The only land-based memorial at Pearl Harbor, the USS Oklahoma Memorial honors the more than 400 servicemen who lost their lives aboard the ship during the flurry of attacks on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Second only in casualties to the USS Arizona on that fateful day, the Oklahoma Memorial on Ford Island commemorates each life lost with a tall white marble column, symbolizing a crisp white Navy uniform. Taken together, the low black granite walls etched with stories and towering clean rows of columns symbolize the ship and the crew within standing tall forever.
The memorial’s location, on the still-active military base at Ford Island, is also significant. The USS Oklahoma’s berth was here, just offshore. When the ship was torpedoed, several crew were able to escape by swimming and crawling on the stretch of land the memorial now occupies.
A relatively new Pearl Harbor attraction, the USS Oklahoma Memorial was designated on Dec. 7, 2007.
