Mighty Mo marks 15 years in Hawaii

Bob Wentzel and wife Pat of Lubbock, Texas, made visiting the Battleship Missouri Memorial a priority during their most recent visit to Hawaii.

"We visit a lot of military sites, and this is one of the best. This ship is one of the most historically significant that I’ve visited. When you come here it brings the picture to life," said Bob Wentzel, a military history buff who previously served on the USS Baltimore SSN-704, a Los Angeles-class submarine, that was decommissioned in 1998, the same year that the "Mighty Mo" arrived in Hawaii.

The Mighty Mo had a career that spanned five decades and three wars, from World War II to the Korean conflict to the Gulf War.

Saturday marked the 15th anniversary of its return to Pearl Harbor as a museum ship. Since then it has become a key part of the history visitor’s experience, starting with the USS Arizona, whose sinking marked the beginning of U.S. involvement in World War II, and ending with the USS Missouri, upon whose deck the United States accepted Japan’s unconditional surrender in Tokyo Bay.

Tourists like the Wentzels have helped put the Battleship Missouri Memorial on pace to reach a half-million visitors annually by year-end, making it the state’s second most visited private attraction after the Polynesian Cultural Center. Year-to-date, visitorship is up 15 percent, and the ship is finally making headway with the Navy to get a long-term pier lease, which would allow the memorial to finalize and implement an aggressive 10-year improvement plan.

"Every single goal that has been laid out for the organization has been exceeded or hit," said Michael Carr, who marked his fifth anniversary as president and CEO of the USS Missouri Memorial Association on Thursday in his office in the ship’s former "Damage Control" room.

The association has generated positive cash flow since it paid off a $5 million startup loan within five years, Carr said. Another milestone was reached in July when the 5 millionth visitor stepped on the ship’s deck. Its educational programs serve between 10,000 and 12,000 schoolchildren a year, and the ship hosts about 1,000 military ceremonies annually, Carr said.

But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. The proposed relocation of the USS Missouri from the Naval shipyard in Brem­er­­ton, Wash., where the battleship had been berthed for many years, to its current home in Pearl Harbor initially met with strong resistance from dissenters, who were concerned that locating the Mighty Mo in Hawaii could overshadow the USS Arizona Memorial and make it harder for mainland visitors to see the USS Missouri.

By the time that the Missouri finally arrived in Pearl Harbor, rust and corrosion had tarnished the 900-foot, 58,000-plus-ton ship. Its teak decks were weather-worn, and the windows on the historic bridge were covered with a milky-white glaze. Thousands of volunteers scrubbed grime, chipped away rust and applied paint until she gleamed; however, the maintenance never ends.

Right now the association is refurbishing all of the ship’s air-conditioning units and is about 20 percent of the way through replacing all 55,000 square feet of the teak deck. It’s also dehumidifying tanks and voids at the bottom of the ship to avoid rust, and after July 1 the ship’s main stack will undergo several months of rust remediation and painting. Carr also wants to get the ship wired for Wi-Fi by year’s end so that events can be live-streamed, and rig exhibits with bar codes that visitors with cellphones can scan to get instant information on the ship’s history.

"It was in pretty sad shape back then (when it arrived), but not anymore," Carr said. "Now we are going through a series of discussions to figure out what the next 10 years should hold. We’ve already been working on our strategic plan for the last six months, and I’d like to see it done by the end of the year." 

Carr wants to see emphasis on preservation and wants to see the memorial garner a greater share of the traffic coming to Pearl Harbor historic sites.

"Over 1.5 million people visit the USS Arizona Memorial each year. We just have to persuade them to come and visit us. At this point we get about a third of them, but I think that we still have the capacity to grow our numbers considerably," Carr said.

Greater emphasis should also be placed on attracting more kama­aina visitors and tourists from developing markets, he said.

"The Chinese were the third signature on the surrender document, so the ship is very popular with them," Carr said.

Other Asian visitors also know about the ship, said Sangwon So, a Korean visitor from Saipan, who was visiting the ship Monday with his young family.

"We have a memory of World War II," said So.

The USS Missouri also is popular with military personnel, who like to host various ceremonies on the ship. Cmdr. Steve Padron held a retirement ceremony aboard the ship Monday to mark the end of his 35-year military career.

"It’s a great honor to be able to have my retirement ceremony on the USS Missouri," Padron said. "This is a historically significant ship, and I wanted to be a part of that legacy."

Likewise, Rear Adm. Brian K. Antonio, deputy chief of staff and fleet maintenance commander for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said the USS Missouri was the immediate choice for his May promotion ceremony.

"Pearl Harbor in general is a place that we don’t want to forget," Antonio said. "The greatest generation made so many sacrifices here. It’s touching to see the USS Arizona, which marks the start of the U.S. entry into the Pacific, so near the USS Missouri, which marked the end of the war. Together these memorials help keep history alive by reminding us of the sacrifices that were made so that we could have the freedoms that we have."

Carr, who served in Vietnam and whose father and grandfather fought in the World Wars I and II respectively, said that he’s proud to carry the traditions of the USS Missouri to the next generation and is always looking for ways to improve the experience.

"What we want to have is a real world-class museum," he said. Carr would like to add displays on the pier next to the ship. "We want to tell the story of the ship and crew better than we can on the ship. The USS Bowfin tells the submarine story of WWII, and we feel it’s our role to tell the surface warfare history. We have more material that we can display, but we need more room."

Carr said that he would like to see "massive improvements" to facilties on the pier, which are all temporary, because the ship has never had a long-term lease with the Navy.

"We are in our third year of a five-year lease, so step No. 1 is to get the Navy to agree to give us a long-term lease, which is kind of a linchpin for our future plans," he said. "We started negotiating a few years ago. We’re on our second try. This time we think the process is unfolding positively."

Once a permanent lease is in place and other long-range goals have been approved, Carr said the nonprofit association will begin another fundraising effort to take it into the next decade and beyond.

"It costs millions of dollars to keep this ship up. We don’t get federal funding, and we aren’t part of the federal government," he said. "We have to pay fair market rent to lease the pier, and the only time that we’ve gotten federal assistance was when we received $15 million to take the ship into dry dock. Those funds were courtesy of the good Sen. (Daniel) Ino­uye, and that door slammed shut the day that he died."