The Arizona Memorial’s new $58 million visitor center doesn’t just tell you about Dec. 7, 1941.

Its new museum puts you there.

The National Park Service, which oversees Hawaii’s No. 1 tourist attraction, is completing new exhibits that will be officially unveiled this Dec. 7, the 69th anniversary of the Japanese attack that propelled America into World War II.

In the "Attack and Aftermath" gallery, a one-third scale model of a Japanese Nakajima Type 97 B5N2 "Kate" torpedo bomber — 18 feet from wingtip to wingtip — hangs from the ceiling and bears down on Battleship Row, depicted in a 25-foot-long mural by famed naval artist Tom Freeman.

In the painting, a torpedo has just been released from the undercarriage of Seaman 1st Class Fukuji Inoue’s aircraft. Torpedo wakes streak toward the battleships West Virginia and Oklahoma from two other attackers.

At 7:55 a.m., Japanese torpedo planes from the aircraft carrier Akagi had begun their assault on the battle line of the Pacific Fleet moored along the east side of Ford Island.

"In that moment, those torpedoes that are in the water in front of you and that are in the sky above you have not yet hit the ships in the harbor," said Eileen Martinez, chief of interpretation at the memorial. "Those are the moments before all hell breaks loose."

Smoke billows in the background from the earlier attack on Wheeler Field, and visitors will hear the drone of an aircraft as it dives toward its target and the devastating history that would unfold at Pearl Harbor.

Arthur Herriford, 88, president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, remembers seeing "God-awful things" when the USS Arizona exploded. He was on the light cruiser USS Detroit about a quarter-mile away.

"It haunts me to this day to think that 1,177 people lost their lives in the blink of an eye," Herriford said.

The three new galleries, the "Road to War," "Oahu 1941" and "Attack and Aftermath," occupy about 7,000 square feet of exhibit space — about double that of the old museum, officials said.

The National Park Service opened the first half of the new open-air and campuslike visitor center on Feb. 17. That half has centralized ticketing for the memorial boat ride and three other neighboring nonprofit museums, as well as an education center, restrooms, a bookstore, snack shop and administrative offices.

The completion is so highly anticipated that the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association is moving up its big convention by a year — normally held every five years — and is holding the gathering in Honolulu.

Herriford, who lives in Sherman Oaks, Calif., said the group is considering disbanding after what could be its last hurrah.

"All our members are becoming quite ancient, and we’re dying off. We don’t have a lot of them left anymore," Herriford said.

When the association organized, about 80,000 people were eligible for membership, he said. Now he estimates there are about 3,000 members left.

"We’re so spread out, and for any of us to get together, there’s only two or three or four as a rule anymore," he said.

The dedication of the new Pearl Harbor Visitor Center is the exception, and about 80 survivors and 420 family members are expected for the museum’s reopening.

The exhibits will include a new frankness and provide a bit of insight into the carnage that would come. The combination has resulted in a "may be too intense for children" warning, as well as a caution that off-color ethnic references true to the era lie ahead.

Exhibits reveal the state of mind of Americans and Japanese before and during the war through photos, videos, interactive exhibits, artifacts and published material from the time.

New items will include a nearly 9-foot riveted and burned slab of the Arizona and a sailor’s uniform bloodied in the Dec. 7 attack.

"One of the controversies was, how graphic do we get in telling the story?" Martinez said.

The response the park service got from a variety of sources, survivors included, was: Don’t whitewash the death, but create a sensitive approach.

Included is a 16-by-20-inch photo of a dead American in a bloody covering on the shore of Ford Island, surrounded by four U.S. military personnel.

Nitrogen-filled cases specially made by a company in England will protect some of the artifacts from Hawaii’s corrosive humidity.

The park service sent a film crew to Japan to film oral histories of some of the last surviving aviators from the attack.

The tactics of the attack will be shown in a 10-minute film on three interconnected 52-inch screens with surround sound.

Bronze replicas of the Japanese carrier Akagi, the battleship Arizona and the Arizona Memorial itself will help the visually impaired feel what other people are seeing.

Construction continues everywhere. With $7.2 million (over and above the $58 million for the new visitor center) in federal stimulus funding, a bus turnaround and new parking lot are taking shape.

New exhibits are added to the museum every day.

"People are going to spend quite a bit of time in the museum," Martinez said. "There are many, many more artifacts displayed, and there are more interactive exhibits."