National Park Service spots across the country are weighing the risks and costs of staying open while the federal government is shut down, but local partners are stepping up to keep Hawaiʻi's Pearl Harbor National Memorial open for visitors.
The organization Pacific Historic Parks works to preserve significant monuments across the region, including several in Hawaiʻi. It is now financially supporting the Pearl Harbor site and posting all updates during the shutdown.
Aileen Utterdyke, the president and CEO of Pacific Historic Parks, said this same transfer of power happened during the last government shutdown in 2018.
“There is a moratorium on the National Park Service sites that they're not allowed to post social media and they're not allowed to create and have press releases created on their behalf,” Utterdyke said. “What that does is it shuts down the communication with visitors who are coming to the park.”
She added that the Pearl Harbor National Memorial is different from other NPS spots because of its personal, historical, and cultural significance. She said it is one of the most visited tourist spots in the state.
“As soon as we had heard the potential of the closure, we already started to rebuild the path to make sure that we could do the best that we could to get this park reopened as fast as possible, or not closed at all,” she said.
“We want people to remember that it's not just tourism. Yes, there are people coming to visit who just want to visit, which is fine, but it’s also people coming to see relatives’ names on the wall and it's our children coming to learn about history. If we close the door on that, that's really where we feel that it's not the right thing to do.”
Utterdyke said the daily cost of keeping the memorial open is roughly $8,500. Local nonprofits, businesses, and volunteers are also donating.
The sites at Pearl Harbor, including the USS Arizona Memorial, remain open during normal hours. All future updates and schedules can be found on the Pacific Historic Parks’ website.
