What Did Elvis Presley Have to Do with the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor?

From the November 15, 2021, New Orleans Times-Picayune "Pearl Harbor exhibit features artifacts, stories, shrapnel... and Elvis" by John Pope.

In observance of the upcoming 80th anniversary of the attack on  Pearl Harbor, the National World War II Museum will have an exhibit on it featuring fragments of ships that were destroyed in it, stories of heroic men and women and, Elvis Presley.

Elvis Presley was not stationed there when the attack came (he was just six years old), but he did play a part in raising money to build the USS Arizona Memorial.

By early 1861,  Congress had approved the monument but not the money to pay for it.  Elvis Presley was in Hawaii shooting the movie "Blue Hawaii" and his manager, Col. Tom Parker came up with the idea of staging a concert to raise the money.

The museum has a poster from the concert showing Elvis in a gold lame suit with tickets costing from $3 to $10 apiece (the equivalent of $26.47 and $88.24 today).  Also on the bill were Minnie Pearl of the Grand Ole Opry, the Jordanaires, and Presley's drummer D.J. Fontana and guitarist Scotty Moore.

The concert raised about $54,000 (nearly $477,000 in today's money), but was still about $150,000 short.  U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, a World War II veteran, got Congress to approve the rest.

--GreGen