Related: ʻIolani Palace: The 1893 Overthrow That Ended the Hawaiian Kingdom | Bishop Museum, Honolulu: Tickets, Hours, and What to See | 7-Day Oʻahu Itinerary for First-Timers
Pearl Harbor is the most visited place on Oʻahu, and it earns that title. This is where the United States was pulled into World War II on the morning of December 7, 1941, and it is where that same war formally ended less than four years later, on the deck of a battleship that is still moored here today. Standing in the quiet between those two ships, the sunken Arizona below the water and the towering Missouri just across the channel, is the kind of moment that stays with you long after the flight home.
Here is what most first-time visitors do not realize until they are standing in the parking lot: Pearl Harbor is not a single attraction. It is a group of four separate sites that share one visitor center, and each one has its own ticket, its own hours, and its own set of rules. We have walked family and friends from the mainland through this place more times than we can count, so this guide covers all four sites, what each costs in 2026, how the free reservation system actually works, and the bag policy that trips up almost everyone on their first try.
What Pearl Harbor Actually Includes
When people say they are going to Pearl Harbor, they usually mean the Pearl Harbor National Memorial, home of the USS Arizona Memorial. That is the free and most famous piece, run by the National Park Service. But the wider complex holds three more sites, each operated by its own nonprofit and each charging its own admission: the Battleship Missouri Memorial, the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park, and the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.
Two of these, the Arizona Memorial and the Bowfin, sit right at the main Pearl Harbor Visitor Center. The other two, the Missouri and the Aviation Museum, are out on Ford Island, an active military base that you reach by a free shuttle bus from the visitor center. The visitor center itself is free to enter, with two open air museum galleries, a bookstore, and a shoreline path that looks straight out over Battleship Row. You could spend a meaningful hour here without paying for anything at all.
The USS Arizona Memorial
The USS Arizona was a Pennsylvania class battleship, 608 feet (185 m) of steel, when Japanese aircraft attacked just before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941. A bomb pierced her deck near the forward ammunition magazines, and the explosion that followed tore the bow open and sent her to the harbor floor in under nine minutes. Of the 2,403 Americans killed that morning, 1,177 died aboard the Arizona alone, close to half of the entire day’s toll in a single ship.
Nearly 900 of those men are still entombed in the hull below the water. The Arizona was never raised. She is treated as a hallowed grave, and to this day a thin sheen of oil still rises from her tanks and spreads across the surface, drop by drop. Rangers and local families call them the black tears, or the tears of the Arizona. The stark white memorial you see in every photo spans the sunken ship without ever touching it, so you are standing directly above the wreck and the men inside it.
Visiting the memorial is a set program. You watch a 23 minute documentary film about the attack, then board a Navy operated boat for the short ride across the water to the memorial itself, where you can look down at the hull and read the marble wall of names. The whole thing is free. What you need is a reservation.
How to Get the Free Arizona Memorial Tickets
Tickets to the USS Arizona Memorial program are free, but you reserve them through Recreation.gov, and each ticket carries a $1 non refundable reservation fee. That single dollar is the only cost, and it is worth every penny to lock in a time.
Reservations open on a rolling schedule, 56 days (eight weeks) ahead, released at 3 p.m. Hawaiʻi time. They go quickly in summer and around the December 7 anniversary, so set a reminder and book the moment they drop. If you miss that window, a smaller batch of next day tickets is released at 3 p.m. Hawaiʻi time the day before your visit, though availability is never guaranteed. Every person in your group needs their own reservation, including infants over one year old.
On the day, plan to arrive at the visitor center at least an hour before your program time, because security screening and the walk to the theater take longer than you expect. The visitor center is open daily from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., the first program starts at 8 a.m., and the last boat leaves the dock at 3:30 p.m. Even without a memorial ticket, you can still walk the grounds and both galleries for free, so a missed reservation does not mean a wasted trip. If you have already booked the Diamond Head hike, this system will feel familiar, since both use timed online reservations that sell out early.
