The USS Arizona Memorial has become part of a
national memorial — again.
The lengthy and much-
encompassing World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument designation applied by President George W. Bush in 2008 was recently removed by Congress.
The new official name for the National Park Service unit, which became law on Tuesday, is the Pearl Harbor National Memorial.
“The park and its partners are universally delighted with the name change that was signed into law by the president this week,” said Superintendent Jacqueline Ashwell. “Our prior name was rather long and unwieldy and difficult to remember.”
The Arizona Memorial
visitor center, the USS
Utah and USS Oklahoma
memorials, six chief petty
officer bungalows on Ford Island and three pairs of mooring quays along historic Battleship Row will
remain part of the Pearl Harbor National Memorial.
The new name “… immediately understandable, and is a name commensurate with the importance and reverence of the site,” Ashwell said. The park plans to announce next steps on the name change in April.
The 2008 Valor in the Pacific proclamation lumped together the five sites on Oahu, three in Alaska associated with military action, and one in California, the Tule Lake Segregation Center where Japanese Americans were detained.
Before the Arizona Memorial became part of the Valor monument, it was the USS Arizona National Memorial.
The new name reflects a desire to connect to a greater degree with the familiarity of “Pearl Harbor” history. The former Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor on Ford Island changed its name to Pearl Harbor
Aviation Museum.
The legislation also changed the name of Honouliuli National Monument, which was created in 2015 and is also a unit of the park service, to Honouliuli National Historic Site.
