“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” With these opening words in his now-famous “infamy” speech, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States, addressed a joint session of Congress on December 8, 1941, reacting to the horror of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in the U.S. Territory of Hawaii.

In this military photo taken from a Japanese plane we have a pilot’s view of the air attack on Pearl Harbor as it was happening. Items of interest: The torpedo attack on ships moored on both sides of Ford Island shortly after the beginning of the Pearl Harbor attack, looking eastward, with the supply depot, submarine base, and fuel tank farm in the right center distance. A torpedo has just hit the USS West Virginia on the far side of Ford Island (center). Other battleships moored nearby are (from left): Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee (inboard of West Virginia), Oklahoma (torpedoed and listing) alongside Maryland, and California. Japanese planes are visible at right center (over Ford Island) and over the Navy Yard at right. U.S. Navy planes on the seaplane ramp are on fire. PHOTO: Official U.S. Navy photograph NH 50930 via the Imperial Japanese Navy; Public Domain (Wikimedia Commons)

The surprise Sunday morning air raid over Pearl Harbor by 353 Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service aircraft had damaged or destroyed many American warships and aircraft, and killed over 2,400 civilians and military personnel. The 1941 attack also brought the US into World War II, a war that had been raging in Europe since September 1939, when Nazi forces invaded Poland and threw Europe into a major armed conflict.

1941 > 1961
Fast forward two decades to 1961. Supporters of a proposed memorial worthy of honoring those who perished aboard the USS Arizona in 1941 needed to raise an estimated half million dollars for its construction in the early 1960s. But after an initial burst of enthusiasm, donations were declining. To help the cause, Elvis Presley and his manager Colonel Parker agreed to sponsor a benefit concert at Bloch Arena, Pearl Harbor.

It would not be Elvis’s first concert in Hawaii. The King had previously performed in Honolulu on 11 November 1957, a rare concert for Elvis at the time, a special Memorial Day concert only for service members and their families. It was the singer’s final public concert before he was inducted into the U.S. Army in 1958 and later stationed in West Germany as a GI.

But the Arizona fundraising concert would be the King’s first in the State of Hawaii (spelled “Hawaiʻi” in the native language). Hawaiian statehood was granted in March 1959, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill admitting Hawaii as the 50th state, only three months after signing the bill that made Alaska the 49th US state. (Hawaii legally became a state on 21 August 1959.) The US flag now had 50 white stars. Finally, 18 years after the Pearl Harbor attack, Hawaiians were full American citizens.

Although much has been written about Elvis’s 1961 Pearl Harbor concert and the Arizona Memorial itself, very little has been written about the architect who designed the memorial we see in the harbor just off Ford Island today. Almost none of the articles and books written about Elvis’s concert even mention Alfred Preis, the memorial’s Austrian-born architect.

We’ll come back to that below. But first we’ll look at the efforts raise money for the construction of the memorial.

Funding the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor

By the time “Colonel” Tom Parker and Elvis Presley became involved in a proposed benefit concert, the Pacific War Memorial Commission (PWMC) had raised only about $155,000 of the estimated $500,000 to fund the memorial. The PWMC had been created in 1949 by the Territory of Hawaii to plan and raise funds for the construction of war memorials in the territory.

To make a long story short, the PWMC had struggled with politics, red tape, and turf wars in its decades-long effort to obtain funding from private and government sources for the USS Arizona Memorial. Thanks to statehood in 1959 and the efforts of Hawaii’s lone congressman, the PWMC had been able to accumulate a tidy sum, but it was still barely more than a fourth of the required total.

In an effort to revive the stalled fundraising efforts, in late 1960 Honolulu Advertiser editor George Chaplin had sent letters to 1,500 other American newspaper editors asking for help. One of the newspapers that had responded by publishing a story about the need for more donations was the Los Angeles Examiner. Col. Parker happened to read the Examiner article and recognized an opportunity to promote his star attraction while helping a good cause. He telephoned George Chaplin in Honolulu and proposed a benefit concert by Elvis.

Of course Parker timed the concert to coincide with the production of Elvis’s next movie, Blue Hawaii, which was set to do location filming on Oahu. Elvis had to fly to Honolulu for filming anyway, and now the concert was just a bonus, requiring no extra travel expenses.

An agreement was drawn up with the PWMC and the Navy. Parker did insist that all the money raised by the concert go directly to the memorial fund. He and Elvis agreed to chip in $5,000 each, as long as the PWMC also contributed $10,000 toward the productions costs – which could not be taken out of the concert proceeds. Everyone had to pay to attend the concert, even Elvis, Parker, Minnie Pearl, and all the performers! The venue was Bloch Arena at the Pearl Harbor base. The arena was a relatively small facility with only 4,000 seats. The show was scheduled for Saturday, 25 March 1961 at 8:30 p.m. Regular tickets cost from $3.00 to $10.00. One hundred of the 300 special $100 tickets were reserved for a special ringside section in the arena. [Adjusted for inflation, $3 in 1961 = $31 in 2024; $100 in 1961 = $1,030 in 2024.] Elvis and Parker also bought 30 tickets for patients and staff from Tripler Army Hospital.