Battleship Missouri Memorial: the Mighty Mo
If the Arizona is where the war began for America, the Battleship Missouri is where it ended. The Mighty Mo is an Iowa class battleship, 887 feet (270 m) long, and on September 2, 1945, Japanese officials stood on her deck in Tokyo Bay and signed the formal surrender that closed World War II. Bringing her to Pearl Harbor and mooring her a short distance from the Arizona was a deliberate choice: the two ships bookend the war, the beginning and the end, within sight of each other.
The Missouri carries her own stories too. A kamikaze struck her in April 1945 and left little more than a dent and a scorch that you can still see, and the captain ordered a respectful military burial at sea for the young Japanese pilot, a moment the crew never forgot. Walking her decks, standing on the surrender spot, and climbing up into the superstructure is a highlight for a lot of visitors.
The Missouri sits on Ford Island, so you park at the visitor center and ride the free shuttle, which runs every 15 to 20 minutes starting at 8 a.m. Admission is $37.99 for adults and $18.99 for children ages 4 to 12, and guided tours are available for a little more. The memorial is open daily from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and closes on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. The last shuttle back to the visitor center leaves the Missouri around 4:05 p.m., so keep an eye on the clock.
USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park
Right beside the visitor center, with no shuttle required, sits the USS Bowfin, a Balao class submarine that stretches 311 feet (95 m) from bow to stern. She was launched exactly one year after the attack, on December 7, 1942, which earned her the nickname the Pearl Harbor Avenger, and she ran nine war patrols across the Pacific.
Admission is $25.99 for adults and $14.99 for children ages 4 to 12, with reduced rates for seniors, military, and kamaʻāina, and no reservation is needed. Your ticket includes a self guided walk through the submarine with a free audio guide, plus three museum galleries and an outdoor collection of torpedoes and deck guns. Squeezing through the narrow hatches and past the bunks tucked between the torpedoes gives you a real feel for how tight life aboard a wartime sub actually was. The ladders and hatches are steep, so it is not the easiest stop for very young keiki or anyone with mobility limits, but for most people it is a favorite.
Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum
Out on Ford Island, the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum lives inside the very hangars that were strafed during the attack. You start in Hangar 37, a survivor of December 7, where a short film sets the scene before you walk among restored aircraft, from a Japanese Zero to American fighters and warbirds from the Pacific campaign and beyond.
The detail that gives a lot of visitors chills is next door in Hangar 79, an 80,000 square foot (about 7,400 square meter) maintenance building whose blue glass windows are still pocked with bullet holes from that morning in 1941. Nobody patched them. They were left exactly as they were, and standing beneath them is a quiet, powerful thing. Admission is $29.99 for adults and $17.99 for children ages 4 to 12, with keiki 3 and under free, and you save $2 per ticket by booking online. The museum is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the free Ford Island shuttle runs about every 15 minutes from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the last ride back leaving the museum at 5 p.m. Aviation fans and families with plane obsessed kids can lose two easy hours here.
Passport to Pearl Harbor: the Combo Ticket
If you want to see everything, the Passport to Pearl Harbor bundles the three paid sites into one ticket: general admission to the Battleship Missouri, the USS Bowfin, and the Aviation Museum, plus a self guided multimedia tour at the national memorial and one virtual reality experience. It runs $99.99 for adults and $49.99 for children ages 4 to 12, and it is valid across two consecutive days, so you do not have to cram it all into one visit. You can buy it at the Pearl Harbor Historic Sites website.
One important catch: the Passport does not include the free USS Arizona Memorial boat program. That still has to be reserved separately on Recreation.gov. Run the numbers before you buy. If you are committed to all three paid sites, the Passport saves you a bit and simplifies the day. If you only care about one or two, individual tickets are the better call.
Getting There, Parking, and the Bus
The Pearl Harbor Visitor Center sits at 📍 1 Arizona Memorial Place, Honolulu, HI 96818, about 11 miles (18 km) west of Waikīkī. On a good day the drive is around 20 minutes, but rush hour on the H-1 freeway can stretch that to 45 minutes or more, so give yourself a cushion, especially for a morning program. Parking at the visitor center is free, but the lot tends to fill by about 9 a.m., which is one more reason to come early.
