Pearl Harbor attack gun may leave Minnesota Capitol grounds for new museum home

For 66 years on the Minnesota Capitol grounds, a 50-caliber gun with a barrel mouth 4 inches wide has served as a reminder of the distant Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941 that drew the United States into World War II.

Minnesota’s connection to that event in history is that a St. Paul-based reservist crew helped man the gun on the USS Ward destroyer that day. They’re credited with firing the first shots in defense of Pearl Harbor, sinking a Japanese midget submarine.

The gun, which sits on the south end of the Capitol Mall near the Veterans Service Building, was installed as part of Minnesota’s centennial celebration. It includes a stone monument added in 2007 listing the names of those Minnesota sailors, the last of whom died in 2015.

Now, the naval artillery could be on the move again.

A relocation petition that gets its initial airing on Dec. 19 seeks to transfer the USS Ward Gun Number Three to an under-construction military museum near Little Falls and Camp Ripley, the Minnesota National Guard training facility.

There, petitioners say, it would fit in with other military artifacts and get the care and preservation it deserves.

“This new facility, dedicated to veterans of all service branches, will be a more appropriate location for this military artifact,” Randal Dietrich, executive director of the Minnesota Military & Veterans Museum, wrote in an application to the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board. 

The museum isn’t slated to open on its new site outside Camp Ripley until 2026. The public review and comment period about the USS Ward gun relocation is part of an extensive process.

The surprise attack on the U.S. Navy’s Hawaii base at Pearl Harbor 83 years ago killed more than 2,400 service members and civilians and more were wounded. About two dozen people from Minnesota were killed or wounded.

Competing interests for Gun Number Three

Capitol planning board officials wrote in a memo this fall that there are competing interests that need to be sorted through. They acknowledged that the gun has fallen into disrepair. Peeling paint over the steel armament shows the rust forming underneath and other wear caused by exposure to the elements. 

The Capitol architectural board has been upfront that it has no current plans or funding dedicated to future maintenance and cautions that “will inevitably result in continued degradation.”

But public access is also a consideration.

“In addition to information related to the history of the gun, its ownership and its siting here at the Capitol, CAAPB staff is aware of the particular importance of the gun to veterans groups and veterans families based in St. Paul, the long process of establishing the gun in its site on the Capitol Mall, and the process of maintaining the gun over the years,” the memo written in September says.

The warship gun technically doesn’t belong to the state. Since 1958, the USS Ward Gun Number Three has been on loan from the U.S. Navy under an agreement that the state properly maintains it.

In May 2024, state lawmakers approved $275,000 in outdoor and legacy heritage funding for relocation and restoration of the USS Ward gun display. Additional legislation could be discussed in 2025 to help financially support the transfer, museum leaders have said.

The Navy League of the United States, Minnesota Council backs the effort to move the monument to an indoor location at the new museum.

Then-council president William James III wrote to Capitol planning officials in June 2022 to say a move “will preserve this important part of Minnesota’s Naval history.”

Plans currently call for the artifact to be the centerpiece of a World War II exhibit where “visitors will be immersed in the sights and sounds” of what sailors went through as Pearl Harbor was under siege in 1941, Dietrich’s application says.

The Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs also supports relocation. Commissioner Bradley Lindsay wrote in a January letter to an admiral in the Naval History and Heritage Command that he was eager to see a new chapter for the artifact at the 40,000-square foot military museum.

Lindsay asked that the loan agreement be therefore modified to allow its transfer.

“The prominent placement it will enjoy at the heart of the WWII Exhibition Gallery is befitting  of the service of the Minnesota Naval Reservists who made history the morning of December 7, 1941,” Lindsay wrote. 

If the move is ultimately made, it would be up to state Capitol grounds planners to decide what happens with the empty spot. One possibility on the table is to simply seed it with grass.

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