The PWMC flyer for the 1961 benefit concert at Bloch Arena – with special guest Minnie Pearl. PHOTO: PWMC

On 20 March 1961, five days before the Pearl Harbor show, Elvis reported to the Paramount studios in Hollywood to begin work on Blue Hawaii. Perhaps because of his film work, Elvis did not leave Los Angeles for Hawaii until the day of the concert. That morning Elvis boarded a Pan American Airways jet at LAX to start what would be a long, tiring day for him. Meanwhile in Honolulu an estimated crowd of 3,000 began gathering at the airport to greet Elvis on his arrival. Also on board the Pan Am flight that day was another famous personality. The flight was delayed for the arrival of actor and Air Force General James Stewart and his wife.

The flight arrived in Honolulu at 15 minutes past noon. Jimmy Stewart was still a big star, but the screaming girls gathered behind the fence at the airport were definitely not there for him. Elvis was the last to exit the plane’s rear door and descend the stairs (no jetways in those days). As he so often did, he went over to the fence and signed autographs for some of the fans. The pandemonium continued when Elvis and his party arrived at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel. He stayed in his hotel room until it was time to head to Pearl Harbor for the concert. He would call the Hilton home for the three weeks of filming in Hawaii.

The Benefit Concert
As scheduled, the show began at 8:30 p.m., but the headliner did not appear until after the intermission. Elvis was introduced by Rear Admiral Robert L. Campbell – once several minutes of screaming died down. Elvis performed for almost 45 minutes, offering 15 songs, beginning with “Heartbreak Hotel” and ending with “Hound Dog” – with a dramatic six-foot slide across the stage on his knees.

The sound quality left something to be desired, but Elvis later said he felt that was a blessing. Between the screaming girls and the poor sound, few in the audience noticed when he flubbed the lyrics on songs he had little or no time to rehearse. It’s doubtful if anyone in the audience was at all aware of that. No film or video of the Elvis benefit concert exists, but there is a YouTube audio recording available online.

The Concert’s Benefits
After all was said and sung, the Elvis concert brought in far less than the $95,000 raised earlier by the 1958 television show “This Is Your Life” promoting the memorial and recognizing USS Arizona Medal of Honor recipient Rear Admiral (ret.) Samuel G. Fuqua. Most estimates credit a total of $64,000 raised by Elvis’s Pearl Harbor benefit concert, including ticket sales and other donations. But the 1961 Elvis concert is also credited with reviving interest in the Arizona memorial and spurring additional funding.

The memorial was already being planned and funded at the time of Elvis’s benefit concert. But thanks in part to Elvis, additional funding from public and private sources made it possible to complete the Arizona Memorial designed by the Austrian American Honolulu architect Alfred Preis. The estimated cost of $500,000 proved to be fairly accurate. The final cost was only slightly above that figure. (In 2024 dollars that would be $5.3 million!) In fact the memorial that has long been Hawaii’s most-visited tourist attraction was finished within budget and was formally dedicated on Memorial Day, 30 May 1962 by Texas Congressman and Chairman of Veteran Affairs Olin E. Teague and the future Governor of Hawaii, John A. Burns. More than one million people visit the memorial annually. It is officially a cemetery that is the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed on USS Arizona during the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Austrian Architect

Alfred Preis (1911-1994) was born and raised in the Austro-Hungarian capital city of Vienna. His life story, until recently little known even in Hawaii, where he resided for most of his life, is unusual and interesting. Preis was a Jewish refugee who escaped the Nazis and ended up in Honolulu to become the designer of the USS Arizona Memorial, as well as a highly respected architect and patron of the arts in Hawaii.

Alfred Preis pictured in graphics for an online panel discussion about the architect and his work in Hawaii. There is also an Austrian-sponsored online Preis biography. PHOTO: Austrian Consulate General, Los Angeles

Born on 2 February 1911, Alfred was the first son born to his Jewish, working class parents, Ignaz Preis (1880–1941) and Hermine Heim (1884–1942). His mother was from Sopron, Hungary and his father was Viennese. He grew up in Vienna, living at one time just a ten-minute walk away from Vienna’s grand opera house In fact he was an opera lover and considered at one time becoming a set designer.

But then he fell in love with Janina Vermiskoyiska Melzer, the daughter of a successful doctor, and realized that he needed a more stable profession to support a wife and family. Beginning in 1932, Preis began his studies in architecture at Vienna’a Technische Hochschule. During summer breaks he worked as a draftsman at Universale Redlich & Berger, a large architectural and engineering firm that specialized in large-scale commercial, civic, and residential projects.

But soon the growing Nazi menace in Germany arrived in Austria. Preis’s homeland was annexed by the German Nazi government on 12 March 1938. After witnessing the expulsion of many of his Jewish classmates and professors, he managed to graduate later that year, helped temporarily by the fact that he had converted to Catholicism in 1936.

