Working on the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor

In 1991 I was a US Army Infantrymen stationed at Schofield Barracks Hawai'i. In August of that year I was afforded the extreme honor of being selected for a special duty: refurbish the USS Arizona Memorial located at Pearl Harbor in anticipation of the 50th anniversary memorial ceremony.

Four members from each branch of service, (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard) were selected, and each morning we would meet at the dock to be carried out to the memorial via a Navy skiff. Our tasks were mostly stripping the paint and textured coating that had been originally applied back in 1962, and for 10 weeks we repaired and refurbished pretty much every square inch of the memorial. The last task was to snorkel onto the ship itself in order to clean up as much of the stray paint and coating we could find.

Then on December 7th, 1991 we were honored in a ceremony at the Pearl Harbor Museum. At this ceremony all service members who had participated in the refurbishment were matched up with an equivalent veteran of their particular branch of service -- each of those veterans were present somewhere on the island of Oahu on the morning of December 7th, 1941.

The particular vet I was matched up with was an Infantryman of the 27th Infantry Regiment from the same squad that I was part of (D squad). As it turned out, I shared the same quad that he did at Schofield Barracks, and during the attack he hauled a 30 cal. machine gun to the rooftop in an effort to shoot down Japanese planes.

During the ceremony, we were all presented with a certificate and a flag that had flown over the USS Arizona Memorial as well as a plaque that describes our work. That plaque has all of the team member's names, including the veterans, engraved on it and is on display at the Pearl Harbor Museum to this day.

I feel very honored to have been part of this project and event. My grandfather was a member of the US Navy and served in the Pacific during World War II. The memories of his stories, along with my time spent on the memorial, have instilled a deep sense of gratitude in me and I will always remember the "Day of Infamy".

- SgtGrunt