Only the name has changed.../NPS
Time to update your list of units in the National Park System. Not to add another, not yet, but to shorten a name and perhaps make it easier to remember.
Under the recent, and massive, public lands bill that was signed into law last month, the WWII Valor in the Pacific National Monument was officially renamed as the Pearl Harbor National Memorial.
“The park and its partners are universally delighted with the name change that was recently signed into law,” said Superintendent Jacqueline Ashwell. “Our prior name was rather long and unwieldy and difficult to remember. The new name is immediately understandable and is a name commensurate with the importance and reverence of this site.”
Visitors can expect to start seeing the new name on signs and brochures, as well as on Pearl Harbor’s website and social media sites in the coming months.
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And, update your count of NPS units.
WWII Valor in the Pacific formerly had pieces in HI, AK, and CA. Until sometime Monday, the public website www.nps.gov/valr notes those 3 states, but only had content about the Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor. Now, VALR is exclusively "Pearl Harbor National Memorial", the California part is TULE: Tule Lake National Monument, and the Alaska part is ALEU: Aleution Islands World War II National Monument. However, ALEU is listed as an "affiliated area", as the enabling legislation in 1996 prohibits NPS to obtain land from Ounalaska Corporation.
Monuments , by definition are not affiliated areas. so when Bush 43 declared the parts of the Aleutians a monument in 2008 the site become fuilly a part of the Park Service. all 3 sites were part of the same national monument. the legislation carves out Tule Lake and the Aleutian battlefields as distinct monuments and redesignated the remaining area of Hawaii as a memorial. in short the monument no longer exists and was replaced by 2 smaller component monuments and a memorial. Congress did the same thing to Honuliuli, in renaming it an historic site, frankly national monument fits better. all 10 detainment/concentration camps should be national monuments, to remember a time when fear caused us to lock away over 100000 Americans , simply because they were of Japanese descent.
They should make all of these areas National Historical Parks and consolidate them into campaigns. Same with the detainment camps. Make them a National Historical Park and Memorial. Some of these units spread across the U.S. and Pacific would benefit from sharing branding.