The National Park Service (NPS), Department of the Interior, apparently doesn’t remember the “Day of Infamy” at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial (PHNM) very well nor has any desire to improve that situation — despite having the assets, real estate and funding to do so.

People and events surrounding Dec. 7, 1941, inspired me to choose a history and naval aviator path. Today retired from the Navy and a fledgling historian, in my many visits to the PHNM I noticed historical errors in the displays the NPS has at its visitors center, which have been there since refurbishment in 2010. I have brought these to the attention of every park superintendent since 2013, and yet they remain today.

One of the many errors concerns Doris Miller, the African American mess attendant who on board the USS West Virginia, took his mortally wounded commanding officer to safety and then fired a machine gun at Japanese planes, the latter a task he was never allowed to train for.

The display that tells of his eventual death in World War II has its date a year off, in a battle he wasn’t in, at a location nearly 3,000 miles off. His valor has the U.S. Navy placing this Navy Cross awardee’s name on a new construction aircraft carrier in the near future.

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The PHNM has a lack of display space. The visitors center makes only a nodding reference to the post-attack rest of the war, never mind the impact it has had ever since on the world at large. There is a warehouse full of artifacts and research materials the public will never see, many donated by veterans and their families to the NPS.

Solutions are readily at hand for the NPS, in real estate and funding to enhance the visitors’ historical experience many times over. The Navy transferred custody of the Chief Petty Officers (CPO) Bungalows on Ford Island, literally at Battleship Row’s waters edge to the NPS more than 10 years ago. This neighborhood, including a schoolhouse, can be the space needed for historic displays of artifacts and interpretation in detail, instead of the “Readers Digest” version at the visitors center. This hallowed ground, too, is where sailors and Marines swam ashore through flaming oil to safety. One is less than 100 feet from where Doris Miller was on West Virginia, and amid where thousands of other heroes served.

The funding is there now. The “Great American Outdoors Act” became law in August 2020. It provides five fiscal years’ worth of funding, 2021-2025, to the NPS toward long-deferred maintenance and park improvements nationwide.

I’ve sent two letters to the Interior secretary this year and copied many inside the NPS and Hawaii’s four federal representatives via email, snail mail and phone calls, detailing ways to improve this situation — similar to how the NPS does Gettysburg and other battlefields in its charge. I suggested using military construction units to do any required work via an authorized Defense Department initiative to cut costs. In short, it fell on deaf ears. And recently the fiscal year 2022 NPS budget came out, again not a penny to Pearl Harbor.

Years of apathy and a future of more of the same. A new PHNM superintendent won’t help if said person is not funded for improvements. No funding for improvements will show up unless a formal plan in detail is submitted to cost out and fund.

Perhaps it is time to transfer the USS Arizona Memorial and the PHNM back to the Navy to manage via its Naval History and Heritage Command, which manages many museums under its charge on the mainland and does it well. Under new management, employees at the PHNM could transfer their federal job status over. The overall beneficiary will be the American people.

Charles Gillman, of Simi Valley, Calif., is an airline pilot and retired U.S. Navy captain who comes to Hawaii several times a month.