POSTAVENO

HISTORY

(Jiří Fiala)

USS Arizona Memorial

After salvaging all reusable components

and removal of the dangerous ones sticking

out about the water surface, the Navy’s concern was what to do with the battleship‘s

wreck. Some US Navy personnel suggested the wreck’s demolition with explosives followed by the partial or full recovery

and scrapping. The voices for leaving the

wreck where it sank and create of it the

memorial to all victims of the Pearl Harbor

attack were growing stronger. Among the

strongest supporters of the memorial was

at that time very popular cartoonist, radio

anchor, traveler, and influential entrepreneur LeRoy Robert Ripley (1890–1949) who

in 1942, for the first time personally visited

Pearl Harbor and places which were attacked. In 1948 he visited Pearl Harbor for the

second time but this time with his popular

radio show „Believe it or not“ when he contacted Department of Navy representatives.

He wrote couple of letters to Rear Admiral

J. J. Manning from the Bureau of Yards and

Docks where he skillfully presented his desire of the permanent memorial to Arizona

casualties.

raising and its evening lowering became the

tradition. The same year the temporary memorial was built above the raised portion of

the ship’s deck. During 1951-1952 Admiral

Radford tried to raise more funds from the

Navy to built a permanent memorial however he was not successful due to the high

cost of the Korean War operations.

Only on December 7, 1955, the Navy placed

the first permanent memorial on the deck

in the form of almost 3 meters tall black

marble stone with memorial plaque. In 1958,

President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved

the construction of the national memorial

with the budget of 200,000 US dollars. The

remaining 300,000 USD needed for the project were raised from private gifts and funds.

Some of the more interesting contributions

is 64,000 USD revenue from Elvis Presley

beneficial concert and 40,000 USD in sales

of the USS Arizona plastic models in cooperation with Fleet Reserve Association and

Revell Model Company.

The contemporary memorial was designed

by the Hawaiian architect Alfred Preis who

led very colorful life as he was, at the beginning of WWII, interned on Sand Island

as a potential enemy of the state since he

After the initial intellectual encounters

between Robert Ripley and the Navy, in the

end USN took over the initiative and in 1949

created the Pacific War Memorial Commission which was tasked with completion

of the permanent memorial. In 1950 a mast

was reinstalled on the wreck and the Pacific

Fleet Commander Admiral Arthur W. Radford hoisted the United States flag on Arizona again. Since then, the daily morning flag

April 2022

INFO Eduard

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