A U.S. Postal Service employee from Florida flew to Hawaii for the unveiling of the new USS Missouri postage stamp so she could honor her late father, a World War II Navy officer with ties to the USS Arizona and USS Missouri.

Erica Mann, daughter of former Rear Adm. Charles Mann, arrived in Honolulu on Sunday with her husband to attend the unveiling on the USS Missouri at Pearl Harbor, which is scheduled for 11 a.m. today.

“I did not want to miss this opportunity, the memorialization of the USS Missouri on a stamp and the connection to my family history, and to honor my father,” Mann said.

Mann, 60, said she couldn’t make the 2014 unveiling of a stamp depicting the USS Arizona, which her father was an officer of during World War II.

“I’ve always wanted to come here for that reason, to come here to see the Arizona,” she said.

Mann said her father survived the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, in which hundreds of Japanese fighter planes killed over 2,400 people, damaged almost 20 battleships and 300 American fighter planes, and brought the U.S. into the war.

Her father was scheduled to be on the USS Arizona at the time of the attack, she said, but someone switched schedules with him only a day or two prior.

“That’s the only reason he wasn’t among those dead on the Arizona,” she said.

He was also aboard the USS Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945. On that day the battleship became famous for being the site where the Japanese delegation signed an instrument of surrender to officially end World War II. When Mann found out earlier this year that a stamp of it was going to be issued, she decided to take the trip to Hawaii.

She had never been to Hawaii before arriving Sunday, and on Monday she toured the USS Missouri for the first time.

“It was amazing. I was in awe of everything,” she said. “The things that were still there from that time, we were saying, ‘My dad probably touched this.’”

Mann is a diversity specialist for USPS, where she and her husband have been working for over 25 years.

The unveiling of the stamp coincides with the 75th anniversary of the USS Missouri’s commissioning in 1944.

The stamp is a rendition of the battleship moving through water, facing forward and in “disruptive camouflage” coloring that it wore until 1945.

“The use of the Navy’s dazzle camouflage pattern immediately identifies the period we’re honoring as World War II,” said Bill Gicker, USPS’s stamp services director. “Our intention was to honor the 75th anniversary of her launch in 1944, and her combat role and her role in the end of the war.”

The USS Missouri is the latest in a long and recently prolific history of Hawaii- themed stamps. Aside from 2011 and 2013, a stamp inspired by Hawaii has been issued every year since 2006, according to USPS.

Hawaii’s postage stamp history began in 1851, when the first “Missionary” stamps were issued. They were available for less than a year and are among the most valuable U.S. stamps.