Performing Identity and Belonging at Pearl Harbor

ABSTRACT

Prior to 7 December 1941, Pearl Harbor was perhaps best known for its associations with the Hawaiian Shark Goddess, its pearl-producing oysters and as a strategically important US naval base. It was not until 1962, some twenty years after its attack during World War II, that it emerged as a place of heritage, when the USS Arizona Memorial was first opened to the public. Transformed from a place of war to a place of heritage and finally into a prepared touristic experience, Pearl Harbor today transmits, absorbs and constructs a range of personal and nationally based meanings about the past. It thus provides a vivid case study through which to interrogate the construction of heritage in a politically charged, contested and institutionally mediated environment. Drawing on the reflexive responses of 73 visitors, collected through in-depth, onsite interviews with domestic tourists, the paper unfolds around two key themes: (1) the varied ways in which visitors come to terms with a ‘dark’ national past; and (2) the affective entanglements that emerge from such efforts and concomitant attempts to understand their visit as a performance of national identity.

Acknowledgments

This project was supported by a Western Sydney University Seed Grant, awarded in 2011.

Notes

1. The ship’s sunken remains were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1989.

2. Readers interested in the reactions and responses of non-American visitors to the Pearl Harbor memorial complex may find the work of Yujin Yaguchi (2005) on Japanese tourists useful.

3. For a fulsome discussion of the term ‘dark tourism’, its history and reflections on more recent usages, please see Light (2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Western Sydney University Seed Grant.