Architect of USS Arizona Memorial to be honored on 60th anniversary of opening

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - The month of May marks 60 years since the opening of the USS Arizona Memorial.

It was built to remember those lost in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

The memorial, which first opened on May 30, 1962, took nearly 20 years to complete. Elvis Presley even helped raise money for the structure to be built.

Famous architect Alfred Preis designed the memorial for free.

“This was Alfred Preis getting everybody together and saying we need to do something. We need to make sure that those fallen soldiers, that those people’s memories, that these events don’t get forgotten, so we can learn something,” said Axel Schmitzberger, an architect at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

“I think that’s a very selfless dedication.”

An exhibit featuring Preis’ Arizona Memorial design process and his other works opens on May 30 at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial.

“It’s not only the celebration of the architectural achievement and the achievement of the memorial itself, but also, simply as we’re looking at here, the continued preservation of his architecture,” said Laura McGuire, architectural history professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

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