Minnesota veterans museum to commemorate Pearl Harbor attack with online event

An online event is planned for Sunday to commemorate the 84th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and preview a new Minnesota military and veterans museum being built near Little Falls.

Next year, organizers hope to hold an in-person Pearl Harbor remembrance at the new museum, which is scheduled to open next summer. 

"We'll be able to gather indoors in a newly finished facility, and really look at in depth the stories and legacy of Pearl Harbor, and especially examine the lives of those hundreds of Minnesotans that were there that morning and the lives that they led after that attack,” said Randal Dietrich, executive director of the Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum.

Construction on the $32 million, 40,000-square-foot museum next to Camp Ripley began a year ago. It will include a World War II exhibit gallery and a Pearl Harbor theater, as well as artifacts and veterans’ stories from all military branches and conflicts.

“Some of those artifacts are very small and precious, a Medal of Honor, a letter home from a loved one,” Dietrich said.

Others are much larger, including tanks, helicopters and the sail of a Cold War-era nuclear submarine, the USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul. It was transported from a Washington shipyard and restored, and is now on the museum grounds.

One artifact the museum will showcase is a 50-caliber gun from the USS Ward. A St. Paul-based reservist crew aboard the destroyer is credited with firing the first American shots of World War II at Pearl Harbor.

In September, the gun was transported from its former place on the Minnesota Capitol Mall to Camp Ripley, and is being restored, Dietrich said. 

Its new home in the museum will provide protection from the elements, he said, as well as an opportunity for a deeper interpretation of the gun’s historical significance.

“The Ward itself – a World War I destroyer that was on patrol at Pearl Harbor – and the 80 Minnesotans that were aboard announced, really, the entry of the United States into the war by firing the first shots at Pearl Harbor,” Dietrich said.

The museum also will tell the story of Edwin “Bud” Nakasone of White Bear Lake, who was a teenager living with his family in Hawaii when he witnessed the Pearl Harbor attack. He later served in the U.S. Army. His son, Paul, is a retired four-star Army general who was in the Pentagon during the 9/11 attacks.

Construction on the new museum is on schedule and should wrap up early next year, Dietrich said. That will allow several months to move all artifacts from the old museum behind the Camp Ripley gates to the new facility just off U.S. Highway 371. 

The Pearl Harbor remembrance online event will be at 4 p.m. Sunday. Registration is required.

Anyone can participate and share stories about loved ones who were at Pearl Harbor, Dietrich said.

“There were hundreds of Minnesotans at Pearl Harbor, and those family connections to those loved ones remain really strong,” he said.

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