A battleship stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, which bears the name of the Show-Me State, tells the story of the wars she’s been a part of and the men who served aboard her. The Battleship Missouri recently got a multi-million-dollar facelift.
Over the last 14 years, more than 48,000 square feet of the main teak deck on the Battleship Missouri Memorial was restored at a cost of more than $6 million. Governor Mike Parson allocated about $500,000 to the project. A plaque on the ship's deck acknowledges the contribution.
Teak wood on battleships protected against the sparks from metal-on-metal contact, reducing the risk of fires during the transportation of gunpowder. And it provided insulation – helping to shield crews from the sun’s relentless heat.
On this particular ship, the teak deck was where a significant moment during World War II took place.
“On September 2, 1945, World War II came to an end on the deck of the Missouri in Tokyo Bay," said Mike Carr, the president and CEO of the Battleship Missouri Memorial.
The Battleship Missouri launched in January of 1944 and was commissioned in June that same year. The crew had to be trained, so the ship didn’t enter the war until 1945, according to Carr, "so a very late entry into the war. She participated in the Battle of Iwo Jima and then the Battle of Okinawa, which was like one of the worst battles of the war. It was during the Battle of Okinawa that the ship was hit by a Kamikaze attack. Of course, April 12, 1945, was the day Franklin Roosevelt died, and Harry became the accidental president.”
That’s Harry Truman of Missouri, of course. Carr said the Secretary of the Navy at the time, James Forrestal, according to Carr, suggested to Truman that he might want to consider having the Missouri be the location of the surrender.
“Harry always considered the Missouri to be his ship," said Carr. "He spoke at the launch. His daughter, you know, was the sponsor of the ship and cracked the champagne bottle when she was launched, and, naturally, Harry agreed.”
Carr said the Missouri got its name due to politics. Then Senator Truman was serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee when the ship’s keel was laid, and he was always complaining that the Navy was spending too much money. So, Carr said, as a way to try to sweet talk Truman, the Navy told him they would name the battleship after the great state of Missouri.
The Battleship Missouri went on to participate in the Korean War, providing cover fire for the invasion of Inchon, which Carr said helped to turn the tide of the war. She was decommissioned in 1955 and sat for 30 years in Bremerton, Washington as part of the Navy’s inactive fleet – until Ronald Reagan became president.
“And he decided he wanted to spend the Soviets into oblivion, which worked, and part of that was the 600 ship Navy," he said. "And all the Iowa class battleships were brought back into service, modernized to the tune of about $450 million of modern weaponry and communications and radar equipment, and almost immediately after recommissioning all the ships, the Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union collapsed, and they immediately started to decommission all of these ships because they were just absurdly expensive to operate.”
But before the Missouri was decommissioned, it and a sister ship, the Wisconsin, were sent to the Persian Gulf to participate in Operation Desert Storm. When the Missouri’s role in that was over, and it was on its way back to be decommissioned again, Senator Daniel Inouye suggested the Navy make the Missouri the centerpiece for the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“And as a consequence, the Missouri became the last battleship ever decommissioned in the world in March of 1992,” said Carr.
The teak deck restoration was badly needed, according to Carr. When the Battleship Missouri arrived at Pearl Harbor there were plants and trees growing out of the deck and pieces of plywood scattered around to keep the deck from popping up, he said. And those pieces of plywood were trip hazards.
More work still has to be done on the ship — a project to restore the teak wood on the surrender deck is expected to start this fall.
The restoration work is labor intensive and weather sensitive, Carr said, and when it rains, the work has to stop. The project has to be done in stages so as not to disrupt the visitor experience.
And the Battleship Missouri sees visitors from all over the world each year who hear the stories she has to tell.
“Those of us who have been here for awhile will tell you that this ship is alive," said Carr. "And I think the people that come and walk the deck and spend some time here get to, you know, take that home with them. They stand on the surrender deck where WWII ended for the entire world. And they look to their right, and they see the sunken USS Arizona Memorial where the war began for the United States. And so, I mean, there aren’t too many places where you get that visceral sense of history. And this place is definitely that.”
Carr said, even though the Battleship Missouri was built as an instrument of destruction, within two years of her launch she instead became an international symbol of peace and reconciliation.
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