The new facility doesn’t speak to the memorial architecturally, except in one shocking way. On Preis’ memorial, there is a stylized “tree of life” motif cast as perforations into the far end of the structure, flooding sunlight onto the wall bearing the 1,102 names of the Arizona’s dead, still entombed in the wreck.

The new facility reproduces this design in a monolith right on the visitor center grounds, so it’s now one of the first things you see. This is like telling someone the end of a movie they are about to see.

America’s entry in mankind’s biggest conflagration in history began on this spot. To tell that story architecturally we got … beige. The site seems to call for something more.                                                   

* The area has also been renamed the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, embracing the memorials for the USS Utah—also still wrecked in the harbor—and the USS Oklahoma.