The House voted Tuesday to create a separate Pearl Harbor National Memorial in Hawaii to mark the attack on the U.S. naval base there by Japan on Dec. 7, 1941.
Lawmakers easily passed the noncontroversial bill in a voice vote on their first day back to work following the midterm elections.
Hawaii already hosts a “World War II Valor of the Pacific” national memorial. That memorial includes Pearl Harbor, but the bill passed Tuesday would create a distinct national memorial for that site.
“Although the Valor Monument consists of multiple sites, National Park Service materials refer to Pearl Harbor as the World War II Valor of the Pacific National monument,” said Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, D-Hawaii, one of the sponsors of the bill. “H.R. 5706 will separate Pearl Harbor from the Valor Monument, and establish it as the Pearl Harbor National Memorial.”
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., said on the House floor that separating the sites would give Pearl Harbor the “full recognition that this hallowed site deserves.”
The bill said the new memorial site is meant to “preserve, interpret, and commemorate for the benefit of present and future generations the history of World War II in the Pacific.”
The bill would also designate as a national historic site an area in Honouliuli that marks the internment of Japanese Americans during the war.
“The purposes of the Historic Site are to preserve and interpret for the benefit of present and future generations the history associated with the internment and detention of civilians of Japanese and other ancestries during World War II in Hawai’i, the impacts of war and martial law on society in the Hawaiian Islands, and the co-location and diverse experiences of Prisoners of War at the Honouliuli Internment Camp site,” the bill said.
