New Orleans’ WWII Museum Opens Exhibit about Pearl Harbor on Attack’s 70th Anniversary

The National World War II Museum in New Orleans will open an exhibit dedicated to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7.

Called Infamy: December 1941, the exhibit will be open to the public on the 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

The exhibit recounts the strike in Hawaii as well as the lesser-known but nearly simultaneous attacks on American territories in the Pacific, including Wake Island, Guam and the Philippines, museum authorities said in a statement.

Accounts of Pearl Harbor veterans and survivors, who witnessed the attack on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, that drew America into World War II are also documented at the exhibit. One such exhibit features the story of Pearl Harbor veteran Robert Templet, who was a Radioman (1st Class) at Ford Island, Hawaii.

Templet was walking to breakfast on the day of attack when he heard a plane motor surging forward from behind him. He turned and saw the pilot, his goggles atop his head, smiling down at him before a torpedo fell from the plane's belly, according to a Reuters report.

Pearl Harbor forever changed America. It is appropriate and important that we observe this anniversary at the national Museum devoted to telling the story of our country's role in the Second World War. It is doubly so as this may be the last significant anniversary of the attack when we will have eyewitnesses to that event still with us, said Dr. Gordon H. Nick Mueller, President and Chief Executive Officer of The National WWII Museum.