With
the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the absence
of a perceived threat to the United States came drastic cuts in the defense
budget, and the high cost of maintaining and operating battleships as part of
the United States Navy's active fleet became uneconomical; as a result, Missouri was
decommissioned on 31 March 1992 at Long Beach, California. Her last
commanding officer, Captain Albert L. Kaiss, wrote in the ship's final Plan of
the Day:
Our
final day has arrived. Today the final chapter in battleship Missouri’s
history will be written. It's often said that the crew makes the command. There
is no truer statement ... for it's the crew of this great ship that made this a
great command. You are a special breed of sailors and Marines and I am proud to
have served with each and every one of you. To you who have made the painful
journey of putting this great lady to sleep, I thank you. For you have had the
toughest job. To put away a ship that has become as much a part of you as you
are to her is a sad ending to a great tour. But take solace in this—you have
lived up to the history of the ship and those who sailed her before us. We took
her to war, performed magnificently and added another chapter in her history,
standing side by side our forerunners in true naval tradition. God bless you
all.
—Captain Albert L. Kaiss
Missouri returned to be part
of the reserve fleet at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Washington,
until 12 January 1995, when she was struck from the Naval Vessel Register. She remained in Bremerton, but
was not open to tourists as she had been from 1957 to 1984. In spite of
attempts by citizens' groups to keep her in Bremerton and be re-opened as a tourist
site, the U.S. Navy wanted to pair a symbol of the end of World War II with one
representing its beginning. On 4 May 1998, Secretary of the Navy John
H. Dalton signed the donation contract that transferred her to the
nonprofit USS Missouri Memorial Association (MMA)
of Honolulu, Hawaii. She was towed from Bremerton on 23 May to Astoria,
Oregon, where she sat in fresh water at the mouth of the Columbia
River to kill and drop the saltwater barnacles and sea
grasses that had grown on her hull in Bremerton, then towed
across the eastern Pacific, and docked at Ford Island, Pearl Harbour on
22 June, just 500 yd (460 m) from the Arizona Memorial. Less
than a year later, on 29 January 1999, Missouri was
opened as a museum operated by the MMA.
Thank you Becky for this
lovely card.
