After Years In Limbo, Navy Sets USS Iowa's Final Berth

[Jim von Krieg]

Des Moines Register
November 28, 2007
Pg. 1B

After Years In Limbo, Navy Sets USS Iowa's Final Berth

By John Carlson

Finally, after 12 years of arguing, posturing and West Coast political mumbo-jumbo, the USS Iowa appears to have found a home.

The Navy has declared Mare Island at Vallejo, Calif., to be the only viable place to berth the old World War II-era battleship as a floating museum and memorial.

"We're beyond thrilled," said Merylin Wong of the Historic Ships Memorial at Pacific Square, the organization that has worked to make sure the 887-foot-long ship wasn't cut up for scrap. "It's just a matter of raising the money."

That means coming up with $18 million to restore the ship and prepare the site, and Wong has lots of ideas to make sure that happens.

It is, Wong says, too important a ship to die. The Iowa carried President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Tehran conference for his meeting with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, and from then on it became known as "Roosevelt's Battleship."

It served in the Pacific during World War II and off the coast of Korea during the Korean War. It also was the site of the greatest peacetime tragedy in U.S. naval history, a gun turret explosion in 1989 that killed 47 sailors.

The massive ship was decommissioned in 1990. In 2001, it was towed from Rhode Island, through the Panama Canal and to a supposedly temporary parking place with other mothballed ships in Suisan Bay near San Francisco. That's where the battleship's future seemed certain and the political craziness began.

Then-San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown supported berthing the Iowa as a museum on the city's waterfront. Sens. Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer agreed. So did Rep. Nancy Pelosi and virtually every other politician in northern California.

But things changed, beginning with a new mayor and board of supervisors - and a war in Iraq.

One guy got some attention because he proposed painting the ship pink and using it as a place to honor gays who had been discriminated against by the military.

One city supervisor said San Franciscans didn't want a warship docked there under any circumstances. Another supervisor opposed it because he didn't want a USS Iowa museum in San Francisco when America was stuck in a war he opposed. So the supervisors voted down a proposal to bring the battleship to the city.

Feinstein called the decision "petty," but it didn't matter. San Francisco, which was Wong's organization's dream home for the Iowa, was out of the picture. Nearby Stockton made a pitch for the Iowa, but the Navy quietly settled on Mare Island - on San Pablo Bay about 25 miles from San Francisco - as the only place for the ship.

"I think it's great news," said Larry Seaquist of Gig Harbor, Wash., a former commanding officer of the battleship. "Letting it sit there rotting away is a disgrace. Actually, I'd love to see it back on active duty, but that's a false hope.

"Its real value will be as a museum, and that's important in a country where most people don't have any connection with the military. People will be able to tour that spectacular ship and see what was right about the Navy."

Finding a permanent home for the battleship hasn't been just a California effort. Wong has lobbied Iowa politicians and visited the state looking for political and financial support.

Former Govs. Terry Branstad and Tom Vilsack wrote letters supporting the establishment of the Iowa as a museum, as did Sen. Charles Grassley and Rep. Leonard Boswell. Wong also has worked with Patrick Palmersheim, director of the Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs.

"Merylin Wong has worked about as hard as anybody could to get this to happen," said Palmersheim. "I'm looking forward to the day when I can go to California and see the ship open as a museum and memorial. It looks like it's finally going to happen."

One thing is for sure. The ship will not be berthed in Iowa, as some have suggested.

"I heard from an individual who thought the USS Iowa should be in Saylorville Lake," said Palmersheim. "Somebody else thought it should be in Dubuque."

Not exactly practical, since the 45,000-ton ship's draft - the depth of water needed to float it - is about 38 feet.

Anyway, there's a fine model of the USS Iowa in the state Capitol. It's as close as the state ever will get to the real thing.