H.R. 5706

STATEMENT OF P. DANIEL SMITH, DEPUTY DIRECTOR EXERCISING THE AUTHORITY OF THE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, BEFORE THE SENATE ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, CONCERNING H.R. 5706, A BILL TO ESTABLISH THE PEARL HARBOR NATIONAL MEMORIAL IN THE STATE OF HAWAII AND THE HONOULIULI NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE IN THE STATE OF HAWAII, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.

December 12, 2018

Chairman Daines, Ranking Member King, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to present the Department of the Interior's views on H.R. 5706, a bill to establish the Pearl Harbor National Memorial in the State of Hawaii and the Honouliuli National Historic Site in the State of Hawaii, and for other purposes.

The Department supports H.R. 5706 with amendments described later in this statement.

H.R. 5706 would establish the Hawaii sites of the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument as Pearl Harbor National Memorial, a unit of the National Park System that is separate from the national monument. The bill would also redesignate Honouliuli National Monument as Honouliuli National Historic Site. H.R. 5706 would give both sites a statutory basis that they currently lack. There would be no changes to the management or funding of either unit as a result of these changes. The cost of new signage and interpretive materials would be absorbed within existing budgets.

World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument was created by Presidential Proclamation No. 8327 on December 5, 2008. The national monument includes nine sites that represent various aspects of World War II history—five sites in Hawaii, three in Alaska associated with military action, and one in California, the Tule Lake Segregation Center, where Japanese Americans were detained.

The Pearl Harbor National Memorial that would be established by H.R. 5706 would include the USS Arizona Memorial and Visitor Center, the USS Utah and USS Oklahoma memorials, six Chief Petty Officer Bungalows on Ford Island, and three pairs of mooring quays on historic Battleship Row. These resources, and in particular the USS Arizona, are the most well-known and heavily visited sites within the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument. "Pearl Harbor" is the name commonly associated with these resources, which were all impacted by the attack on December 7, 1941, that cost the lives of 2,390 sailors, soldiers, marines, and civilians. The Department believes it is appropriate to use the name Pearl Harbor in the formal designation of the site, and that it is consistent with standard National Park Service naming conventions to call it a national memorial.

Honouliuli National Monument was created by Presidential Proclamation No. 9234 on February 27, 2015. This site commemorates the internment and detention of civilians of Japanese and other ancestries during World War II in Hawaii, the impacts of war and martial law on society in the Hawaiian Islands, and the co-location and diverse experiences of Prisoners of War at the Honouliuli Internment Camp site. H.R. 5706 would make the site's designation consistent with two of the National Park Service's other Japanese American incarceration sites--Manzanar National Historic Site in California, and Minidoka National Historic Site in Idaho and Washington State.

The Department is concerned that because enactment of H.R. 5706 would remove the Hawaii sites from the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument without providing for accompanying changes to the remaining resources, the national monument would consist only of the Tule Lake Segregation Center and the battlefield sites on the Aleutian Islands. "Valor in the Pacific" is an appropriate name for battlefield sites, but not for a site where Japanese Americans were incarcerated.

The Department would like to work with the Committee to develop amendments to H.R. 5706 that would establish the Tule Lake Unit of the national monument as a national historic site and the Aleutian Islands Unit as its own national monument. Along with those provisions, the amendments would abolish the existing national monument. This would allow each of the three areas currently included in the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument to have its own identity and recognition in the history of the United States' role and activity in World War II.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I would be pleased to answer any questions you or other members of the Subcommittee may have.