Tri-state WWII national monument declared

On Friday, President George W. Bush proclaimed nine historic sites in three different states a national monument. The World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, commemorating “various aspects of the war in the Pacific,” according to a White House news release, consists of sites in California, Hawaii and Alaska.

The designated sites in Northern California are the Tule Lake Segregation Center National Historic Landmark and Camp Tule Lake. Both were former internment camps for Japanese Americans, and their inclusion in the monument is intended to bring greater awareness to the “high price paid by some Americans on the home front” during the war.

In Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, one of the three designated sites is on Atka Island, where a WWII bomber aircraft (pictured above) crashed. Another site encompasses relics on Kiska Island, which the Japanese occupied starting in June 1942. And Attu Island is the third part of the Alaskan designation. According to the news release, this was the site “of the only land battle fought in North America during World War II.”

The remaining sites are in the Pearl Harbor area of Hawaii. They include the USS Arizona Memorial and Visitor Center and the USS Utah Memorial, though the ships themselves are not included in the designation. Other inclusions in the area are the USS Oklahoma Memorial, six Ford Island officer bungalows and Battleship Row mooring quays.

The monument sites will be managed by the U.S. federal government through the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. A national-monument designation increases the protection, and recognition given to a particular site.

— Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

[Top photo: USS Arizona Memorial. Credit: National Park Service]

[Bottom photo: Site of Atka B-24 D Liberator crash site, in 1978. Credit: National Park Service photo by Ted Spencer]

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 10:23 am by Susan Derby and is filed under Alaska, California, Hawaii, Northern California, Oahu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.