication of a new visitor center and other renovations that totaled more than $56 million.
The outward signs of strain include overgrown landscaping, peeling paint and dirty and scuffed walkways. And the internal dissent is obvious as well, evident in an internal National Park Service survey that found low morale among memorial employees and diminished trust in the facility’s administration.
It’s true that federal budget cuts and the continually increasing visitor tallies account for some of the problems, but those factors alone cannot explain the ongoing conflict.
The latest salvo comes from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, that claims the National Park Service has swept the ticketing scandal under the rug.
Although the practice of selling tickets has been discontinued, further action is needed to address the misconduct that occurred in 2013, the group asserts. For a period of about seven months that year, the Park Service and its nonprofit fundraising arm, Pacific Historic Parks, sold what should have been free tickets to commercial operators, who then resold them to tour patrons. On some days, more than 700 of the 4,350 daily tickets available for the Arizona Memorial tour were diverted, an NPS investigation found.
The park’s superintendent, who is the focus of some current and former employees’ and volunteers’ complaints, insists that he is working diligently to ensure that park operations and staff morale are the best they can be.
There’s a lot of work to be done, and among the welcome efforts are the call for broad public input about how to improve the process of reserving and distributing tickets to visit the memorial. Anyone who has ever visited, or wants to, should offer suggestions at bit.ly/WiXAyK.
The USS Arizona Memorial holds a seminal place in world history, and a leading role in the tourism industry on which Hawaii’s economy relies. The ongoing dispute over its management should not be considered an internal matter within the national park system, but one of vital community interest that demands rapid followup to ensure that the iconic site receives the respect it deserves — now, and forever.
