“Salt River has always had really strong ties to the military and that’s exactly how it all began,” says Maleena Deer, tourism manager for Discover Salt River. “When we received the relic, the community wanted to create a place around it to honor those onboard—a space for all veterans and anyone else to come and have a moment to reflect here in the community.”
Deer says that when they learned about the size and the weight of the relic, they asked themselves, “OK, how do we create a space to house and honor this piece?”
That task was left to Aaron Allan, vice president and principal landscape architect of J2 Design, the Phoenix firm hired to design the memorial around the relic. The challenge was to develop a concept that collectively honored those who served on the USS Arizona, but also to create an intimate public space that recognized every individual involved in one of most significant events in U.S. military history.
And because the attack on Pearl Harbor happened decades ago, it was an opportunity to tell the story in a completely different—and personal—way.
“We needed to relate something that happened so long ago, and bring it back to today. The best way to do that was to try to make an emotional connection to the event and to people, so that’s where the idea of the individual originated,” Allan explains.
“The military is made up of different people from all walks of life. At the end of the day, they’re all working towards one kind of goal: protecting all of our freedoms. The biggest thing for us was how to make those visual cues and connections to people to relate to the intensity of the event. We tried to do it in multiple ways.”
The 5-acre memorial is silhouetted by 1,500 varying-sized commemorative columns that form the shape of the exact width and length of the USS Arizona, an outline meant to give a sense of the battleship’s scale. The columns represent everyone aboard the USS Arizona, with the taller ones preserving the memory of those who died and the shorter ones recognizing survivors of the attack.
Every night, 1,177 columns are lit to honor the fallen, an illuminating visual that not only projects the magnitude of the actual vessel’s size, but also the depth of loss of life at Pearl Harbor. The centerpiece of the memorial is the boat house relic, displayed in a viewing room with glass walls facing north and south, which allows complete transparency of the memorial from one side to the other at all times. It features a timeline of the attack and accounts from survivors, and is positioned exactly where it would have been located on the USS Arizona. A walkthrough garden with recycled trees and a flag display are situated north of the relic to imitate the ship’s “stern.” The lake on the south side, adapted from a water supply used by the adjacent Salt River Fields, forms the ship’s “bow,” with submerged columns that replicate turrets still visible at Pearl Harbor.
What’s unique about the memorial is it provides two distinct visitor perspectives, according to Allan.
“The memorial really has two different looks and feels,” he says. “There’s the daytime feel, where the sunlight comes through and gives it one kind of glow. But then at night, when all the lights actually come on, you get the reflection off the really black water, and it has this other kind of ethereal feel.”
The design includes subtle nods to the military with signage and unique architectural elements to help retell the Pearl Harbor narrative. Stacked aluminum blocks, which hang next to the boat house relic, contain the name and rank of every individual who served on the ship.
“It was our interpretation of dog tags,” Allan says.
J2 Design also incorporated symbols of the tribal community into the memorial, using basketweave patterns on ground pavers and raised planters to acknowledge its influence on arts and culture. Plus, it repurposed the existing Veterans Circle into the design.
“We wanted to have different touch points for visitors,” Allan says of the memorial experience. “Whether you’re willing to just spend five minutes or five hours there, you can take in as much as you want and pay your respects.”