But Preis quickly realized the growing danger to him and his fiancé Janina, who had no official citizenship in Austria. The couple quickly married on March 14th, just two days after the annexation (Anschluss). Despite his Catholic conversion, Preis was now prevented from working as an architect. Later, under even harsher guidelines, his own father had his auto business confiscated by the Nazis. Following Kristallnacht, the attacks on synagogues and Jewish businesses on the night of 9-10 November 1938, the couple realized they had to get out of Austria as quickly as possible.

Alfred Preis wrote about 50 letters to architectural firms in the United States pleading for a job. He only got one response. It was from Lutah Maria Riggs, a Southern California architect, who wrote that she had no work for him, but one of her former employees, Connie Conrad and his partner Bernard Dahl, had opened an office in Honolulu and were in need of additional designers. Knowing almost nothing about Hawaii other than from Hollywood movies, the Preises were thrilled about their good fortune.

But they faced a long, uncertain journey to get from Austria to Hawaii. In 1939 that meant crossing two oceans via ship. They arrived in New York City from Cherbourg, France on 6 April 1939 aboard the SS Queen Mary. The director of a Catholic charity, a fellow Austrian, helped them arrange travel to California on a freighter via the Panama Canal, the least expensive option. Sailing via the Panama Canal, the freighter brought the couple to San Pedro, California, where they were welcomed by Ms. Riggs and given a quick tour of Los Angeles. After their final week at sea, Alfred and Janina arrived in Honolulu Harbor on the island of Oahu on 22 June 1939 on a typically warm Honolulu summer evening. They had no way of knowing that a war that would radically change the world would break out less than three months later.

The next morning architect Bjarne Dahl met them at the ship. He then gave the couple a tour of their new hometown, including Waikiki and downtown Honolulu. Preis worked for Dahl & Conrad from 1939 until 1941, crediting Connie Conrad with helping him become an “American architect”. But the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought some complications into what had been very good years for Alfred and Janina Preis in Honolulu.

“Enemy Aliens”
Following the Pearl Harbor attack, Preis and his wife were interned as “enemy aliens” for three-and-a-half months on Sand Island. (It is quite the irony that not so many years later Alfred Preis would produce the winning design for a memorial related to the Japanese attack. He was never bitter about his internment.) His former employers finally managed to get him and his wife released. But as with almost all internees, the Preises lost their apartment and most of their possessions.

After his release, Preis returned to work for Dahl & Conrad, but war conditions soon led to the dissolution the firm. Alfred was lucky enough to find work at a rock quarry for a time. It was physical labor involving operating machinery, driving a truck, and other non-desk-job tasks. He later accepted a position at the Hawaii Territorial Department of Public Works before opening his own architectural firm, designing over 180 houses and other projects, including the entrance to the Honolulu Zoo.

Preis became an advocate for the arts, culture, and education in Hawaii. He was the first Executive Director of the Hawaii State Foundation for Culture and the Arts, serving from 1966 to 1980. In 1967 he authored the legislation that made Hawaii the first U.S. state to require companies to donate one percent of the construction costs of public buildings for public art.

An aerial view of the USS Arizona Memorial as it looks today. Designed by the Austrian American architect Alfred Preis, the memorial draws over one million visitors annually. PHOTO: National Park Service

Alfred Preis and the Arizona Memorial
Alfred Preis’s work on the USS Arizona Memorial lasted from 1950 until 1962, when it was dedicated on Memorial Day of that year. It is a war memorial for the servicemen killed aboard the battleship, and one designed by a Jewish refugee who lost almost his entire family in the Holocaust. Preis felt it was also a fitting tribute to the nation and the Americans who had saved him from the Nazis.

The memorial structure we see in Pearl Harbor today was not the first design that Preis envisioned, but that was due mostly to the fact that the Navy’s specifications for the Arizona Memorial kept evolving. It was also a tricky task to design a memorial for what is essentially an underwater cemetery.

Finally, the Navy came up with the criteria they thought would work best. In the words of Preis: “…no load was to bear on the hull of the sunken battleship, and that the memorial to be built was to bridge over the hull. It seemed logical that if the bridge should not be supported by the hull, that there should be no physical, visible link between the hull and the bridge. The bridge should float, hover over the hull. The existing level of the water, regardless of tide, would show the hull below the surface of the water, and the bridge floating above it.”*

Preis’s final design was a beautiful blend of design and engineering. Although he had worked on the project earlier, the actual award of the architectural contract by the Navy and the PWMC was made in August 1959 with the selection of Preis and the Honolulu firm of Johnson & Perkins, Preis Associates.

Alfred Preis passed away on 29 March 1993 in Honolulu. His ashes were scattered from the Arizona memorial.

*As quoted in Remembering Pearl Harbor: The Story of the USS Arizona Memorial by Michael Slackman, Pacific Historic Parks (2012)