USS Arizona Memorial Reopens After 16 Months

From the September 3, 2019, Military.com  "USS Arizona Memorial reopens after repairs" the Honolulu Star-Advertiser by Rob Shakina.

"With the American flag billowing in the wind above and 'The Star-Spangled Banner'  playing on the loudspeakers from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam Field, the first boatload of tourists and residents in nearly sixteen months stepped onto the USS Arizona Memorial on Sunday morning."

The 145 persons disembarked from the Navy boat and spent solemn minutes looking at the long list of names of the 1,177 men who died that December morning.  Among the dead were a father and son named Free and 23 sets of brothers.

The oil is still seeping up from the ship which to me is the most moving sight.  The life blood of the ship and those men.  That oil is from the million gallons of bunker oil aboard the ship when it blew up.

While the memorial was closed, Navy boats still gave tours by it with a narrated story.  But no one was allowed to go into it.

It was closed in May 2018 after park staff found major damage to the anchoring system for the boat dock at it.    This damage possibly came from king tides in 2017.  Originally the memorial, which is one of Hawaii's biggest tourist attractions with about 4,300 people a day, was supposed to reopen in October 2018, but that was pushed back to December, then March of this year.

It's been a long time, but glad it has reopened.  I know that when I went to Hawaii, that was number one on my list of things to see.

--GreGen