Talk:USS Arizona Memorial

Picture of Japanese Sailors manning the rails

That picture is INCORRECT. Those sailors are NOT manning the rails. Their ship is docked and you can clearly see the concrete ground. They are disembarked. For anybody who doesn't know what manning the rails actually means, there's a wikipedia article. 69.111.188.61 (talk) 06:36, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Quite right, glad you caught that error and removed it JGHowes ^talk - 07:02, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Italics

Should Arizona be italicized in the memorial name--USS Arizona Memorial--as is done when the ship itself is referred to--USS Arizona (BB-39)? Neither the NPS webpage nor any other I could find with google did so, but they didn't italicize the ship either.

—wwoods 05

10, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Tears of the soldiers

Dou you guys want a picture of the tears of the soldiers? For the ones who don't know, the oil tank of the Arizona releases small black clumps of oil from time to time and they are called Tears of the soldiers. I have a picture... Matthias Aubin 14:20, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That would be nice. It would show what all the hubub is about. I personally wouldn't mind seeing it either. TomStar81 00:28, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I have some pictures of the "Tears" that you can use here. I'll offer any of those pictures for use here under the "Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License". I'd put the pics in myself, but I don't have time right now to deal with the formatting issues (maybe I'll try later). Anechoic Man 00:46, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Isn't that "sailors", not "soldiers"? I've put a picture on the page clearly showing the oil slickJGHowes 15:03, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Dedication date?

Does anyone know the day and month of the memorial's dedication? — Eoghanacht ^talk 23:48, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

It was dedicated on Memorial Day, which used to always fall on May 30.— Eoghanacht ^talk 19:14, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Pilings/Islands

I haven't been able to find any explanation of what the six pilings or small man-made (looking) islets that continue in a line from the wharf where the USS Missouri is docked. Are they a part of the Arizona memorial or are they something else, perhaps related to a larger Pearl Harbor memorial design? Manys 07:28, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

They are mooring keys(not sure if that is how they are spelled). The harbor crew would tie off the ships to them, just like you would tie a small boat to the dock. Bunns USMC 16:04, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

They're called Quays. Anechoic Man 00:47, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Oil Concerns

A National Geographic special outlined a major concern about the fact that the Arizona is corroding more quickly than expected and it might suddenly let go of the millions of gallons of oil still on board. So instead of a quart a week like it leaks now, you'd have a major environmental disaster. The quandry is that it is also a tomb for a lot of fallen sailors and not something that is easily tampered with. I wonder if this article should at least briefly touch on this concern. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.91.175.180 (talk) 00:16, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

It should. --89.53.7.27 (talk) 23:51, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I've added this with a citation to the Natl Geo article. JGHowes ^talk - 00:51, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The Memorial's commemoration

Is the Article correct in stating that, "The USS Arizona Memorial has come to commemorate all military personnel killed in the attack on the island of Oahu"? Previously, it said "Pearl Harbor". The Memorial actually has inscribed only the names of the Arizona crew lost - perhaps someone could clarify the accuracy of this statement and cite a source? JGHowes 00:01, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

The attack was more than Pearl Harbor, but "come to commemorate" is suspiciously vague to me - is that what the tour guides are saying now (I don't remember hearing it myself), or does everybody on base "just know", or what? Let's insist on a source, and delete otherwise. Stan 15:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

According to the National Park Service's website (external link to this article), "The USS Arizona Memorial has come to commemorate all military personnel killed in the Pearl Harbor attack," so I've changed the article back to that. JGHowes 22:40, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge - still has work to do

I see that USer:Reywas92 merged the shipwreck article with the memorial mainly by cutting and pasting. Unfortunately it needs more work to better integrate the two articles. In fact, the overall memorial article looks like it could use a good edit. I'm still working on my pet project of National Natural Landmarks, but could someone start looking at improving this article? Thanks dm (talk) 23:09, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Gallery images

I’m not quite sure the reason why the gallery includes images of seemingly irrelevant flags. Now, I know that Americans like to slap a flag on every corner and that’s fine, but I don’t see how the images Image:IMG 8924.jpg and Image:UssArizona-flag.JPG have anything to do with the article. They are good quality images, but they could literally come from anywhere (despite their claims from being shot at the site) and add nothing specifically to the article. To me, it would make just as much sense putting in an Imperial Japanese in with the bunch, seeing as they had just as much to do with the event as the Americans did (sounds absurd - and would probably ruffle a few feathers - but is really no different to including these flags). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dupz (talk • contribs) 10:19, March 18, 2009

The flags are part of the memorial. If this article was about the attacks on Pearl Harbor, I guess it wouldn't make much sense to have them included. But since this article is (or, should be) about every aspect of the memorial, it seems only fair to include images of the various parts. They aren't just random images of flags, they are images of parts of the memorial. Mahalo. --Ali'i 13:58, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Two comments: because Wikipedia works by consensus, starting a proposal by a condescending put-down (e.g., "...Americans like to slap a flag on every corner...") is hardly going to gain you much traction with other editors. Secondly, as Ali'i notes, these two images indeed illustrate specific aspects/views of the Memorial site and thus add value to the article for the reader interesting in seeing the Memorial here.  JGHowes  ^talk 18:15, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Shipwreck merge

The merge of the USS Arizona Shipwreck article into this one seems to have been done poorly and has essentially left us with a lot of repetition. I propose removing all (including the info box) except the burial section, which can be integrated into the article somehow. Any objections? raseaC^{talk to me} 17:05, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Flagpole

The "Description" section contained a comment that the flagpole was once attached to the ship but is now attached to the memorial. I could not find any reputable source (official or news) to verify this information, so I removed the comment. (Those sources that do mention that the flagpole is attached to the memorial appear to simply have pasted content from the erroneous article.) The National Park Service's website states that the flagpole is still attached to the ship, which is why I believe people mistakenly think the ship is still commissioned. Wxkat (talk) 09:39, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Link to USS Arizona Memorial web site.

There is a (minor) problem with the link to the US National Parks Service official web site. The link that is currently in the External Links section of the Wikipedia article points to http://www.nps.gov/usar/ but this no longer exists and is currently being redirected to http://www.nps.gov/valr/index.htm . This page doesn't directly mention the USS Arizona at all, which confused me when I went to it, and I'm sure would confuse others.

As far as I can see, the restructuring has happened because the Arizona Memorial has become part of the "World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument", but I'm not clear on the exact structure.

The best alternative link to this site that I could find was this: http://www.nps.gov/valr/planyourvisit/factsheet.htm , but I wanted to open this to discussion before making any change, since it's a pretty significant link for this article. 86.7.22.39 (talk) 11:31, 8 June 2010 (UTC)