PEARL HARBOR VISITOR CENTER

Time of visit. If you want to visit all the sites, plan on spending a day. If you only want to visit the USS Arizona Memorial, half a day is sufficient. The Pearl Harbor Passport, available online, allows same-day access to the main monuments of the site.

All bags are prohibited. You will have to leave them in the trunk of your car or in the locker (6 US$) before entering the site, just before you start waiting in line to enter. Don't expect to sneak your bag in because the security guards will be watching at the entrance and will send you back to your car or to the locker... However, smartphones and cameras are allowed.

Pearl Harbor Visitor Center: tickets are now only available online. Free brochure available on site.

In order to organize your visit and not to waste time, we strongly advise you to get your tickets for the USS Arizona Memorial first: the wait is sometimes long and you will be assigned a visit time that you cannot change.

Remember during your visit that you are on a historic site full of history: you will be asked to behave respectfully and sometimes even to be quiet. Some images of fighting during film screenings may offend the most sensitive. Note that you can also meet veterans or witnesses of the attack on site.

Another important advice: you should start visiting the memorial early in the morning, if possible at the opening. For some tours and activities, it is first come, first served. Every 15 minutes, ticket numbers are called and a group leaves for the 1 hour and 15 minute tour of the USS Oklahoma Memorial. While waiting for your turn, you can always read the different panels in the entrance exhibition hall. Very well done and very recent, this hall allows you to remember the key moments of Pearl Harbor thanks to a mini-museum in the open air, with very interesting archival images.

The small budgets or those who didn't manage to take a seat in line, can however go to the site by bus from Waikiki to enjoy the free access exhibitions (inside and outside) and observe the monuments visible from the Visitor Center. This gives you a great overview of this place that cannot be ignored.