WWII Memorial In Phoenix Appears On Target For Dedication

Behind a construction fence outside the state Capitol, story Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett points out the concrete pedestal on which a 70-ton gun barrel from the USS Arizona will rest.

Bennett said everything is on track, from fundraising to donations of time and material, to dedicate a World War II memorial featuring guns from the Arizona and USS Missouri on Dec. 7.

“All kinds of companies have donated rebar, concrete and workers from a lot of the unions,” he said. “We’ve had a real wonderful outpouring of companies wanting to help in a variety of different ways — somebody’s going to do all the landscaping for free, somebody’s going to put in the lights.”

Bennett was the driving force behind a nearly three-year effort to obtain the two guns and bring them here from East Coast shipyards.

No tax dollars have been spent directly in the process of building the memorial, he said.

The gun barrels have been sandblasted and repainted and now wait for concrete to cure before being moved from a storage lot near downtown to their permanent home in Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza on Oct. 7.

The memorial will feature the gun barrels pointing toward downtown along West Washington Street, with nine steel beams standing upright between them, bearing names of the more than 2,000 Arizonans who died in World War II.

The memorial will be between the anchor and mast from the USS Arizona, with the Arizona’s gun representing the beginning of the war and the Missouri’s gun representing the war’s end.-[source]