The USS Oklahoma Memorial is a stunning $1.2 million black granite and white marble memorial that can be visited daily at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu.
Related: Everything You Need To Know About Visiting Pearl Harbor
The Oklahoma Memorial was completed in 2007 and dedicated to the 14 Marines and 415 sailors who lost their lives when the USS Oklahoma sank during the 1941 strike on Pearl Harbor.
Officially dedicated on Dec. 7, 2007, the memorial features the names of those who lost their lives when the Oklahoma rolled over at its mooring on Battleship Row and sank.
The names are engraved in black granite on 429 individual white marble columns, each of which is 7 feet tall and weighs 120 pounds.
Visiting the memorial is a somber experience to say the least, especially when you realize that less than two-thirds of the USS Oklahoma crew escaped.
In fact, the death toll was topped only by that of the USS Arizona, which totaled 1,177 casualties.
The USS Oklahoma’s Second Birth And Subsequent Loss
A plan by the Navy to salvage the actual sunken battleship was hatched in 1942.
It was indeed a massive undertaking, as righting the huge vessel was no small feat.
When all was said and done, it took more than 20 electric street car motors connected by cables to the hull of the ship to pull it from the water.
After much effort, the salvaged battleship was finally afloat in early November of 1943, and with its resurfacing, the bodies of the 429 Pearl Harbor attack casualties were recovered for a proper burial.
However, the USS Oklahoma went down once again during a storm while under tow to Oakland, California.
The revered battleship now rests somewhere on the bottom of the sea, roughly 540 miles northeast of the Hawaiian Islands.
