On Sunday night, July 18th, at about 5pm, the new War in the Pacific website was migrated to NPS server ... and just in time.
On July 19th, the WWII historical park which commemorates the bravery and sacrifice of those who participated in the Pacific Theater, had its "web-debut" and showed the site to almost 100 people through a internet connection displayed on a large screen. Among the one hundred people in attendance were twenty-four returning veterans who stormed the beaches of Guam sixty years ago to liberate the island and about twenty-five of their friends and families- all from the U.S. mainland. An additional fifty people from the island, including many Chamorros who were forced to endure the two and a half years of Japanese occupation from December 8th, 1941- July 21, 1944, were also in attendance at the debut last night and were visibly touched by the images they saw and the accounts they read.
This site was featured in the Pacific Daily News newspaper today and the feedback from the veterans and the Guam public has been tremendous. A glowing email has already come in from a ParkNet web visitor which praised the site has a "virtual museum" and thanked the park for bringing the texts and historical photos to the web. The email also stressed that the individual was glad that he could once again virtually visit our museum and was grateful that he could now do so at his own pace even though he no longer resides on Guam.
War in the Pacific NHP's museum, visitor contact facility, and research library was forced to close following the devastating effects of Supertyphoon Pongsona in December 2002. This website represents the park staff's efforts to reestablish the museum for the public's benefit. This website includes many of the park's historical publications and almost 700 WWII historical photographs from the park's museum and National Archives photo collection.
The new website can be viewed by going to the In-depth portion of the www.nps.gov/wapa website at
http://www.nps.gov/wapa/indepth .
Special thanks to all the people that helped make this site possible including a NPS web volunteer from Seattle, Harry Butowsky, and June Jones.