If you would rather skip the wheel, TheBus routes 20 and 42 connect Waikīkī to the visitor center, though you should budget well over an hour each way and remember that the strict bag rules below apply on the bus too. Rideshare drops you right at the entrance, and plenty of Waikīkī operators run round trip transport if you want the driving handled for you. For how a Pearl Harbor morning fits alongside the rest of the island, our guide to day trips from Waikīkī lays out the options.
The Bag Policy That Catches Everyone
This is the rule that surprises the most people, so read it twice. For security reasons, no bags are allowed at the Pearl Harbor Historic Sites unless they are smaller than 1.25 by 2.25 by 5.5 inches (about 3 by 6 by 14 cm). In plain terms, that rules out backpacks, purses, camera bags, diaper bags, and fanny packs. Clear stadium bags and bags holding medical devices or medication may be allowed at the discretion of the National Park Service, but do not count on anything else getting through.
You have two good options. Leave everything in your car or back at the hotel, or use the paid storage counter near the visitor center entrance, run by the Bowfin museum, which charges about $7 for a standard bag and $10 for oversize luggage and covers you for all of the sites. You can still carry your phone, wallet, keys, and a camera without a case. Strollers are allowed in most areas, which helps families. Sorting this out before you arrive saves you a frustrating scramble in the parking lot.
How Much Time to Budget
For just the USS Arizona Memorial, plan on about an hour and a half once you factor in early arrival, the film, and the boat. Add roughly two hours for the Missouri, an hour for the Bowfin, and two hours for the Aviation Museum. Trying to do all four in a day is absolutely possible, but it is a full one, running close to seven or eight hours with the shuttle rides in between. Most first timers pair the Arizona Memorial with one other site and save the rest for another trip. Bring water, a hat, and reef safe sunscreen, which is required by state law across Hawaiʻi, because shade at the outdoor sites is limited and the day gets warm.
Visiting With Respect
It is worth remembering what this place is. Pearl Harbor is a working memorial and, in the case of the Arizona, an active grave where close to 900 sailors and Marines still rest. Rangers ask for quiet on the memorial itself, and it is the right instinct anyway. Dress like you are visiting somewhere solemn, keep your voice down, and let the weight of it land. Survivors of the attack still return for the remembrance ceremony every December 7, and their numbers grow smaller each year, which makes bearing witness feel more important, not less. This is the heart of how we try to travel with aloha: with gratitude, and with care for the stories a place holds.
When to Go and What to Pair It With
Pearl Harbor is open year round, and mornings are the sweet spot. You get cooler temperatures, first pick of the boat programs, and a jump on both the crowds and the traffic. Weekdays are calmer than weekends. For a fuller sense of the seasons, crowds, and prices across the islands, our guide to the best time to visit Hawaiʻi breaks it down month by month.
Because Pearl Harbor sits on the west side of Honolulu, it pairs naturally with a day of history. You could follow it with ʻIolani Palace and the story of the 1893 overthrow downtown, or the Hawaiian history galleries at the Bishop Museum up in Kalihi. If you are still building the trip, our 7-day Oʻahu itinerary and our guide on where to stay on Oʻahu both slot a Pearl Harbor morning into the wider plan.
Quick Reference for 2026
The Pearl Harbor Visitor Center (📍 1 Arizona Memorial Place, Honolulu, HI 96818) is open daily from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., and parking is free. The USS Arizona Memorial program is free with a $1 reservation through Recreation.gov, released 56 days ahead at 3 p.m. Hawaiʻi time. The Battleship Missouri ($37.99 adult, $18.99 child) runs 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Ford Island by free shuttle. The USS Bowfin ($25.99 adult, $14.99 child) is open 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. beside the visitor center. The Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum ($29.99 adult, $17.99 child) is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Ford Island. The Passport to Pearl Harbor combo is $99.99 adult and $49.99 child. Remember the bag rule, come early, and treat the memorial as the grave that it is. For current conditions, the National Park Service posts updates at nps.gov/perl.
More from Wanderlustyle
Keep exploring the island with our guide to the Battle of Nuʻuanu, the view from the Nuʻuanu Pali Lookout, the full Oʻahu circle island drive, the best things to do on Oʻahu with kids, and our 3-day Oʻahu itinerary for a shorter trip.
